Saturday, October 27, 2007

I Think I'm Allergic

Can I develop new allergies at this time of my life? I thought allergies were for younger people.

Ron and I went out tonight with our friends, Larry and Linda. We went for a nice steak dinner. Well, three of us went out for a nice steak dinner. Larry actually ordered ribs and they were not a huge success. The first plate of ribs he got were stone cold. Not a little cold, stone cold. That plate was sent back.

Out came plate # 2 of ribs. Not stone cold, but no where near warm either. Since the rest of us were almost done now with dinner, he didn't want to send plate # 2 back and suffer the wrath of the chef on plate # 3. So, he ate what was in front of him and decided this was not a place he would want to go back to for dinner. Too bad. We'll miss him next time the rest of us are there.

After dinner we headed back to Larry and Linda's for a rousing game of Pokeno. I know, I sure do take the long way around to tell you a story about allergies, huh? Well, I'm getting to that.

Larry and Linda have three cats. I'm really not much of a pet person, aside from my fish. I'm less afraid of cats than I am of most household pets. I don't usually think of them one way or another as long as they are not hissing at me.

One of their cats was more friendly towards me than normal. Usually, I am tolerated or allowed to be in the house and that is it. Tonight, one of the cats tried to extend an olive branch of sorts. She was rubbing against my legs under the table and actually came up to me by the table wanting to be petted. So as not to appear rude to our hosts, I reached down and gave her a cursory little scratch behind her ears. It must have been satisfying because then she walked away.

Sure. Walk away! Now you know that you've infected me with Ick!

Based on how my right eye looks right now, we're assuming I rubbed my eye after petting the cat. A few hours of playing Pokeno and I was ready to rush home to remove my eye. No, not just my contact lens but my entire eyeball.

We did rush home and I popped out the contact lens and was really surprised to see what was left. My eye is red, swollen, weeping and there seems to be some kind of "bubble" under the cornea. It's not for the feint of heart to see. This has me so freaked out that I actually called a 24/7 nurst hotline associated with our medical coverage. She didn't have a clue what would be going on with my eye and suggested calling my primary care physican or if I coudn't reach him, going directly to the ER. Well, sa much as I'm freaking out about my eye, I'm not calling my primary care physician at midnight nor am I going to spend the dough to go to the ER. I guess if it's not better by the morning, I'll call the primary care doctor. Grrr. I don't know what to do.

So, Dr. Ron in all of his wisdom suggested taking a Benedryl. I've done that and it does actually feel like the weeping has lessened.

I've never been allergic to cats in the past. Allergies. At my age. Who'd have thought. At least that's what I hope this is going to turn out to be.

On the good side, Ron was the big winner at Pokeno and took home most of the nickles we were betting. Woo hoo! Good job baby! Next stop - Vegas!

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