Highlighter Tears
Remember how cool black lights were? I’m not implying that they’re no longer cool, it’s just that it’s been years since I’ve seen one. When I was in college they were all the rage. All of the parties and clubs my friends and I went to had them. The best were the highlighter parties where you’d color on your white shirt or your skin {gasp!} with the fluorescent markers and then hang out in a room lit only by black light bulbs. Totally awesome, right?! So just think how totally awesome it would be if you could have had that highlighter juice coming out of your eyes!
Ok, so maybe that isn’t the most awesome thought right now. It’s actually kind of disturbing. But today, I got to see what that would have looked like. Back in October I wrote a post about my daughter’s blocked tear duct. I was having a hard time with the fact that she might have to have it surgically probed to open it up. This meant putting her under anesthesia. The thought made me sick. But now, I’m coming to terms with the idea.
Today I took Nora for her second eye doctor appointment. The first time, she had a comprehensive eye exam and aside from the blocked duct and very slight myopia {nearsightedness} in one eye she checked out just fine. So back to the highlighter oozing eyes… They put these special yellow drops in her eyes. The drops tint her tears and then the doctor can see how the tears are draining. The way they do that is they shine a black light in her eye and see where the tinted tears are going. And since Nora’s left tear duct is blocked, the tears were pooling on her lower lids and glazing over her entire eye. So when the doctor shined the black light it looked like highlighter was pouring out of her eyes. It was cool and creepy at the same time.
All of this has confirmed the fact that Nora will have to have her duct probed. They refer to it as a surgery which makes me cringe, but it takes all of about 5 minutes. Hopefully once it’s over with I’ll stop hearing, “Oh, poor thing! Why is she crying?”
