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Travel Story - Thai Eye

Blessings cloaked in goo

A new perspective on Thailand comes with temporary loss of sight

Science has never been one of my strengths. In physics, when asked to describe what happens when you put a sugar cube into water, I launched into some flowery description of a knight on a horse and a maiden in a crumbling tower. When we were supposed to observe what happens to Alka Seltzer in water, my friend and I popped them into our mouths and pretended we were rabid. I did not dissect a frog; I was at Muffin Break. When I was supposed to be learning the Periodic Table, I was busy flirting. I claimed it was chemistry, but I was kicked out of class, nonetheless. I graduated from high school with A's. I did not take science in Grade 12.

My scientific apathy did not prepare me for the loss of the use of my left eye while I was in Thailand.

It was a Sunday. I went to the Internet café to send a few "sàwà-dii"s and to see if anyone was on MSN. Sélèna dropped by the café to see if I wanted to accompany her to the markets. I paid up and off we went. The Sunday market in Chiang Mai is a wonder. You can walk and shop and gawk for hours. After a length of meandering and munching, we decided to take a rest. We headed for the corner. There were rows of plastic chairs and stools and smiling faces wooing us to pay $1.50 for a half-hour foot or head and shoulder massage. Life is very good in Chiang Mai.

The man pushed, pulled and kneaded my neck, head and my shoulders. I vied to keep it together enough not to drool too much. As my eyes wandered over the sea of heads perking and lurking along, a stream of white haze slid across my left eye. It wasn’t sleep. My scientific mind immediately recognized the discharge as, "goo". I knew I had to head to the pharmacy asap, though I didn't cut my massage short.

I rubbed my eye. More goo seeped from somewhere. I rubbed my eye again. Sélèna told me my eye was really red, and that I probably shouldn’t be touching it. I nodded, as my hand reached once again for my eye. I had a roll of toilet paper in my bag, as you do in Thailand, so I tore off a piece, and dabbed my eye once more.

By the time I got to the pharmacist, my eye was poppy red and weeping. She prescribed some drops, recommended that I keep my eye shut, and told me to come by tomorrow. I had been planning to go to Pai for a week the next day with some Thai Massage classmates. I went home, abused the drops, cursed and crashed.

I woke up with one eye. My left eye was sealed shut. I moistened a towel with some boiled water and coaxed it open, shucking an oyster with bare hands. I grabbed my hand mirror and examined my eye carefully. It was baggy and red.

"My eye!"

It was not my first eye infection, but my eyeball had never been baggy and swollen. It was creepy. I threw on some clothes and b-lined for the pharmacist before my imagination started knitting little horrors.

The pharmacist gave me drugs and told me to wear an eye patch and to wash my hands a lot. She said that eye infections were very common for travellers, and remarked that there had been many more incidences since the advent of the Internet café. You never know who else touches the keyboard.

I flicked that thought from my shoulder before it festered. I washed my hands when I got home. I swallowed the drugs with my coffee and sweetened condensed milk. I washed my hands again. I stuck on an eye patch. I stood up and stumbled. I headed for the stairs, and carefully made my way down each and every stair. I had to look at each one. I had to see my foot make contact with the stair. I did not understand.

My friends came over on their way to Pai, offered words of condolence, and stayed well away. I washed my hands with Lady MacBeth. They left for Pai, and I kicked rocks in my head. I drank another coffee and tried to read. I returned to my room, somewhat dejected. Again, slightly stooped, I directed my feet on the stairs. I went to my bed and hummed for a couple of hours.

I transplanted myself to the living room a few hours later, to play with the puppy and hang out with Mim, the owner of the fabulous Spicy Guest House. A fellow resident came home and offered me a bag of taro sweets. I reached for the bag. My hand missed the bag, about two inches to the left. We looked at each other. I tried again. It took me three tries to get my hand into that bag. I decided it was time to go for a walk, but I tripped over the puppy and then walked into the wall. I had a hot shower instead. I washed my hands 37 times that day.

I lay in my bed, listening to the bawling monkey next door. Without my eyes, my other senses were neon. I could hear and smell each garlic clove and slice of galangal being mashed in the mortar and pestle in the kitchen below. I wore a patch for three days. I When I took it off, the flood of light and depth dazzled me. My eye, still crimson, attracted little attention without that patch. People stare at a Cyclops, especially one that trips up the curb.

I headed to Pai after that. My eye was getting better, and the goo was abating. When I arrived, I was informed that I would not be sharing a bungalow with any of my friends. Nobody wanted to share with a goo-eye girl, save for the four-inch cockroach that caressed my face in the night when I didn't bother to tuck in my mosquito netting properly.

I surveyed my friends on the function of the eye. I was comforted that only half knew the importance of both eyes in depth perception. I had assumed that when you have two eyes you see everything, and when you just have one you see half. This seemed perfectly logical to me. I was haunted by the ghost of science classes past.

My eye infection cleared in a week and a half. I was tentative with my contacts, but elated. Initially, I was more conscious of the fullness of the space around me. Colours were more vivid, and the contrasts more acute. I was already in love with Thailand, but with the depth perception suspended and then retrieved, I felt my love for this place deepen, stretch and extend. Blessings cloaked in goo.