Mixed Emotions

Okay. Hopefully - for all of us - this is the last stye picture I'll post. The damn thing just won't let go...so I went back to the opthamologist a few days ago and had it, um, drained again. And drained means that they put your head in a plastic stirrup and say "don't move while I stick this hooked needle just below your eyeball and tear a small gash in your eyelid." That's the easy part, though. What comes next is excruciating: They take two Q-tips and press the stye between them. With enough pressure, all kinds of gunk starts to flow out of the gash, but until it does, the stye is screaming shockwaves of terror and agony into your ocular brain pan, the sweats begin, and a voice in your head advises you "Now would be the time to disociate as much as possible - just divorce yourself from this physical reality. Think of anything but what's actually at hand." But your nerve endings won't let this happen. Satan is burrowing his way into your stye, so you dig your fingernails into your thigh and breathe really deep yogic breaths, so now your funky assed coffee breath is flooding the opthamologist right in front of you, and it ain't like she's used to patients practicing the "funk breath of yogic fire" in her clinic, but whatevs - that's how it is, so she stirs a little and tries to reassure you (per the Bedside Manner 068 elective she took in med school), "You're doing great." Oh, really? I'm doing great? Breathe it all in, Jon-dog. All of it. All the pain, suffering, agony of it, let it bleed and explode garmonbozia, welcome the honesty of the moment, what it can show you, etc. etc. the fact of our tenuous human physicality, blood pressure soaring - see how this is nothing compared to what some people have to live with and- Aaaahhh...soft warmth streaming down my cheek. "Oh, there we go. Now it's flowing," she says. Trail of tears. I'm a pressed grape. And I'm having these bizarre, endorphin/adrenaline mixed impulses of genuine-gratitude-for-the-bloodletting-satyagraha transcendence-meets-lady-if-you-don't-get-those-goddamn-qtips-outta-my-face-I'm-gonna-clock-you-in-the-mouth. And the whole time a young, pretty honey of a Japanese resident is observing & wincing at it all, scribbling notes. You too, Sweets.