Fear...

So a few years ago, December 2009, I had Shingles... bad.  I have this horrible lump on the top of my head that looked honestly like something had laid eggs under my skin.  The rash went all the way from my forehead to the crown of my head and cause most of the hair in it's path to fall out.  If I so much as moved too fast, I was in extreme pain.  Pain that rivaled my worst contractions when I was pregnant.  It went down to my left eye and quickly spread to my right eye.  They call it Shingles.  It was bad.  The Dr. that treated me in the emergency room told me outright that for me to get it in my twenties was a rarity and that since one of the triggers is stress, I must have been under extreme stress.

I actually took a Facebook picture of how I looked before the lump on top of my head got big...

This was when the lip was swollen and the whole left side of my face hurt.  You can see where my hair started to fall out at the top.  My Dr. at the time was completely unconcerned that I described my eyes as red and yellow.  He told me to buy an eye patch.  I think it was the day after this or so that I went to the ER to find out it was Shingles and never called my doctor again.

Truth is, I was.  I had an ex husband that was acting like most ex's act which is to say $#(&.  I had a job that was more quickly becoming a place I dreaded going whereas I used to love it. I was raising three kids pretty much on my own and at the time my son treated me the way he grew up watching his father treat me which is to say like I was inconsequential to his everyday life, and I had a landlord who thought he was God's gift and he could treat me anyway he wanted to.  So yeah.  Stress.

Anyway, like I said it affected my eye.  The whites of my eye turned yellow.  I looked like I had a serious case of jaundice.  The slightest amount of daylight hurt my eyes and I had to wear thick dark sunglasses everywhere I went including into my house for up to an hour while my eyes adjusted to the now muted light.  The eye doctor they sent me to hinted that untreated I would have lost my vision.... at first.  He later said that I had damaged my eyes irreparably.  That part I told no one because I put myself in denial and told myself that he had no clue what he was talking about.

Recently I have to take day trips out of denial because my eyes are getting bad.  Really bad.  Bad like sunglasses are increasingly not helping and doing almost anything outside is near impossible.   Driving is becoming something that I don't look forward to because I can be in the middle of the road and suddenly my eyes go blurry and or my vision just blanks out for a second.  Blinking used to help clear it but it doesn't always anymore. Grey days like today actually cause me headaches because they are so bright and I've become the person that has to wear sunglasses almost into nighttime.

I have a real fear that I am going blind and bloggers, I am scared to death.  Scared like you wouldn't believe.  There isn't a damn thing I can do about it because I am now dependent on Medicaid and they don't cover adult's eyes anymore.

I have no one but my kids to rely on if I lose my sight. They aren't old enough to be able to cope with that and I feel that if they aren't 18 when I finally do go blind, my ex will use that as an excuse to take them from me.  Not that I'm selfish that way, If I do lose my sight I will probably give them to him because they deserve a life that I will no longer be able to give them.

I will be so totally alone that I am pretty sure I will want most days to curl up in a corner and die.  I have never really much thought about losing my sight but more and more it's pressing on me.  I have stopped rearranging my house and have become the person that has places for things.  On days when ordinary room light hurts too much for me to see well, I try to walk around with shades on or even with my eyes closed just to get the layout of my house.

I'm a reader.  The written word is a huge part of my life.  If I can't read anymore can I survive?  If I can't get on the computer and type out my feelings would I survive?  Even as I type this, my eyes are starting to hurt a lot.  Hurt like... almost burn.

I am scared to death and I can't tell anyone.  I tried to tell my mom once. She said I needed to wear my glasses more.  My glasses have since been lost actually.  I had to stop wearing them because they actually made it all worse.  And Like I said before Medicaid no longer covers eye care for adults so they were my last pair.  I'm no longer able to go to an eye doctor.

It's after midnight, I should go.  I need to stop looking at the screen like I'm going to find the answers I need.  There aren't really any.

And besides ending up alone and possibly in a dark world where I can't even see my children anymore, the fact that no one can tell me anything has me scared shitless...