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The BIG beautiful day: The big day arrived when I was to see wonderful Dr. "J" the plastic surgeon. I woke up poorly after another night of fever and chills, my joints were all swollen and my right upper eyelid was so inflamed it looked like there was a golf ball stuck under that eyelid. I was 17 years old and my feet were always so swollen that my tennis shoe size had gone up to size 9 and 1/2. However, despite the fatigue and the pain, today was such a beautiful day! I was just bursting with sunshine and hope! Dr. "J" would help me! He'd repair the damage the very best that he could and maybe, oh just maybe, he'd know why I was sick too! After all, hadn't I heard from my friend that Dr. "J" was a kindly and BRILLIANT doctor -- the very best in the state. Dr. "J" had even won all kinds of awards for being such a great doctor! He might know of another doctor, one who wasn't a mean horrible pervert, who could help me with the sickness before or after Dr. "J" repaired the damage! So I hobbled stiffly into the bathroom and I did everything I could to sooth the swelling out of my face and eyelids. My face and eyelids were always inflamed, but not literally always as bad as this morning. By this point in the disease's progression my eyes had actually receded slightly into the sockets, but I thought they just looked that way because of all the swelling. I drew a hot bath and soaked in it, placing my face down into the hot water repeatedly to alleviate the swelling. Then I used ice cubes wrapped in a thick hand towel. By the time I went to my late morning appointment, driven by my parents who were silent and sullen all the way there, my right upper eyelid only looked like there was 1/2 of a large marble stuck underneath it. My left upper eyelid and my bottom eyelids were swollen too, but the right upper eyelid was the worst that morning. Nonetheless, when I gently placed my fingers on my sore eyelids I could clearly feel the inflammation -- that soft bubbled up flexible feeling. It felt like they were filled with water. We arrived and I went in to be examined by the GREAT super-star physician Dr. "J" who I had heard so much about! Dr. "J" seemed like he was angry from the first second that he laid eyes on me. He just sneered at me, he barely looked at me, and then he said, "I don't know what you expect me to do here. You just have little squinty eyes." I couldn't believe it. I stammered and I tried to explain. I tried not to cry too. I tried to tell him, "NO, wait I could come back. I could bring you some pictures of the way I looked before�I'm not here to get huge eyes, I'm only here to look more like I used to�." He cut me off and quickly dismissed me. He acted like he'd been wasting his time seeing me even before he actually saw me. It was over. Time to go home. I sat in the back seat of the car biting the insides of my cheeks so that I wouldn't cry and look stupid in front of my parents. My parents never asked me what happened during the appointment. They didn't care beyond the fact that apparently they didn't have to waste any money on me. When we got home I went into the bathroom and wept as quietly as I could. I cried for a long time and then I ran hot water into the tub again. I soaked my face some more. When I finally got out more of the swelling was gone and I stood in front of the bathroom mirror under the bright lights and looked at myself. I tenderly and carefully pressed my fingers down into the remaining inflammation to flatten it out a little and then I gently pulled the extra skin and puffy lumpiness back away from my eyes. I had five to seven (depending upon which eyelid) layers of thickly creased drooping extra skin on both my upper and bottom eyelids at this point. I had hoped that Dr. "J" would remove this extra skin and obviously I had prayed that he'd also help me find someone to make me well again. I knew that ultimately I needed to be well so that the swelling would stop pulling and stretching my skin apart. Holding my skin away from my eyes like this I examined myself, up close, and very critically in the mirror. I wanted to understand why Dr. "J" had treated me that way and said what he'd said. I was very careful not to create a false appearance, making sure that I was doing this honestly, not wanting to make my eyes look bigger than they were. I DID NOT have tiny squinty eyes -- I did not! My eyes were normal sized underneath all that swelling and extra skin that had come to sag in my eyelids. MY EYES WERE NORMAL SIZED! I was thinking that maybe they looked kind of flat and sunken in, but still not squinty. I began to wonder why my eyes looked flat like that. Could something be going wrong with the area under my eyes? Did I have muscles behind my eyes that held them in place? I didn't know. At that moment, I verified what little I could and that was all I could do. It was over beyond that. |
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