Yesterday, while I was enjoying a hibiscus tea and a salad at the local mall for lunch, I began to have problems with my eye sight.

I started to see semi-opaque white dots appear around my field of vision in both eyes. I took off my glasses and cleaned them and put my glasses back on; the dots were still there. They began to flash as they moved across my field of vision and I was unsure of what was happening, of what was going on.

I remember thinking “Shit, my eyes have never done this before” before the blurriness kicked in. I could hear a child laughing and looked up to see the hazy form of a girl sitting close to me, turned around in her chair. I could hear her laughter and knew she must be smiling because of it, but I could not see her face. I will always remember her and the face I did not see.

I decided to go, that I had to get my coat and go home. I stood and as I did so, my vision changed again. It was as if my eyes had become funhouse mirrors. My eyes work independently of one another and each eye had its own mirror to look through.

Things were blurry but also distorted. The people I could see walking in front of me were cut into pieces, their bodies arriving in my vision sooner than their faces. Other details were blurry, as if my eyes were experiencing sensory overload and had just started to shut down and, amidst all of this, those slightly opaque white orbs.

I’m still not sure how I made it to the second floor. Everywhere I looked, it was as if the mirrors within my eyes had become even more fractured, as if the glass holding the silver had broken. I took my steps carefully and I moved slowly, wondering if anyone around me could sense that something was off about me.

I had a brief notion of going outside for a breath of fresh air and moving on to a different mall, but I had no idea how long this would last or if this would in fact become permanent. I did the only thing that made sense: I sat down and called my husband. He told me to call my parents while he drove back from Kingston. I called my parents and sat where I was to wait for them to pick me up.

I was going to text my husband, but I couldn’t see the words and couldn’t type on the small keyboard of my phone, so I called him instead, pressing my finger to his picture and then hitting the option for mobile. I did the same for when I called my Mom.

While I waited, I meditated on the inside. I tried to remain calm and centered. I can deal with the big things that life throws at me, but I have trouble with the little things. This was obviously one of the big things, something I didn’t have any control over. I sat and tried to look at my Kindle. I could see a cloud of words in front of me but couldn’t focus on the words I wanted to read within that cloud. The same thing had happened when trying to call them before. I just sat there and looked down and tried to remain calm.

By the time my mom had arrived, it had been about an hour and a bit. My eyes gradually cleared, bit by bit. The semi-opaque dots were gone and the fractured look had lessened, leaving me only with slightly blurry vision.

My parents took me to the hospital where my mom explained my medical history to the emergency care nurse. We were triaged in and then began the waiting. Gradually, my eyes became clearer so that I could see without too much blurriness. By the time my husband arrived, they were at almost full sight.

My parents left and my husband and I waited some more. I was visited by two nurses that took measurements and tested my eyes and gathered info for the doctor. When he finally came in, he could tell me…nothing.

He said that if I had had the white spots in only one eye, that that would signify something concerning multiple sclerosis. As it was, the only thing to do was to go home and to go in if it happened again.

Not the best medical advice I had ever received, but not as bad as it could have been. After nearly six hours at the hospital, I was allowed to go home. Today, that ten percent of my vision that had been missing gradually got better. The blurriness went away and now I’m seeing at 100% again. I’m not entirely sure what happened but will remain alert if anything changes. I have an appointment with my neurologist on the 17^th of April so we will see what she says.

In the meantime, I will just sparkle on!