On that night, I happened to meet Tanner, 16, in the street in front of our house. He was getting dropped off from cross country practice, and I was just starting to take our dog Schatzi for a walk.
"Mom," said Tanner, "My vision is blurry in my right eye." He said this to me with a smile on his face, almost as though he were playing a bad joke on me.
He had been running on the track, had heard another runner coming up along his right side, and wasn't able to see him until he turned his head. He realized his vision was blurry when he covered his good eye with his hand.
Tanner, our youngest child, had been blessed with perfect vision in his beautiful green eyes. I would always ask him to read something far away, just to make him feel important. I have been near-sighted for as long as I can remember.
So when Tanner told me that he couldn't see, I did the mommy thing and peered into both of his eyes, almost as if I expected to find a twig stuck in there. I couldn't see anything, of course, and the alarm bells began to jangle furiously in my head.
"I think we need to go to the hospital," I told Tanner. Together, we walked back to the house. Schatzi, who had just begun her walk, also seemed confused by the abrupt turnaround.
Gary, my husband, was sitting at the dining room table, reading a newspaper, when we came back in. I told him that Tanner had something wrong with his eye. Gary looked into his eyes, just as I had, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
I think I told Tanner something silly, like "go take a shower," somehow thinking that a nice hot shower would make everything better. He wasn't in pain, he said. He was hungry. Gary didn't think he should go to the hospital, that he would be better after a good night's sleep.
I insisted on taking Tanner to the local hospital, where I figured we'd have to wait a while. I work in a non-clinical area of the hospital, and I wasn't expecting any favors. After all, Tanner wasn't bleeding, he wasn't throwing up, and he appeared to be strong and healthy - what could possibly be wrong with him?
We sat next to a sad looking family with a small child who was weakly puking into a pink bucket. "Don't touch anything," I hissed at Tanner. The old joke is that hospitals are no place for sick people.
great first post!
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