Trance-like state

The next two weeks passed by and I don't really know how to differentiate the days--they all just blur together. I was spending time working...and that's it apart from sleeping. I progressed from needing 10 hours of sleep per night (still a lot for me) to needing 14-15 hours of sleep just to kind-of make it through a shift at work; I'd come home from work and fall into bed until time to get up again the next day.

During this time, I noticed a gradual decline in my eyesight--I remember looking at my computer screen and asking my co-workers if it appeared blurry to them, too. I had to keep water on me at all times because my throat was so dry that I had to continuously sip on agua just to be able to speak. Something had to be done.

So I went to an urgent care facility one day on my lunch hour. The nice doctor did a little blood work and sent me to an optometrist--of course, right? Eyesight is failing--send her to an eye doctor.

My optometrist verified that my prescription was current, but also stated that my pupils were "minimally responsive." He didn't know what to do, so he sent me to a neurologist. And that guy took a lot of my money and said "it's not neurological...why don't you wait a while and just see what happens."

Ugh.

So, I waited. Lived in the blurred monotony that my life had become...until the day I woke up and my vision was completely shot. My ability to focus at all was gone. My pupils were hugely dilated and had become completely unresponsive. Panicking a little now, I was taken down to our primary doctor's office...but since it was a Saturday, my doctor wasn't there. The one I saw just threw up his hands and said he doesn't deal with the eyes and referred me to an opthalmologist the following Monday.

The opthalmologist I saw is a great physician--he took one look at my eyes, and having listened to my other symptoms (dry mouth, difficulty swallowing and digesting food, fatigue, etc.) declared that I had come into contact with some kind of toxin that I had gotten into both of my eyes that was paralyzing my ciliary muscle. GREAT! Finally someone who seems to know what's going on! We never could ID the culprit--some chemical, apparently, that I got on my hands and into my eyes. His advice: "wait it out. In 2 weeks, all should be well and you'll be as good as new."

So I waited.