Inside Gigi's World

* * * * *

“My right eye has been bothering me. I’ve started having some double vision in it but the thing that drives me most crazy is it droops sometimes. It looks half open.”

“It doesn’t appear to look that way to me. It looks strong and healthy.”

“Well, it only does it when I’m really tired or if I have been on the screen a lot or if I am reading…like when my eyes feel tired. It also does it under certain lights, like my lights over my station at work or some of the lights at the dance studio.”

“Are you tired, reading, or on electronics a lot?” 

“Yeah.”

“Can you cut back? Change your habits?”

“No. I’m in school.” The doctor looks at me puzzled. I further explain, “I’m in college.”

“Oh, I see,” she says, “I could see how staying off of electronics or cutting back on reading could be problematic.”

I have been to three doctors already in the past two years since my eye has started doing this. They all say the same thing, “Nothing wrong”…”I don’t see anything”…”Everything looks good”…and my most favorite, “Sometimes as we get older our muscles get looser and things begin to sag. Have you thought about cosmetic surgery?” (No shit as we age things start to sag, have you seen the rest of this mess?) However, none of the three doctors have had any explanation for why I could possibly have double vision. 

My fourth doctor—the newest one, whose office I am sitting in right now—suggests that like the other doctors she feels as though my eye drooping could be caused by age. She also believes that the (occasional) double vision I have been experiencing could be some kind of deficit brought on from an old concussion that I had about ten years prior. She thinks I may need some prisms in my glasses. 

“I’d like you to see a neuro-ophthalmologist. The only one around here is in Boston but if you need prisms, they are the best of the best and I think that’s the direction we should head in next.”

* * * * *

Our healthcare system, before the Covid-19 pandemic was, at its best, lackluster. Post the Covid-19 apocalypse, it is even worse. 

My appointment with the doctor in Boston—where it is said some of the best and brightest healthcare in the country is located—took over a year to come to fruition. From the time my doctor’s office sent over the referral and scheduled my appointment, three different letters came via snail mail stating, “Dear Mrs…, Due to unforeseen circumstances…Due to the fact that we only have one neuro-ophthalmologist…Due to the fact that we are not considering your case an emergency…Due to the fact that someone with a better insurance than you wants to schedule…Due to the fact that four doctors have already seen you for this issue and they all think its because you turned forty and are as old as white dog shit…Due to the fact that the healthcare system as well as our hospital is failing you and other likewise consumers…Due to the fact that we are allowed to price gouge you and give you inadequate care, your appointment has been canceled by us. You need to call our office at your earliest convenience —and you better make it fast because we have also canceled another 99 appointments besides yours and all those patients are going to try to call to make their appointments at the same time.  Also, there are only ten available appointments within the next six months—so we need to rebook you as promptly as possible.”

I did as they asked each time in the letter; I called the office to reschedule. Each time I spent over an hour on the phone just trying to get a person. Each time I called I’d ask, “Why am I being rescheduled?” and each time I was met with the same response, “The doctor does not think you are an emergency or a priority right now. She feels as though you can wait until she is ready to see you.” 

So that is what I did. I waited because I had no other option. 

I was finally seen one day shy of the day my doctor’s office called and scheduled my first appointment. 364 days. 

Just in case you didn’t know this about the hospitals in Boston, let me be a bit of a tour guide. Parking spots—even in the hospital’s garages—are nearly impossible to find no matter how early you arrive for your appointment. Traffic is enough to make you want to ram your car right into a concrete wall and if you are able to find parking, even if you get your ticket validated, you are going to spend a small fortune on parking fees. 

I met with the doctor’s attending first. He was fashionably dressed in mix-matched patterns and textures that still tied together through his color palette choices. His tie had little red, yellow and burnt orange flowers on blue fabric with a rough texture and splashes of silver running through it. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. His shirt was adorned with the same exact colors in a paisley pattern except it had a silky appearance. His pocket square was the same exact pattern as his tie. His pants which were also crafted of the same colors—minus the silver accents— were plaid with a rougher texture—kind of like wool—and went just above his ankles to show off his fancy socks that were swirls and polka dots of the same exact colors as everything else. He wore blue, shiny shoes and his white lab coat, which was unbuttoned, was worn as a fashionable accessory instead of some kind of doctoral uniform intended to make every person he met while wearing it feel intellectually inferior to him. He was younger than me but the dash of silky silver that sprinkled the front of his pitch-black, freshly styled coiff, made him look the kind of distinguished that came from being on this planet for many years.  

The first thing I said to him was, “My Gramma would think you were a sharp dresser.” I think he felt a bit slighted that an old person might find him fashionable but the joke was on him if he thought it to be an insult, the one thing my Gram knew was fashion. 

We went into a room where he performed tests with lights, depth perception and patterns, numbers and letters, he asked questions. Then he performed more tests with different lights and different sequences. Then he asked more questions. After a bit he says, “I do believe you have a slight deficiency in your right eye which is more than likely causing the blurred vision. It isn’t enough to put any prisms in your prescription. I think it would do more damage than good at this point. I also think that the droop in your eye is because of age. If it gets too bad we can schedule a surgery to help keep it open but at this point I think it is more cosmetic than impeding. We should see you in a year’s time unless anything changes. I am just going to go get the doctor so she can sign off on your paperwork and we will get you your next appointment scheduled.”

He leaves the room where myself and my friend who brought me, sit and make jokes about growing old, droopy eyes, and wasting mornings in Boston hospitals. 

He is gone for only a few quick minutes. When he returns, the doctor is trailing behind him. She takes one look at me and instantly begins panicking, “Call medic! Call medic! We need a bed! She’s having a stroke!”

The doctor’s panicked frenzy makes everyone else begin to panic. 

We all begin yelling at once. 

The attending asks, “Who?”

My friend asks, “What are you talking about?”

I ask panicking, “Who the hell is having a stroke? Me? I feel fine. What the hell are you talking about?”

Once the room settles a bit and everyone stops yelling over each other, the doctor comes to her senses and starts asking me questions, “Has your eye ever drooped like this before?”

I reply, “Yes. I just told him that.” I point at the attending accusingly. 

“This? This is a new symptom?” She asks.

“No. I just said that. It’s been doing it for over three years now.”

I look to my friend for reassurance and she echos the same thing I just said, “We noticed her eye doing this over two or three years ago now.”

“Yeah.” I say. “It comes and goes. Like when I’m tired or have been on my computer a lot. Certain lights, like the ones that are on in here which I already told him.” I point accusingly at the attending again. 

“So this is not new?” the doctor asks again. 

I wonder to myself where she got her medical degree from if she has had to  ask me this same, simple question three times…and after causing all of this panic…making my heart rate elevate to that of a hummingbird’s which will no doubt end up resulting in one of these strokes she’s carrying on about…or me shitting my pants. 

“No! I already told you that. This has been going on for a long time now.”

“Then why are you here?”

Internal monologue: You have got to be shitting me…“Boy, you people don’t talk all that much do you? I’m here for prisms which he said I don’t need so now you are here to sign my paperwork so I can go home.”

“Has your doctor ever diagnosed you with Myasthenia gravis or Graves’ disease?”

“No. The four doctors I have seen for this over the last few years all say it is cosmetic, just like he said.” My finger finds my mark one more time as I point at the attending again. 

“Are you sure no one has ever diagnosed you with any kind of eye conditions in the past? Horner’s disease, perhaps?”

“No. Nothing.”

“And how long has this been going on for?”

I just stare at her when my friend yells from the corner of the room, “At least two to three years!”

She now begins her own set of exams and after about two minutes and eighteen seconds she begins to panic more. “Her eyes, they are two different colors.”

“Yeah, I know. Since birth, me and him (points at the attending again) discussed this already too.”

She now too looks at the attending accusingly. “And her pupils, they are two different sizes and they do not dilate together.” She takes out her phone and begins taking pictures of my eyes. She shines little laser lights with the brightness of a thousand suns right into my retinas. If I wasn’t blind walking in here, I fear I may be now. 

She continues, “You seem stable to me, enough where I feel comfortable sending you home.”

“Well, that’s good because that’s where I was planning on going.” She gives me a dirty look. She is not impressed with me.

“And you are sure that no one has ever diagnosed you with anything before?” I just stare at her. I do not respond. “Alright then, well I think there is something going on here. Something bad could be happening…”

I interrupt her. “Like what?”

“I think you could possibly be having mini-strokes.”

“What?” I feel winded. 

“Or it could be a clogged aortic artery. Or you could have had an aneurysm. There could also possibly be a tumor. I think we need to explore what is causing your eye to droop. I think you need a CTA scan and a MRI.”

My insurance was billed for an almost seven-thousand dollar “specialist” visit. 

I do not feel good about any of this.

* * * * *

The MRI technician appears from a corner that extends just past the waiting area where I am sitting, waiting to take these stupid tests, pondering all of the horribly, terrible things they could find. I wonder how I might look with a shaved head if they need to drill into my skull because something isn’t right. I wonder when a massive stroke will come and end my life if I have indeed been suffering mini-strokes because that would be inevitable, wouldn’t it, a death-inducing stroke? I watch the rain bead on the window that overlooks the parking lot where my car sits and I wonder if I ran out and hopped in it and drove as fast as I could towards home if anyone would even notice. 

That’s when my attention is called back to the waiting area, “Angie?” He’s looking right at me. I am the only one here. He knows it’s me.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“You can come with me.”

He takes me to a small room and I hand him my unsigned consent form. I’ve already consented to have the MRI, what I am unwilling to give consent to is the heavy metal they want to inject into my body. 

He asks, “Did you not want the contrast?”

I feel like I did something wrong. “Do I have to?”

He responds, “No but the doctor might not be able to read your MRI images.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there I guess.”

He begins to talk about there being no studies of the long term effects, it is relatively safe, there is no proof this is a dangerous contrast, most people get the contrast…there’s only two ongoing class action suits but nothing can be proven.

I feel even more confident in my decision. 

He starts his lines of questioning to further check me in. 

“Are you wearing anything metal?”

I feel naked without my jewelry on, like a peasant. The receptionist that called me for my pre-registration reminded me not once, not twice, but three times to make sure I would not show up to my appointment with jewelry on. I made sure I took off all of my bracelets, earrings, chains, anklets, nose rings, and rings before I left the house to go to my appointment. The MRI technician also triple-checks to make sure I have no jewelry on. 

“Any  metal scraps or foreign objects in your eyes?”

“No.”

“Intravenous iron treatments for anemia? Pace makers? Implanted metal devices? Kidney failure? Are you pregnant or breastfeeding?”

“No. No. No. No. No And no.”

I absent-mindedly run my hands over my eyes. I know there are no foreign or metal objects in them but I can’t help but wonder what kind of horror show must have transpired at one time or another for that to become part of the questions they ask. I tug at the phantom earrings that I know I took out but still better to be safe than sorry and I rub my eyes one last time for good measure to make sure that no foreign objects have lodged themselves into my orbital cavity in the last five minutes. 

I feel like I have been living a very boring life after answering these questions.