You might be dying (you might be fine)
My right pupil was v small; my left pupil was v large. It was weird.
Taken 1 minute after a bunch of doctors told me it might be a tumor, but 25 minutes before I stopped freaking out.
About a year ago, I noticed that one of my pupils was getting very small, and the other was getting very large. I thought it was weird, but I just ignored it because I had other sh*t going on.
By January, I started to have double vision, and I realized I could see much better if I covered up my left eye - like a pirate. It was… not attractive. Also, I do writing, photography, and video for a living - so this was v frustrating in general.
By February, my vision was getting really dark, and I realized that if I sat in a low-light room, I couldn’t see out of my left eye at all. This was terrifying and cued me to call my awesome chief-medical-resident sibling-in-law for free medical advice. I don’t know why they haven’t charged me for the caring medical advice they dole out on a regular basis.
Anyway, the convo went something like this:
“Sooooo you might be dying, or you might be fine, but you should probably-definitely go to the ER. Today.” - Dr. J
Going to the ER sounded like the perfect way to spend a Sunday… but I always do what Dr. J tells me to do.
I checked in and was called back ten minutes later, which is the first sign that maybe you’re screwed. First one doctor came in, then another doctor, then a specialist, then a scary neurologist. They gave me Very Concerned Looks and told me that I had one of three things:
a brain tumor (bad)
a pending aneurysm (bad)
Adie’s Pupil (less-bad)
So for about 30 minutes, I texted my sisters through dilated pupils. It was a lot of jivbpivuupy and pi9ugvouytcxrtex, because I don’t know how to do voice-to-text. (Texting LIKE A GRANDMA.)
After a cat scan and a bunch of other tests, I was diagnosed with not-a-tumor and not-an-aneurysm: Adie’s Pupil. You know what causes it? Stress. Stress caused it. FML (in a non-stressful way because now I had to calm myself down if I wanted to stop being Adie’s Pupil-ed.)
So my Sunday in the ER is just one more example of why everyone who is getting a divorce, white knuckling through a pandemic or is generally high-strung might need Zoloft.
Or else you could end up in the ER texting gibberish to all your friends - while sober and not-dying.