After having a lovely meal at Tender Greens (cause I’m trying to detox), I went to the parking garage to start my car. No starty. I opened up the hood (never a good idea for a musician) and saw a bunch of white powdery corrosion on the battery. I vaguely remember hearing that the car will usually start if you can get rid of the corrosion, but DON’T TOUCH IT! So I got some baby wipes and started brushing the powder away when I noticed it was not as packed-in as it looked. It was loose! So — genius idea — I blew on it.

Instant cloud. Stupid little toxic particles swirled through the air, and more importantly, in my eyes, nose and mouth. I coughed an earthshaking cough. My eyes stung. My nose started running. I sneezed several times. My face was in Evac Mode.

There was no bathroom around and I was only ten minutes from home, so I drove back, ran into my house and put my eyes under the tap and let the water do its thang. Then I rinsed my sinuses (which is as unpleasant as it sounds). Then I flushed my eyes again. Can’t be too careful.

My right eye felt like I scraped it on the sidewalk, and my left eye felt like I shoved a piece of that sidewalk inside it. In the next few hours my head started pounding and my stomach started to hurt. BODY REBELLION!

I had some awesome Friday night plans to go karaoke-ing with friends and another party after that but guess what!? Early-to-bed Night.

Woke up in the middle of the night and both eyes were blurry. OMG. I’m blind! I really shouldn’t have texted during the Blu-ray version of Alice in Wonderland cause I will never see another beautiful (but stupid) movie in hi-def again!  But then I blinked a couple times and everything cleared up. Back to bed.

Woke up this morning with no headache and less stomach pain. But the eyes. OH, THE EYES. “Only a matter of time before they heal though,” I thought. “They’re just doing their thing.” So I went about my day: meetings, work, Juicy Burger, etc.

I was still feeling pretty icky in the afternoon, and talking to my Dad about it when he suggested I call Poison Control. Why not?

I told Dr. Eileen from PC about my situation. She said that the dusty powder from the battery was actually sulfuric acid. Acid IN MY EYES. She also said that 90% of poison control complaints are treated at home, but I was in the 10% that should see a doctor immediately, because I could go blind if I didn’t deal with it soon.

And of course, these things only happen on weekends.

ER time! Except no. Last time I went to the ER, I was there for 6 hours and it cost $18,000. No joke. And my insurance company stuck me with $4,000 of that. Oh also, during that visit, the doctor couldn’t help me at all. So next time I’ll just gather up that money in unmarked bills and set it on fire in my yard.

I decided instead to go to an Urgent Care center, which I later discovered is code for “We Don’t Care center”.

They handed me the usual clipboard of useless questions about my medical history that no one would read. But most importantly, I had to write down what my current issue was, so that no one could read that either. I wrote “battery acid in eyes, nose, mouth.”

While I was waiting, I called my opthamalogist, Dr. First (seriously, I should have called him first) and left a message on his emergency line. Battery acid. Face. Burny eyes. Blah blah blah.

The orderly assistant lady let me in, took my blood pressure, and asked me all sorts of questions about the battery situation, and wrote nothing down. I thought, “She’ll tell the doctor right? This isn’t just for her own curiosity, right?”

Well, wrong. She just likes to know all the gossip, I guess.

She lead me into a room with a bed, a chair, and various probey gadgets. The doctor came in. He didn’t tell me his name, so I’ll call him Dr Dimbulb. He was a small man wearing a white doctor’s jacket, dress shoes and sweatpants. He sat down and began asking me about my allergies. I told him that I don’t have any medical allergies. So he asked me about my food allergies. Then he asked me about my animal allergies. Then he asked me about my pollen allergies. Then he got REALLY specific: “So if you walk barefoot on grass, do you react?”

This train had derailed before it even left the station.

I said, “None of this is why I am here.”

He said, “Oh? Why are you here then?”

After pausing incredulously, I replied, “because of the battery acid that got in my eyes, nose and mouth.”

He rifled through his papers and said, “Hmm. It just says here ‘itchy eyes.’”

I told him, “The physician at Poison Control told me that you could do some sort of PH test to see if the acid was still present, and that there was a risk of losing my sight .”

He replied, “Well, yes, if there was some sort of ulceration.” Then, he got up and left the room. Seriously.

As I sat in stunned silence, I got a call from Dr First, with some answers. Thank sweet baby Jesus. He told me that with acid like this, the damage is done in the first minute or two. So if I hadn’t lost any vision at this point, I wasn’t going to. He said that the pain in my eyes could be from an abrasion or cut caused by the acid that would heal up, or it could even be rust that was mixed in with the acid-corrosion-dustcloud-from-hell. He said to go ahead and have these Urgent Care folks look at my eyes but they would probably need a microscope to really see what’s going on. I should have just left at that point.

So what does Dr. Dimbulb McDummypants come back in with? A glorified vanity mirror. He put it down and said, “Lay down. First let me listen to your heartbeat.” Sure, why not? Guess we can make sure the acid didn’t eat through my heart and kill me yet. He struggled to put on his stethoscope and actually poked himself in the eye with it.

I wish I was kidding.

What a shocker, my heartbeat was fine. So he pulled out some orange dye strips, pulled down my left bottom eyelid, Clockwork-Orange-style, and placed the strip right on my friggin’ eye. Just then a lumberjack started an optic forest fire in my face. I squeaked, “Should it burn this much!?” To which he replied, “Well, the dye is probably reacting with a cut or something.” Then, because he hates me, he put the other strip in the right eye. DOUBLE FIRE RAINBOW. My vision went yellow. This canary dye started running down my cheeks as Dr. Demento played with his bellybutton lint (or something) across the room. I said “can I please have some paper towels?” As slowly as humanly possible, he ambled over with a few, and I snatched them up and started dabbing like a crazy person.

He picked up the Super Girly Makeup Mirror and looked in my eyes. He pulled down my bottom eyelid and said, “Look down.”

…

…, “I mean, look up.” He had me look each direction, making no real reaction to anything he saw. He said, “Now look at the ceiling.” I looked at the ceiling. He said, “No, look at the ceiling.” I was laying down so the ceiling was directly in front of me. “Oh, umm, look at the wall behind you.” Why didn’t he just say “look up” again?

Then he started fiddling with the FisherPrice My First Mirror and pressed a button. A black light came on. He seemed surprised. As if the idea had just come to him, he did another pass at looking in my eyes. He asked, “Do your eyes feel any better?”

I said, “You mean, better than when you put the dye in?”

“No.”

“Oh, so, ‘better than before I came here?”

“No, better than when they were burning, from the dye.”

If I could have rolled my eyes, I would have. “A little.”

He left the room again.

A few minutes later he came back with some eyedrops. “These should help with the pain.” He dropped a couple in each eye. The lumberjack was back with his matches. QUADRUPLE FIRE RAINBOW! AAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH! The doctor left.

An orderly came in. “Those drops hurting you?”

I grumbled, “Yes, they might be reacting with the dye strips.” 

To which she replied, “Ooooooh. Yeah, that could be it.” Then she left.

Slowly, the burning gave way to a tingle. My eyes started to pull closed. What was going on? Was I going blind? Again? I couldn’t keep them open.

When Dr. VanMoron came back, I asked, “Were those numbing drops?”

“Oh, yes. Did they help?” Then before I could answer, he left again.

I should stress that there were no other patients at the Urgent Care center. WHERE WAS HE GOING? Small bladder? Poker game? Crack habit?

He came back, prescribed me some antibiotic drops and sent me on my way. As if I could actually put any more junk in my eyes at that point. 

On my way out, they notified me that my insurance would not be paying anything.