Something Other than a Pencil

At four o'clock this morning I woke up with a pencil, a very well sharpened pencil stuck in my right eye.  Actually it just felt like that.  I've had this feeling before and I've tried to figure out exactly what it feels like.  I settled for the pencil.  I use pencils.  The big yellow ones with the erasers on one end.  I sharpen them with my pocket knife.  They're sharp.  That's what it feels like.

It's called Iritis.  It's an inflammation of the iris of the eye.  It's nothing you want to have or have long enough to figure out exactly what the pain feels like.  I wandered around the cabin.  Being on study leave, I'm in a cabin in the woods on the Connecticut River.  So I wandered.  The pencil went deeper.  It usually does.   So, I walked outside, trying to figure out what to do.

I drove to the hospital.  Dumb.  But in the long run it kind of made sense.  I found a mental institution.  Lots of bricks and a pleasant lady who wanted to know if I needed help.  With her and a great amount of grace I wandered into the emergency room.  The security lady asked me "How are you today?"  I took a moment, hand over my eye, spasms shooting into my head as some giggling demon jammed the pencil in and rotated it, just a moment to tell her that I've trained people who visit suffering souls in the hospital to never ask, 'How are you?'  They're in a hospital.  How do you think they are?  Teaching moments abound.

 They were nice to me.  I tried to be pleasant.  The doctor dropped this stuff into my eye that hurt like hell and then took all the pain away.  Wow!  He used a portable version of the thing my eye guy uses to inform me that I had some sort of mark on my eye.  It looked like a twisted knot imprinted on the cornea.  No Iritis.  Good news.  But somehow the druids reached me, in Connecticut.  Go figure.

I have little perspective on this whole thing.  Gratitude per usual.  But who gets a symbol of the eternal connectedness of all things etched onto his eye?  I guess it's better than a pencil.  But sometimes things are too strange to shrug off. 

I apologized to the guard lady.  She told me nobody had ever told her that before, but it made a lot of sense.  She told me it was good advice.  She hoped I felt better.  All that to teach a guard lady?