I’m Having Surgery on Monday - In a Foreign Country!

About a year ago, I awoke to a terrible migraine and my vision took a dramatic hard-right into blurry hell; to make matters worse, I could barely hear anything, because my right ear sounded as if I was in a wind tunnel. I tried to clean the noise away, but no matter how abrasive the cleaning agent was, that evil sound persisted.

Like any honest American, I dove head first into denial: “It’s probably just the drugs, my vision’s not that bad, everybody hits pedestrians at night...” So, there I was, reduced to just another Mr Magoo, but it’s not as much fun as the cartoon makes out.

Luckily, I live in a British ghetto that is filled Muslim people, and they are just too scared of white-devils like myself to give me too much flak for little accidents like knocking down their children when stumbling through the Asian market. The only downside is that immigrants never warn me when cars are coming: those bastards just stand there, watching me, and I have a suspicion that they’re actually taking bets to see if I survive the cross-walk.

At times like this, I really miss black people from my old ghetto in Atlanta, because even when they were complete strangers, they were always warning me of unknown dangers: “Hey! You’ll go to jail for that!”

As you can imagine, with each day, I was beginning to feel more and more like Helen Keller and I knew that this couldn’t go on.

So there I found myself, before a British optometrist who was performing a battery of tests that were as equally thorough as they were annoying. When she had finally finished checking my eyes for every disease known to man, instead of trying to sell me some overpriced glasses, she handed me a letter and in an alarming tone, said:

“You have a lot of pressure on your optical nerve, go to A&E, give them this letter and they’ll take care of you.”

I immediately went into shock, but my mouth went rogue grilling her with questions and in that conversation I learned that A&E is a British Emergency Room, and this lady was convinced that I was on death’s door. I tried to go back into denial: “So what kind of glasses should I...?”

“There’s no time for glasses, you need to go to the hospital now!” she interrupted.

As I stood up to leave she abruptly said, “Wait, you’re not driving, right?”

I assured her that I wasn’t driving, but that didn’t stop her from explaining the laws and how I was some sort of menace.

Then as she followed me out of her office, I found Sarah and I loudly proclaimed, “She said, it’s fine for me to drive home!”

Upon hearing me, the optometrist froze dead in her tracks and her eyes became vacant as she stared into the distance, as if she was witnessing a premonition of Sarah’s death. I could tell that she wanted to warn Sarah, but was prevented by some sort of optometrist-confidentiality-law and the muscles in her forehead scrunched up in agony as she debated what to do next.

Then Sarah, who never leaves home without lacing up her goodie-two-shoes, ruined everything by laughing and calling me an idiot, in order to let the woman off the hook. So now, I’ll never know if that optometrist was willing to sacrifice her career to save a life and it’s the not knowing that haunts me still.

Anyways, as karma insisted, I spent the next few days in the hospital. At first everything seemed interesting and humorous, like all the posters of people being arrested to remind patients that it is not socially acceptable to abuse the NHS staff, but by day three, those posters took on a completely different meaning and I had to keep glancing at them to fend off my urges.

So, here I am, I’ve had countless examinations and tests and during the height of the Coronavirus, I'm scheduled to go back to the hospital to have a terrifying procedure: they’re going to remove liquids from my fucking brain!

Can you believe that shit!?

So, all I can do is write this out in an attempt to fend off the panic attacks, but the story’s over... I’m all out of jokes and the realization is setting in... I guess it’s time to panic.

Wish me luck!