Jeepers Creepers... Don't Touch My Peepers!

I’m starting to get little pieces of paper in the mail telling me it’s time for some yearly exams. One of them is freaking me out.

No, it’s not my yearly woman’s exam. After having given birth to three kids, stuff like that is small potatoes. Hell, with Son#3, there were so many damn people in the room come birthing time; they might as well have put up bleacher stands. (There were some ‘touch and go’ moments with that birth. So much for it gets easier every time.)

No, it’s not my yearly breast exam. That doesn’t faze me either. Mammograms don’t hurt; and the manual exam by my doctor doesn’t embarrass me. It’s all science. Get a grip. During the mammogram I usually spend my time talking to the technician about how the machine works. During my doctor’s visit, it just doesn’t faze me. I found a lump 6 years ago (talk about taking 10 years off your life) and when I went into his office (he fit me in the next day), I had no problems saying, “No, it’s right here” and firmly placing his hand directly upon the lump. Why bother giving directions? “At the center of the nipple, take a left… no not my left, your left… now go down 2.3 cm and take a diagonal….” Sorry. It’s a breast, not a road map.

The exam that is freaking me out is… my….yearly…. eye… exam. There. I said it. I said yearly didn’t I? Well, I haven’t gone in YEARS. I am scared half to death. I’m an eye phobe. A serious, the type doctors talk about behind closed doors, eye phobe. I can’t touch eyes, can’t have my eyes touched, can’t think about it, the whole thing makes me start to hyperventilate. You know that weird fetish you sometimes read about… this eyeball licking thing? Yeah,well, if I ever dated a guy that had one of those… immediate grounds for jettison. Nope. If any man tried to touch my eyeball, damn, with his tongue, immediate kick to the groin and I’d be outta there. Makes me want to vomit just thinking about it.

My biggest fear has been something happening to my kid’s eyes and my not being able to cope. I’ve done the broken arm thing with Son#2. I calmly got an ice pack and our insurance card, strapped him in his car seat, and told my husband to call me when he got to the ER. I’ve done the whole split the head open thing with Son#1. As a big gaping hole appeared on his forehead, and blood started to pour out, I saw white and thought to myself, calmly as he was screaming, “Well, damn, is that his brain or his skull?” Everyone else around me is wiggin’ out, and I’m looking for ice and trying to figure out what ER has the best pedo unit and really hoping it was his skull and not his brain I just saw. But eyes… they get sand in their eyes and I can hardly breathe. I’m a frickin’ whacked out mess.

I’m a whack job. I know it. I was at dinner with my in-laws many many years ago and we saw our Ophthalmologist. He made some mention to me about how I am a phobe. My father in law, says, “Yeah, I get squeamish about eyes too.” Our doctor says, “No. Not like this. She is ONE OF THE worst patients I have. She exhibits traits I typically see only in young men. It is bad.”

There you have it. I’m one of the worst. And you are saying, “Please, how bad could it be, Bou?” Bad. I tell ya, it’s bad. It is so bad I have NEVER had a glaucoma test. You can’t do a test on someone who is passed out in the chair. Yup. Flat out cold. Cold sweat, hyperventilated and then just passed out, from pure unadulterated fear. Thank God those chairs have you confined.

So it is time and I know I need a real eye exam. I’m going to be 40 in 1 year and 1 month. Eyes change. And when this was a problem at 25, 30, 34, he would say something like, ‘as you get older, we are going to have to do this’ and I know, that that time is coming and if I go now, closer to 40, this might just be the magic age.

I’m an eye phobe. I’m a freak.