Blind Fear

“Just calm down” my dad said shaking his head. My teeth chattered by way of acknowledgment.


“Why do you get yourself so worked up?” he muttered in bewilderment as he pulled into the doctor’s surgery car park. It’s a question my father continues to ask me whenever I have one of my little episodes and, as I keep telling him, I can only blame the parents.


Checking my eye balls in the overhead mirror for the twentieth time, I hoped blindness wasn’t imminent. When my eyes had first started to itch thirty minutes before, I hadn’t thought much of it, continuing to write birthday cards whilst giving them the odd rub. When they’d started to feel peculiar, I’d gone to investigate. Stood in front of the mirror, I watched two swollen bloodshot eyes widen in horror.


Within seconds, my emergency doctor’s appointment was booked and my parents were on their way to perform counselling. As I sat on the bottom step praying in tongues, I scurried back and forth to the mirror to watch the redness spread across my eyeballs. Each visit crazed me further and by the time my parents arrived, my eyes were clamped shut, too scared their horrified reactions may send me over the edge.


I should have remembered that many years experience has left them highly adept at playing down my latest life threatening discovery and pretending everything is fine. More than happy to go along with it, I let their nonchalance calm me for a moment before running back to the mirror to work myself up again.


To help me gain some much needed perspective, my parents told me a story about a girl, who upon waking from her teenage slumbers, had removed her nightie to find her torso had turned blue. Alone in the house, she ran from room to room, mirror to mirror, appraising her organ failure from every angle. She was discovered by her parents an hour later, rocking at the end of the bed cuddling a Good News Bible. It was her father who had suggested it could be dye from her blue nightie rather than congestive heart failure. Yes, the girl might have been me.


Then there was the time something bit that same girl’s bum on holiday. Something that had been laying in wait under the sea as she’d taken a reluctant swim. She watched in alarm as a blotchy rash spread across her cheek. Surprised that she didn’t die immediately, she gave herself an extra week to live, monitoring her bottom at half hourly intervals over the course of the next seven days.


Exactly one week later, the doctor was called to her bedside following the onset of fever and aching. As she provided extensive details of the attack and her envenomation symptoms, he announced she had a virus and went on his way. She remained unconvinced that the doctor had taken her probable box jelly fish bite seriously.


Whilst I appreciated my parent’s efforts to demonstrate my melodramatic tendencies, it wasn’t until the swelling started to subside whilst sat in the surgery waiting room that I finally accepted that I might not lose the sight in both eyes after all.


My doctor prescribed an anti-histamine for my allergic and over reaction. I was happy as could be until he mentioned they could flair up again.