It was Memorial Day weekend in New York City — the dawn of a jubilant city summer buzzing with Knicks and World Cup energy — and I sat in a windowless East Village hospital room, right eye pried wide.
asserted
eye → buzz → room
As an ophthalmologist steered a small blade toward my cornea to “collect a sample” (translation: scrape the surface) for testing, I panicked.
asserted
I → steer → testing
Would tears dilute the antiseptic?
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tears → dilute → antiseptic
She doused me with more.
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She → douse → more
I also wallowed.
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I → wallow → ?
How did I get here?
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I → get → ?
Just last week, I told the doc, I was sipping champagne in a hot tub aboard a superyacht in Greece.
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I → tell → Greece
(I know: Cry me a river.)
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I → know → river
“How far you’ve fallen,” she said, unimpressed.
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she → fall → ?
Rather, I most likely wound up in the latter due to poor choices in the former.
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I → wind → former
Namely, I failed to remove my contact lenses ahead of my 11-hour flight back home, as well as throughout the 24 hours I stayed awake traveling.
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I → fail → hours
I also wore them while swimming (with goggles) and showering (without goggles) — things I’ve done without issue near-daily my whole adult life.
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I → wear → issue
At one point, I couldn’t see out of my right eye at all.
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I → see → eye
And yet, it could have been far worse, Masako Chen, the ophthalmologist who oversees the resident clinic at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mt. Sinai, where I went, told me later.
uncertain
I → oversee → me
“We’re a tertiary referral center, so we see a lot of really bad ulcers,” she said.
asserted
she → ’re → ulcers
“And so on a scale, you’re on the mild to moderate side of things.
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you → ’re → things
”
While I’m left with a small scar blurring a fraction of my vision, in the most severe and rare cases, a person can lose their vision — and even their whole eye.
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person → leave → vision
A corneal ulcer is basically an open sore on your cornea, the clear dome covering the front of the eye and one of, if not the most, sensitive tissues in the body.
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ulcer → cover → body
Ulcers can arise from all sorts of situations, but often begin with an abrasion to the cornea’s surface that allows a bacterium or other microorganism to break through and infect.
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bacterium → arise → surface
Contact lens misuse can both create the cut and house the bug.
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misuse → create → bug
“When you have a little break in that protective barrier — the epithelium of the cornea — it makes you vulnerable to the organisms that are normally on your ocular surface,” Kathryn A. Colby, chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told The Post.
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Colby → have → Post
In my case, over-wearing contacts while flying overseas likely nicked my eye.
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contacts → wear → eye
Then, any germs I’d collected splashing in the sea or confined in Comfort+ bloomed.
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I → collect → Comfort+
And so, two days after touchdown, I awoke with pain and light sensitivity in my right eye.
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I → awake → eye
When ChatGPT told me it was a medical emergency, that eye went ahead and rolled.
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eye → tell → me
Two days after getting a diagnosis and some generic antibiotic eye drops at CityMD, I landed at Mt. Sinai’s emergency eye clinic, the view from my right eye now a sheet of white.
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view → get → white
And while my pain was blessedly tolerable, Colby said corneal abrasions can rank up there with kidney stones and childbirth.
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abrasions → say → stones
“Everybody has a different sort of pain tolerance,” Chen added, “but the usual look of someone with an ulcer is: The eye is red, they’re sensitive to light, they want to spend time in the dark, they can’t open their eyes.
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they → have → eyes
It’s a little bit swollen.
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It → ’ → ?
I can see clearly now (kind of)
That’s more or less how I presented to the ophthalmologist at Mt. Sinai who “sampled” my baby blue to see which pathogen was present — a question we never got an answer to.
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we → see → answer
No matter, because the treatment worked.
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treatment → work → ?
The prescription included: Spending the next two days taking potent antibiotic eye drops every hour on the hour — even at night.
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prescription → include → night
(“No sleep tonight!” the doctor instructed a little too cheerily.)
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doctor → instruct → ?
In the past, Colby said, people like me were admitted to the hospital as inpatients instead of trusted to their own care at home.
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people → say → home
But, with the support of an attentive spouse, the flexibility of self-employment and the circumstance of no kids, I pulled it off.
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I → pull → it
I took antibiotic drops for weeks to fight the infection and steroid drops for a few more to diminish scarring.
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I → take → scarring
“Your course is very typical, and a good one too,” Chen said.
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Chen → say → ?
“You responded to medication, we tapered off slowly, changed you to a regular commercial antibiotic, added a steroid here and there to reduce inflammation, and you healed up with a small scar.”
In other cases, like when someone has an ulcer caused by a treatment-resistant amoeba, interventions can be as invasive as a corneal transplant.
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interventions → respond → transplant
Despite my relative luck, I give corneal ulcers zero stars.
asserted
I → give → stars
Besides the hassle and cost of spending the first half of summer semi-hospitalized, I couldn’t swim for two months or wear contacts for 10 weeks.
asserted
I → spend → weeks
…and 10 more, not listed.
The Aporia
