On Monday April 27, 2009 my mom made me call my eye doctor.  Over the weekend my eye sight had worsened to the point where I could barely see.  I was able to see light and dark and basic shapes.  You know the silhouette of the cowboy leaning against, well, something?  That is basically how everything looked to me.  To say I had blurry vision was an understatement.  It would be a couple of weeks before I would find this out, but apparently my eyes were scary looking as well – unable to focus on anything and drifting.

So I called my eye doctor and got an appointment the next day.  Both of my ever-involved parents came with me.  The nurse took me into a room to perform a field test (you stare into a large thing and press a button every time you see a light flash).  I had this test done during my initial appointment – 17 days earlier.  After a few minutes of me not pressing the button the nurse stopped the test and asked if I could see anything.  I replied, “No.”  But you were here 2 weeks ago and took this test, you could see then?  “Yes,” I told her.  And then she brought me back to see the doctor.  He took one look into my eyes and told me I needed to go the hospital.  That the pressure in my head was so great that it has caused my optic nerves to swell so much that I cannot see and that they have to relieve the pressure in my head and to do that requires surgery.  A neurosurgeon will confirm, but it is his recommendation that I have a shunt placed in my back to drain fluid from my brain, down my spine and into my abdomen.  And that I need it done immediately.  And that I might go blind.  I need to go to the hospital now, but don’t worry, he’ll call ahead.

Okay, I thought to myself.  We can do this.  Surgery, no big deal, you’ll be out a week and everything will go back to normal and you’ll feel great when this is all done.  “Amy Ruud needs a shunt.” That’s what I’ll put as my Facebook status.

So I get to the hospital and I am led inside and I explain what is going on.  I continue to explain it about 2 dozen times to different doctors and nurses and administrative personnel in the ER.  Meanwhile, I see practically nothing.  And I felt bad.  I felt bad that I couldn’t see what these doctors and nurses looked like.  So I kept asking my mom if they were cute – they were doctors, of course they cute to my mom!

It’s annoying enough to have lights shinning in your eyes when you have perfectly fine eye sight.  But when you’re practically blind from swollen optic nerves a light shining in your eyes is painful.  Worse than a spinal tap.  But necessary – I guess.

I was relieved when I met the Ophthalmological resident and some interns – all of whom came to see the marvel that was me.  All of them eager to shine their lights in my eyes and take a look at my nerves.  Did you know that the optic nerves are the only nerves in your body that you can see without actually cutting your body open?  It’s true – look it up.  They also used this totally archaic machine to take pictures of my nerves (we would find out later that it didn’t work).

They stood there and asked me questions like, “How many fingers am I holding up?”  To which I would reply, “You’re holding up fingers?”  Finally the doctor told me my case was quiet remarkable and that no one in the hospital had seen a case as severe as mine – to which I replied, “Hey, look, I go big or I go home.”  And they concurred with my eye doctor, I needed surgery.  Next stop by would be the neurosurgeon.