Cross my heart/Hope to die/Stick a needle in my eye

I was seeing these distortions in the vision of my right eye, so I dutifully went to pay tribute to the god of Ophthalmology. He accepted my $25 sacrifice – I mean co-pay, and (probably because I did not show the proper level of reverence) sent me to the god of Retinology. He, too, accepted my $25, prodded my eye, dyed my eye, blinded my with holy lights, and told me to come back in two weeks with another tribute, at which time he would stab me in the eye with a needle.

“Are you crazy?” I asked, risking heaven’s wrath.
“Everyone asks me that, but they usually also turn shades of green. You didn’t do that. You must be tough.”
“Yeah. I laugh at needles in my eye.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t even see it coming.”
“I don’t care about seeing it; I don’t want to feel it.”
“Oh, we’ll numb the eye.”

I trust too much.

So, I returned to prostrate myself at the altar. I asked my mother to come with (just in case I could not drive after). Plus, she loves this stuff. We’ll call her Gaia. Gaia picked me up. And, she brought my father. You’d have to meet him to know how great and hilarious that is. I cannot imagine what dark incantations she used to coax him from his realm for this. OK! This was beginning to look like a quest! And, we could do dinner after.

So, we’re in the Retina God’s (big ‘G’, lots of deference for a God with a needle) office, merrily chatting away about his wife’s beautiful paintings that adorn each room, and their garden where he constructs the ponds because she loves fish, and their biking/painting trips to the south of France. Good! Successful Gods are more benevolent, right? He numbs my eyes with sacred drops. I do not see the needle coming. I do not feel it – Yea! Oh, a little bit of pressure there … Hey! Whoa – Oww!

“Sorry to startle you,” he says! STARTLE??? (Geez, I tell a few impertinent jokes, and the god gets all vengeful.)

OK, to be perfectly accurate, he said I would not see it, but he did not quite say that I would not feel it. Only that he would numb the eye. Tricky god (screw the deference). Then he turns to my mother, as if I was eight (OK, I was glaring at him with my one good eye) and says that he had hit a blood vessel, (turns to me), it happens some times, no matter how hard he tries, and the broken vessel would clear in a few days.

“What broken blood vessel?” Mirror. “Oh, that red LAKE in my eye? Think nothing of it.” (I’d post a photo but this is not the Mutter Museum blog.)
“Come back in six weeks, and we’ll do the second treatment.”
“Second - ?”
“Total of three, “ spaketh the demi-god.
“Isn’t modern medicine wonderful?” My mother. (Gee, Gaia, don’t you have some natural disaster to attend to?)

I wore my sunglasses in the restaurant.

Anyone got an eye patch?