Sunday, April 10, 2011

That night began a tedious and dramatic problem that has plagued us for weeks since. The crisis is now averted, so I will write about it's full course to spare it from the rest of the story, and because it did in fact effect much of the rest of the journey. 
In the night, lying in the nocturnal heat of the city, my eyes began to weep, uncontrollably. I wiped at them all night but realized that something was really wrong. They had bothered me ever since working in Ehrwald due to overexposure to the sun (combined with snow) that had made my eyes dry and week. For several days before that night they had been seriously bothering me but, used to the difficulties of eyes, especially with contact lenses, I expected to simply let them heal, as eyes can in fact do with remarkable speed under most circumstances. But with that weeping night it was clear something should be done. The US embassy website listed good doctors and I went to one I knew was in the most expensive part of Buenos Aires, figuring that might increase the chances of a good doctor. Me and Casey made our way there with me in fairly excruciating pain . Imagine lots of sand in both eyes, but you can't blink it out. Closing your eyes hurts, and opening them hurts even more. So slowly we made our way there, and I sat in a waiting room for a couple hours with a dozen others, nodding in and out of consciousness partly from pain but mostly from exhaustion and heat. Finally I was called in, where a sweet opthamologist took very kind cautious care of my eyes and informed me that I had a corneal ulcer, like a vast (3 millimeters across!!) scab on my eye that was refusing to heal. She prescribed antibiotics and a huge eyepatch of white gauze and tape and told me to return the next day. The next few days, though the eye slowly healed and was decreasingly painful, I was essentially an invalid. At first, it was too painful to focus on anything so I just slept and lay in the dark for hours while Casey made buddies with musicians around the hostel. But as it became less painfully I still had the problem of the eye patch. Navigating the huge, packed, dusty streets with no peripheral vision or depth perception was quite a challenge, but I slowly improved, with Casey occasionally steering me and telling me when I could and could not cross streets. In fact, Casey was a great doctor, administering my eye drop antibiotics and my eye-goop medication which apparently was meant to form a protective coating around the eye. The corneal ulcer healed surely, and I finally removed my eyepatch. By this time I was wearing a much cooler, more intimidating black pirate eyepatch. Little kids were fascinated by my condition and would grab their mommies arm to say "what's the problem with his eye mama?" it took a lot of self restraint not to make monster noises and really freak them out. The best reaction I ever got was when I passed a group of little girls on my way to the bathroom, and while there took off the eyepatch for the evening (it was healed enough that this was ok) and then returned. They had slightly oohed and aahed when I passed with the eye patch moments earlier but when I passed without it they were simply stunned. A couple times when people asked what happened I would make up an interesting sorry but after one exchange, where I told a woman I had been mauled by a tiger and she said "really, was that while you were in Europe?" I realized that the drama and humor couldn't withstand the translation. 
So eventually one corneal ulcer healed but then the other eye, exhausted from
doing all the work for a week, began to break down as well. I saw another doctor (by now we were in a strange little coastal Patagonian town, but more on that later) who informed
me that I had keratitis, as a result of the snowblindness I had suffered. Keratitis is like a dozen smaller corneal ulcers. Just wonderful. But after a couple days with him and more new antibiotics, I continued with my eyes almost fully restored. At this point I had several long phone consultations with doctors back in the states. Urged by my parents desire for my health, I was considering traveling home to get to the bottom of this problem. The general consensus among the doctors was that keratitis was not extremely dangerous, just took a very long time to heal. By now I had been forbidden from wearing contact lenses and had a new pair of glasses and super strong sun glasses to be worn at all times. My eyes, through all of this, were extremely, and I mean EXtremely sensitive to the sun, but with ultra heavy duty sunglasses and a hat I could usually survive. I did (and do actually, the sun sensitivity is the only part that continues) spend a lot of time looking at the ground and missing out on scenery, but I'm sure I haven't missed too much. One of my eyes worsened again and we spent a week camping in a little town (the town with the only opthamologist for a 1000 miles, seriously) but at the end of this the doctor sent me on my way with no eye patch, no pain, and lots more fancy medications. That brings the story of my annoying eyes to the present, where they are currently quite comfortable but still slowly healing. The doctors in the US said that as a result of snowblindness they need to grow a new epithileum, which I assume is some sort of outer protective layer, and this is the reason for the continued over sensitivity. But I got a very suave new pair of glasses out of the deal so I guess its not all bad.

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