Madrid y mi ojo en fuego

Hola readers! I have just returned from quite a weeend in Madrid. Before I get to that though, let me preface this entry with a little story from my past, which some of you may already know.

It was about this time 2 years ago that Justin and I flew to Switzerland for my look see trip. The day that I left, a Thursday, I woke up with a bad sore throat and what I thought was the beginning of strep. I explained to my doctor that I was going out of the country for a week and got some antibiotics. Nine hours later, across the Atlantic I was not feeling too hot. I woke up the next day feeling worse and Justin got me french fries and an orange Gatorade. I had a fever and a bad sore throat and figured the antibiotics just needed some time to work. Saturday I mustered up the strength to go out for the day and felt a bit better, but Sunday morning again I felt really sick. At night, I couldn't sleep and neither could my jet lagged Justin; we would end up watching the Swiss Animal Planet channel for hours before drifing off. More daytime sleeping (which Justin was happy to join me in doing) and we called a doctor to come to the hotel, who gave me more antibiotics. That night, we went out for pizza which seemed fine. Then I woke up in the middle of the night and threw up, crying because it hurt my throat so bad. On Monday morning, we called the doctor again who declared I had an abcess behind my tonsils (which were grape sized and white) and I needed to go to the hospital and couldn't eat because I would probably need surgery. So we went to the hospital and fumbled through in English, and would eventually wait for over three hours to see a doctor (during which I was passing out from hunger and lack of sleep). The doctor said that he didn't really want to operate and did not think it was an abcess. Also strangely, I tested negative for strep. He gave me more antibiotics and set up an appointment for the next day. By some miracle of medicine, my fever finally broke in the night and my tonsils began to heal. Needless to say, it was the sickest I have ever been in my entire life. I rarely even get colds. But somehow I end up in the emergency room in a foreign country.

Needless to say, when I boarded my plane to Madrid on Friday evening and my right eye felt a bit scratchy, I figured my contacts were just dried out and my eyes were tired. It looked slightly bloodshot but nothing serious. I slept a bit on the plane, thinking that closing my eyes would help the situation. But when I woke up, my eye hurt more than before. By the time we landed, my right eye was pretty squinty and painful. Everything seemed to bother it, especially light. I high tailed off the plane and wandered through what has to be the biggest airport I have been in in all of Europe to get to the baggage claim area. I made a mad dash for the bathroom and looked at my eye. I could have drawn the ire of a bull, it was so red. I immediately took out my contact and left one in my left eye, not knowing if I had any spares. When my luggage came, I ripped out the eye drops and begain dousing my eye with it. This did not seem to help. Again the bright lights of the terminal were really bothering me, and I had both of my eyes barely half open. The entire terminal must have thought I was high. Ignoring the weird looks I saw out of my half raised lids, I made it to the taxi stand. No way could I take the metro when I could barely see where I was going.

I sat with my head in my hands and eyes closed in the back of the cab. I knew this was probably really really dangeous, but I couldn't help it - my eye was killing me. We arrived at the hotel and I stumbled up to the 3rd floor, where I was meeting my friends. My friend Robyn opened the door and I exclaimed, "Hi, I have a problem, I think I'm going blind." Immediately I took out my other contact lens and put on my sunglasses, laying down on the bed and explaining to her this strange turn of events in the past 2 hours. My friend Aya then appeared with some contact solution, which I used to try and rinse out my eye. Hoping it was an allergy (I get bad hayfever in Switzerand and France that I never had in the US), I popped a claritin and continued to rinse. After about 45 minutes I had not improved, so my friends left to go to dinner.

Not knowing what to do at this point and starting to feel desperate, I immediately turned out all the lights. Then I started hysterically crying, thinking that at least the tears might help. But they didn't. I filled up the sink withh water and dunked my head in, opening my eyes underwater and looking around in an attempt to get out whatever it was in there that was hurting. This soothed the pain for maybe 10 seconds. Then nothing. Back to crying. I started totally panicking and thinking what would happen if I did go blind. I would have to quit my job. I would never see the Cubs win a world series. I would never get to see Justin's cute scruffy face again. Finally, not knowing what else to do, I picked up my phone and called my parents.

My mom and dad suggested I go to the doctor and tried to calm me down. I felt bad but sent a text message to Aya, and told her I needed to go to the hospital. At this point it was around 1130 and the pain was absolutely excrutiating. It felt like someone was pouring acid into my eyeball. Just a constant burning feeling, with occassional bouts of searing pain. About 30 minutes later, Aya came to my rescue and we went to the hospital princessa. At least it sounded nice.

When we got there, I explained to the receptionist that I had a problema con mi ojo and then proceeded to respond to her, stupidly, in French (I now automatically respond in French, even though I understand Spanish very well). I was taken back to a small room where two nurses came in to look at me. They leaned over and cocked their heads to get a look at me, and both of them winced. "That obvious huh? That's not a good sign" I said to Aya. They asked me, "Itchy?" And I replied, "No itchy, burning, en fuego." They sent us back to the waiting room at that point.

I then sat with my sunglasses on, squeezing my eyes periodically because they pain was really out of control. I kept my eyes closed and chatted with Aya. I felt like Ray Charles and an old grandma wrapped up into one. After about an hour, Aya went to go chase down my paperwork, which had been lost and hence the delay. Good thing because about 5 minutes later, the doctor called us in.

Although I was half blind, I could tell my doctor was a cute girl who looked friendly and about my age. The opthamologist squeezed a tiny drop into my eye and I felt instant relief. "Anesthetic," she explained. She looked at my eye, up and down, etc, and then pulled back to explain. "You have...on your eye...como se dice...when you fall, on the ground, and you get this thing on your knee, what is it called?"

"A scratch?" I offered.

"Jes, a scratch, jou have a big scratch on your cornea. This here is your eye," she said, as she proceeded to draw a picture, "and here, dis is the scratch," and drew my iris, then a giant blob which covered 2/3 of my iris. No wonder it hurt so bad!

"Jes it is a very bad one and you need to be careful now...no contact lens for 2 weeks and you need to go to the doctor when you get back to Ginebra." Then she gave me 3 different eye drops and an ointment, warning that one would sting and that the ointment would make my vision very blurry. "But, jou have to do it," she said firmly.

We walked out to check out and to my surprise, I was not charged for the visit or the medicine. I was told later that when the problem is simple, they normally just fix it for no charge. Of course, I was also told that Spain's doctors were not that good which was why the treatment was free. I hoped that the former one was the real answer.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was 230 in the morning and I did my drops regimen and ointment, then crawled into bed, exhausted from the night's ordeal. When I woke up on Sautday, the pain had slightly subsided but was still pretty strong. I put in more drops and took a shower, feeling generally crappy. We were going to watch a soccer match played by some of Robyn's friends. On the way, I got a really good ice cream (Banana Split) and a box of eye patches. We were REALLY hoping for the black piratey ones, but instead there was only the band aid like boring ones. I was worried about dust blowing into my eye at the field, so I slapped on a patch there.

Literally, I was a sight for sore eyes. Of course I couldn't see any of the game, what with my one squinty eye open and my other eye sealed under a patch. It was incredibly bright, and while my friends continued to talk about the hot Spanish men running around on the field, I was quickly bored. I found a shady tree and took a siesta during the second half. Later we had some beers and cold tapas, by which point the swelling had gone down. After a second siesta later that night, the pain had mostly subsided and it was just dealing with the blurry vision.

The rest of the trip was short but much better. We had a delicious nighttime meal of tapas and vino tinto. Saturday happened to be "La Noche en Blanco" or the white night, which had tons of perfomers and street acts plus cool exhibitions all around the city, open until 7am. We tried to go to the Reina Sofia Museum which was unfortunately closed.

Today the 4 other girls left around 10, so me and my one good eye were on our own. I ate a delicious Napolitana (it's the best chocolate croissant I've ever had...and I have had them from France) and then went to the Reina Sofia museum and quite enjoyed it, although I had to stand SUPER CLOSE to the paintings to see them. I really love Picasso and some of his contemporaries like Braque and Dali, and this museum had a whole floor of it. I even got an audio guide. After a bit of shopping it was off to the aeropuerto.

So all in all, I got to really see Madrid for less than 24 hours. The first 20 or so I was half blind so I don't count them. It was a super friendly (although some girl did get robbed on the metro, right next to us apparently), very modern but also very old and beautiful city and I definitely want to go back.

I have written this entry with basically one eye, so I apologize for any spelling errors. I have to now go on another fun adventure, which is finding a Swiss eye doctor. Tres bien!!