The Evil Eye that Lead to the Gates of Hell (now you have to read this...)

So on Monday afternoon, I had the opportunity of working with The Boss (residency program director), who is as fiery as they come. In between patients, I got to hear stories of her near-miss accidents on her bike over the weekend and various other panicky encounters. Hilarious. My favorite quote of the day was while talking to one of the patients, and upon hearing that the patient (a little girl) liked to swim, immediately asked, “Do you open your eyes under water?” “No”, came the reply. “Neither do I.” Well, at least we’re all on the same page.

Anyway, throughout the day I noticed that my eye was becoming progressively itchy, teary, and goop-producing. Great, I thought. You see, I’ve had a low-grade cold/sore throat for a week, and on top of feeling kind of spacey, I now was self-conscious that whoever I was talking too was thinking, “Does he know he has that goop coming out of his eye?” Including the Boss. Of course, no one said anything. But when I woke up the next morning, I couldn’t open my left eye. After cleaning it all off, I looked in the mirror and saw a nasty Pink Eye glaring right back at me. Pink eye! The disease of diseases that makes day care center directors shriek in horror and start wiping down plastic Fischer Price slides with Clorox wipes. Unsure of whether I should call in sick or not, I finally decided to head into work since I knew my resident might be too busy to see our first patient on-time. Of course, on seeing me he freaked out and called the ophthalmology resident. I did, however, see some patients that morning, which probably wasn’t the best idea. It wasn’t until the afternoon that I finally was able to see an ophthalmologist who told me that I couldn’t have any patient contact until it cleared up. I think he was serious, since after shaking hands, I saw him wiping his pen with an alcohol swab.

(My eye was worse)

Well, this story is dragging on. Anyway, the next day I took off (since I woke up with pink eye x 2 – which I figured approximately doubled my risk of being contagious), and spent it lounging around the Finn’s house and reading in front of a fire. After getting a little cabin-feverish, I headed down to the campus library. After parking the car, I happened to discover the school’s own Rodin sculpture garden, with several originals, including The Gates of Hell:


The rest of the day was uneventful. Found some good articles on intracranial ependymomas and eventually made my way back to The Ranch. Random encounter: When I returned back to the Finns, their dentist was there making a house visit (who knew dentists did that?—well, this one does). It turns out his daughter knows one of the residents here through their mutual interest in competitive running. An interesting connection.