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Odin the Pirate
Monday, January 18th, 2016 05:58 pmIn Multiverse #A, I'm at Google's Sydney office right now, chatting with coworkers and preparing for a summit exploring options for some new technology. I periodically close my eyes and think about plans for our upcoming month-long honeymoon in Australia and New Zealand.
In Multiverse #B, I'm sitting on the couch at home. We canceled our airfare after an ocular irritation deteriorated over two weeks. Every hour my wife puts a steroid drop in my right eye with a dilating drop thrice a day. I periodically take care of house organization tasks that have lingered for months.
Unfortunately, Multiverse #B is the one in which we live.
We spent most of December reading guide books, looking at maps, proposing itineraries, sharing adventure ideas, and connecting with Australasian Burners. Then on Sunday, January 3rd I woke up with a localized headache above my right eye. Assuming it was a hangover, I spent most of the day taking care of small details and hanging out on the couch looking up things about the southern hemisphere on the Internet. In the evening, Kelly mentioned that my eye looked really red and I was coming around to the idea that it wasn't just a hangover.
Monday the 4th was the first day back at work for a lot of folks, though I'd taken the holiday period to write a bunch of code on a new-to-me technology stack while nobody was sending interrupting emails. The Colorado sun reflecting on snow felt especially bright while I was outside and I still had a dull headache, but I thought I might recover. On Tuesday morning, the eye was still red, so I called my eye doctor and got an appointment that afternoon, wanting to make sure this was resolved before I left the country on the 16th. Her diagnosis was a bacterial infection in the right eye and gave me an eye drop sample of antibiotics plus steroids, targeted at thrice a day.
Even before I put the first drop in on Tuesday evening, I was feeling much better; I think the drops put in for dilation and other measurements helped clear some of the infection. By my checkup on Friday the 8th, I was feeling really good: my eye was still red with irritation, but my headache had gone and my vision was great. My eye doctor recommended I continue the drops for four days, but didn't think I needed to come back if things were feeling good.
On Friday night, however, things got worse. My headache returned and I was feeling really exhausted. On Saturday, light felt really bright and my head felt really lousy. I took some ibuprofen (which helped with the head but not the light) and we went to REI for some travel supplies. On Sunday I was mostly able to muster the energy to buy two Sydney→Wellington tickets, pack my suitcase and figure out which items I'd want on the plane.
On Monday the 11th, the world seemed really bright as I drove to work early. I met up with a colleague from Sydney and one from New York who were in town to work with me that week on improving our integration testing situation. I started to draw an architecture diagram on the whiteboard, but the glare mixed with the early morning grogginess was too intense. I grabbed some Google Privacy Week swag sunglasses and was able to face the whiteboard for an hour, then scheduled an eye appointment for the next day after my big presentation. Ibuprofen in the afternoon and the pair of sunglasses helped me finish the rest of the slides for my talk, though I was pretty drained when I left the office around 8.
On Tuesday, I was able to get through my lunch-hour talk about a new internal service development framework of which I've led the adoption in our team. Several people congratulated me, though I'm not sure it was the greatest presentation I've given. I think the ibuprofen wore off at about 12:55, and our out-of-town visitors were pretty concerned about my eye as I toughed it out for afternoon meetings. When I saw the eye doctor around five, she could tell I was having a lousy time, but couldn't identify anything specifically wrong. There was no longer any sign of the infection, but there was plenty of unexplained inflammation. She recommended I stop the eye drops and she said she'd call at noon the next day; if things weren't clear by then, she'd have a colleague check me out.
When I got home, Kelly said "If you lose your sight in that eye, I really hope you get Odin's wisdom." I was still hopeful that things would get better, but I asked if she would be upset if we canceled the honeymoon trip down under. She hugged me and was reassuring, noting that not having humans away for five weeks would make our cat feel much better. I think I summoned the energy to place a couple items on top of my suitcase that I'd remembered to pack, then went to bed.
After a restless night of sleep and an early morning awakening in our bright bedroom, I felt pretty terrible and really didn't want to open my right eye. I had a handful of nuts, took some ibuprofen, put a hat over my face, and laid down on the couch in the moderately darker living room. At 10:45 I summoned the energy to call in to my team standup and say that I'd be working from home and taking it easy, but also planing to leave the country on Saturday, so send me anything that needs my attention. I took a shower in the dark and was finally able to open my right eye, rather alarmed that it was as if I was looking through an icy window: everything was really foggy. My eye doctor called and when I explained that things hadn't improved, she had her office make an appointment for me with a local eye surgery office. In the afternoon and evening I was able to pull together the energy to get through a bunch of one-eyed code reviews that had been lingering for a while, but it was clear that I needed to take a break from my daily work of reading words on a screen.
Thursday morning found Kelly and me in an ocular exam room with the doctor looking very worried and saying I was experiencing an autoimmune response. He ordered a battery of tests from syphilis to lyme disease, prescribed a strong steroid to be taken hourly, and eye dilation drops thrice daily. On my right side I was having trouble reading even the big letters on the eye chart and my eye didn't want to stay open for even a few seconds of light. I actually went in to work after that, but mostly because it was an appealing place to have lunch. I attended the final important meeting about testing, delegated some tasks on a bug, and set my out-of-office reply to say that I'd be available for important business but that I needed to spend a few days away from email.
I woke up fairly early on Friday, so I put in an eye drop, turned on a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan album, put on a blindfold, and spent an hour and a quarter meditating and stretching. Kelly had to work on Friday, so I put on my coat and sunglasses and took the bus to the doctor's office, figuring some walking would be good after a month of not bicycling. Eye pressure was down and after another round of poking and prodding and strong eye drops, I finally felt comfortable keeping both eyes open at once, as long as I had sunglasses to keep the light away. I was also able to walk twenty five blocks from the bank to my house, which felt pretty nice.
Saturday was another early morning visit with the eye surgeon, who had a couple other folks he was seeing. There were a couple guys who were clearly in more ocular pain than I was, so I was feeling reasonably positive, even when I took a sad glance at my calendar when my notification popped up for my Denver to LAX flight. On Sunday we went on a half hour walk to brunch and the super market, unpacked my suitcase, watched the Broncos win a playoff game, and made dinner for my parents.
Today's appointment saw not much change from Saturday: I can make out the general shape of letters at 20/20, but they're pretty blurry. All the blood tests that have come back were negative, though some are still outstanding. I keep both eyes open most of the time. Having an eye dropper next to my eyelashes doesn't cause me to flinch away automatically, though I've still got mad respect for the willpower of people who put in contact lenses every day. I've had seven visits to the eye doctor in 14 days; I think we'll hit the limit on our high-deductible health insurance plan pretty quickly :-) Although we're not in a scenic location in southern summer, Kelly and I have spent a lot of quality time together. And we're brainstorming an alternate honeymoon trip to the Hawaiian Islands for later in February, once I'm able to fully appreciate sightseeing. And I'm feeling really glad that this problem didn't develop a month later than it did.
Aye aye, mateys!
In Multiverse #B, I'm sitting on the couch at home. We canceled our airfare after an ocular irritation deteriorated over two weeks. Every hour my wife puts a steroid drop in my right eye with a dilating drop thrice a day. I periodically take care of house organization tasks that have lingered for months.
Unfortunately, Multiverse #B is the one in which we live.
We spent most of December reading guide books, looking at maps, proposing itineraries, sharing adventure ideas, and connecting with Australasian Burners. Then on Sunday, January 3rd I woke up with a localized headache above my right eye. Assuming it was a hangover, I spent most of the day taking care of small details and hanging out on the couch looking up things about the southern hemisphere on the Internet. In the evening, Kelly mentioned that my eye looked really red and I was coming around to the idea that it wasn't just a hangover.
Monday the 4th was the first day back at work for a lot of folks, though I'd taken the holiday period to write a bunch of code on a new-to-me technology stack while nobody was sending interrupting emails. The Colorado sun reflecting on snow felt especially bright while I was outside and I still had a dull headache, but I thought I might recover. On Tuesday morning, the eye was still red, so I called my eye doctor and got an appointment that afternoon, wanting to make sure this was resolved before I left the country on the 16th. Her diagnosis was a bacterial infection in the right eye and gave me an eye drop sample of antibiotics plus steroids, targeted at thrice a day.
Even before I put the first drop in on Tuesday evening, I was feeling much better; I think the drops put in for dilation and other measurements helped clear some of the infection. By my checkup on Friday the 8th, I was feeling really good: my eye was still red with irritation, but my headache had gone and my vision was great. My eye doctor recommended I continue the drops for four days, but didn't think I needed to come back if things were feeling good.
On Friday night, however, things got worse. My headache returned and I was feeling really exhausted. On Saturday, light felt really bright and my head felt really lousy. I took some ibuprofen (which helped with the head but not the light) and we went to REI for some travel supplies. On Sunday I was mostly able to muster the energy to buy two Sydney→Wellington tickets, pack my suitcase and figure out which items I'd want on the plane.
On Monday the 11th, the world seemed really bright as I drove to work early. I met up with a colleague from Sydney and one from New York who were in town to work with me that week on improving our integration testing situation. I started to draw an architecture diagram on the whiteboard, but the glare mixed with the early morning grogginess was too intense. I grabbed some Google Privacy Week swag sunglasses and was able to face the whiteboard for an hour, then scheduled an eye appointment for the next day after my big presentation. Ibuprofen in the afternoon and the pair of sunglasses helped me finish the rest of the slides for my talk, though I was pretty drained when I left the office around 8.
On Tuesday, I was able to get through my lunch-hour talk about a new internal service development framework of which I've led the adoption in our team. Several people congratulated me, though I'm not sure it was the greatest presentation I've given. I think the ibuprofen wore off at about 12:55, and our out-of-town visitors were pretty concerned about my eye as I toughed it out for afternoon meetings. When I saw the eye doctor around five, she could tell I was having a lousy time, but couldn't identify anything specifically wrong. There was no longer any sign of the infection, but there was plenty of unexplained inflammation. She recommended I stop the eye drops and she said she'd call at noon the next day; if things weren't clear by then, she'd have a colleague check me out.
When I got home, Kelly said "If you lose your sight in that eye, I really hope you get Odin's wisdom." I was still hopeful that things would get better, but I asked if she would be upset if we canceled the honeymoon trip down under. She hugged me and was reassuring, noting that not having humans away for five weeks would make our cat feel much better. I think I summoned the energy to place a couple items on top of my suitcase that I'd remembered to pack, then went to bed.
After a restless night of sleep and an early morning awakening in our bright bedroom, I felt pretty terrible and really didn't want to open my right eye. I had a handful of nuts, took some ibuprofen, put a hat over my face, and laid down on the couch in the moderately darker living room. At 10:45 I summoned the energy to call in to my team standup and say that I'd be working from home and taking it easy, but also planing to leave the country on Saturday, so send me anything that needs my attention. I took a shower in the dark and was finally able to open my right eye, rather alarmed that it was as if I was looking through an icy window: everything was really foggy. My eye doctor called and when I explained that things hadn't improved, she had her office make an appointment for me with a local eye surgery office. In the afternoon and evening I was able to pull together the energy to get through a bunch of one-eyed code reviews that had been lingering for a while, but it was clear that I needed to take a break from my daily work of reading words on a screen.
Thursday morning found Kelly and me in an ocular exam room with the doctor looking very worried and saying I was experiencing an autoimmune response. He ordered a battery of tests from syphilis to lyme disease, prescribed a strong steroid to be taken hourly, and eye dilation drops thrice daily. On my right side I was having trouble reading even the big letters on the eye chart and my eye didn't want to stay open for even a few seconds of light. I actually went in to work after that, but mostly because it was an appealing place to have lunch. I attended the final important meeting about testing, delegated some tasks on a bug, and set my out-of-office reply to say that I'd be available for important business but that I needed to spend a few days away from email.
I woke up fairly early on Friday, so I put in an eye drop, turned on a Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan album, put on a blindfold, and spent an hour and a quarter meditating and stretching. Kelly had to work on Friday, so I put on my coat and sunglasses and took the bus to the doctor's office, figuring some walking would be good after a month of not bicycling. Eye pressure was down and after another round of poking and prodding and strong eye drops, I finally felt comfortable keeping both eyes open at once, as long as I had sunglasses to keep the light away. I was also able to walk twenty five blocks from the bank to my house, which felt pretty nice.
Saturday was another early morning visit with the eye surgeon, who had a couple other folks he was seeing. There were a couple guys who were clearly in more ocular pain than I was, so I was feeling reasonably positive, even when I took a sad glance at my calendar when my notification popped up for my Denver to LAX flight. On Sunday we went on a half hour walk to brunch and the super market, unpacked my suitcase, watched the Broncos win a playoff game, and made dinner for my parents.
Today's appointment saw not much change from Saturday: I can make out the general shape of letters at 20/20, but they're pretty blurry. All the blood tests that have come back were negative, though some are still outstanding. I keep both eyes open most of the time. Having an eye dropper next to my eyelashes doesn't cause me to flinch away automatically, though I've still got mad respect for the willpower of people who put in contact lenses every day. I've had seven visits to the eye doctor in 14 days; I think we'll hit the limit on our high-deductible health insurance plan pretty quickly :-) Although we're not in a scenic location in southern summer, Kelly and I have spent a lot of quality time together. And we're brainstorming an alternate honeymoon trip to the Hawaiian Islands for later in February, once I'm able to fully appreciate sightseeing. And I'm feeling really glad that this problem didn't develop a month later than it did.
Aye aye, mateys!
