Ol' Dry Eyes

Just when I think I've hit the wall on my body betraying me in myriad forms (the horrific price of aging), my eyes start freaking out on me. I'm not just talking about the new floaters (which always look like bats swooping just outside the line of my peripheral vision), no-siree-bob-cat-tail! Now I've been diagnosed with "dry eyes."

Which seems to me to be a misnomer. My eyes won't stop tearing up, so how in the world can my newest ailment be called dry eyes? I'd think "swampy eyes" would be a more apt description.

For instance, last week when I went to the grocery store, floods were gushing from my eyes. By the time I got to the check-out, the clerk was giving me a funny look (with her perfectly normal dry eyes). Surely, she must've thought I'd had one of the saddest encounters in the produce section that any man had ever suffered. Or I was just bawling because the prices were so high.

I've tried eyedrops, over the counter and prescription (even the pharm tech commented "those are some damned expensive eyedrops!"), and none of them have helped much. Oh sure, it's a temporary salve, but just minutes later, I'm "hitting the bottle" again, singlehandedly keeping the eyedrop industry in business. (And at $135 dollars for a tiny vial, you'd think the drops would last longer than five minutes.)

Out of desperation, I told the pharmacist of my dilemma. "I had that same thing," she said. "They ended up cauterizing my tear ducts. Worst pain I've ever felt."

On that hopeful note, I visited my optometrist. "Doc," I said, "you've gotta help me! I walk around looking like I've just seen Bambi's mother die!" With great reluctance, I added, "My pharmacist said they burned her tear ducts." (For some reason, I couldn't grasp the word "cauterized" at this moment of near panic.)

The doc looked at me, perplexed. "Well...how about I put temporary plugs into your tear ducts and we'll see if that works. It's a lot less final than cauterization."

First, I thought why in the hell didn't you tell me you could do this before I spent $135 bucks on a tiny bottle of worthless eyedrops? Next, I thought this sounds tantamount to torture.

"How invasive is the procedure, doc?" I asked, attempting to swallow the golf ball lodged in my throat.

She shook her head. "Ah, it's nothing, nothing at all."

Several minutes later, I've got my chin and head strapped into a torture rack while she takes out extremely long--and terrifying--tweezers, attempting to grasp miniscule plugs. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, eye surgery is the scariest sort of procedure I can think of. And when I see tweezers growing, growing, growing in size and moving closer to my eye, I start to panic.

"Um, doc, maybe I think I'll change my miAIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEnd!"

"There," she says, "one down, one to go."

With the eye she'd just put the plug in weeping profusely (not giving me much hope), I considered making a fast getaway. If I can swing her magnifying torture machine gizmo around to smack her, I'd be able to feign right, jag left, and bolt for the door. Yeah, that's my plan and I'm going to...

"Hold still, this won't hurt at all."

"No, no, no, no, Doc, I, ahhhh, forgot I have a very important appAIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEtment!"

The doc sat back, sighed, clearly just as happy to be finished with the grueling procedure as I was. In a snarky voice (maybe meant to imitate me), she said, "There, Stuart...the torture is over." The accompanying finger quotes she used told me that she'd obviously never had the process done to her.

As I left, my eyes squirting oceans, the check-out gals had the gall to ask me for payment. This time the tears were real once I saw the cost.

Speaking of big man-babies, you oughta get a load of Zach Caulfield, male entertainment dancer (not a "male stripper," thank you very much). This guy's heart is in the right place, but his general motivations in life are strictly on a third-grader's level. So, when he constantly finds himself stumbling over dead bodies, it always falls on his competent, usually pregnant, highly exasperated sleuth of a sister to bail him out of trouble by finding the real murderers. Read the wacky mystery adventures of Zach and Zora available here!