Navaho Gunleg

Last week I was minding my own business sleeping, only to wake up with a slight irritation in my eye. I vaguely remember trying to get something out of my eye and possibly scratching my eye-ball with my finger-nail. (At least — that’s what I think as I was still a bit drousy.)

I didn’t give it any mind at all; that kind of stuff happens all the time. At work, a colleague noticed that I had one red eye. So I checked in a mirror that me right eye-ball was indeed more red than usual; looking like a vein that burst or something. Not really unusual either, I thought.

That evening, I told my girlfriend and she noticed my eye-lids were a bit irritated and slightly swollen. “Rats”, I thought, the thing I removed from my eye was a fly, or something, that had stung me, thus causing this irritation.

“It’ll pass — it’ll pass..”…

Well, the weekend passed and I still had that red eye. (The medical term for this is ‘conjunctivitis’, I understand.) The swelling in my eye-lid was gone, however.

Now, I have a history of regularly having headaches, behind this same eye, so I wasn’t sure what to think of the general pain that I felt, behind, or rather ‘in’ my eye: my whole eye-ball seemed to be more sensitive. Also, I had this constant feeling that there was something in my eye.

So, like anybody with a broadband connection, that rather doesn’t go see a doctor, yesterday evening, I started googling for the symptoms I had.

I discovered that there is a myriad of eye afflictions causing the most horrific symptoms. There were a lot that I could eliminate, of course, it wasn’t any of the real ugly stuff. I’m likened to think that it’s most probably a bacterial or virus- infection or an allergy to something (unlikely as I don’t have a real history of allergies).

So, there I was reading up on what it was, recognising the symptoms, reading what could happen and I didn’t know what hit me. I discovered a side of me that I didn’t know was there: I actually ‘freaked out’.

I started sweating and sounds were suddenly seeming to come from far away, muted, just plain weird. I thought I wanted some fresh air to relax, so I stood up and tried to walk to the door to the back-yard. My legs started feeling ‘wiggly’ while I opened the door.

Then, the ‘grand finale‘; I stepped outside, and I remember was that I was thinking “I really gotta get this door closed in case I collapse, otherwise our pets can escape” — priorities, eh.

I managed to close the door while, in the meantime, things were going black before my eyes and I started to loose feeling. I could only hear sounds, still seeming to come from far away. I was fully conscious yet, but it seemed I just lost the ‘connection’ with my body, unable to control my limbs. I really was wondering what the hell was happening to me…. Especially when I heard some metal hitting against metal (there’s a stack of fence material outside to set up in the garden for a rabbit), I was thinking “Now, that isn’t supposed to happen”, sensing my girlfriend was near me, to who I said “What is happening?”.

See, in the meanwhile, she (first unable to get outside, because I had closed the door was making sure it was shut), finally managed to get outside as well and said to me “You are passing out.”.

And I was: my body had collapsed, I couldn’t hear, see or feel anything for a moment.

“I’m back..” I said. “My mind is back, but my body isn’t yet.”.

Slowly, I started my body started to feel ‘normal’ again, vision and sound returned to normal and my mind returned its ‘normal’ state, as I started to go through whatever the hell just happened and realised that I simply panicked. My legs still felt a bit wiggly after this all happened but generally it was over pretty quickly.

A silly anxiety-attack and I just frigging passed-out. “Pussy”, I thought. I really didn’t know I had it in me.

Oh well, a first for everything, I would say, but still a rather freaky experience. My girlfriend thinks otherwise, but I find it amusing how I made sure that I kept the door shut, fearing the cats would escape. I can imagine how she felt though, standing inside, looking outside seeing me crumbling to the floor and not being able to outside because I was keeping the door closed. It surely mustn’t have been a pretty sight for her.

Now, I’m a computer-guy and I can type blindly, but still, I rather still see what I’m doing with both eyes, obviously. 3D vision really comes in handy driving your car as well. It could just be damaged by my fingernail, but if that’s not the case, well, it could be serious.

Also, my girlfriend has been pressuring me, so I’m going to see the doctor this morning just to have somebody to look at it who should know about these things. The warning was pretty clear in anything I read, if a red-eye doesn’t go away within 1 or 2 days you better go see a doctor or risk impairing, or even loosing, your vision.

So, that’s on my schedule for today, “go see the doctorrrrr”.