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For the last few weeks, I’ve started my morning off with the sensation of something in the corner of my eye.
Picture if you will, a crusty, dried-out eye booger (mocos del ojos) with an overactive pituitary gland which has nestled itself comfortably in the corner of your eye where the tears appear.
The problem is that I haven’t been able (nay allowed) to introduce any foreign implements like a fingernail, a bobby pin, or even a pair of needle nose pliers to dislodge the offending particulate.
Sadly I have to resort to more gentle measures to get the rheum out of my view.
Compare the events of this year to my recent bouts with excessive eye crud and one would think that the lead in this dispatch of verbal brilliance was inappropriately weighted. After all, I composed part of this piece while waiting for a triage nurse to inspect that area on Wifey’s left trigger finger where the tip used to be.
Just the tip.
The rest of the finger survived what we’ll someday remember as “that time back in ’25 when she was cutting some thread after repairing the dog bed Tonka chewed up.”
That’s not to be confused with “that time about ten years ago when she lopped the tip off her right-hand ring finger on the mandolin slicer.”
Two down, eight to go.
It’s been a tough year, and we still have a month to go.
Let’s go on a quick side quest.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this point I’m going to warn you that I’m composing this dispatch in two different universes.
In one universe, I’ll outline every little thing that’s happened so far this year in such a detailed fashion that even pedantry will look lazy. That’s also the universe where the pantsuit won the Presidency in 2016, the vaccine mandate wasn’t challenged in court, and your favorite blogger on the whole worldwide web is okay with beans on his nachos.
In the other universe, I’ll provide high level summaries of what’s happened and let you read into my year what you will.
Here’s hoping your homing beacon finds you in the right place and you aren’t reading my own version of Groundhog Day.
I’ve got a stent in the tear duct of my left eye. It was placed there in October by a young lady of the ophthalmologist persuasion to help clear a blockage that revealed itself a few months earlier. The blockage was keeping the tears from old Left Eye Weepy from draining internally, so the decision was made to clear all the junk out of there. Hardware would be left in place for a few months to keep the blockage from coming back.
Thus the stent.
As I understand it, removing that thing will involve some aggressive nose-blowing. I might put that video on pay-per-view.
You’re wondering how the blockage got there.
“There’s really no known reason for these blockages to just pop up,” said the young lady of the ophthalmologist persuasion as she fired up her cordless drill with all the confidence of an Eddie Van Halen guitar solo. “We just need to clear it before it becomes a bigger problem.”
A few more tears appeared.
In early October, time was put on the books at an outpatient surgical center for me to undergo a fifteen minute procedure to clear the Great Lacrimal Logjam of 2025 and then shove the stent in there as far as it would go.
An hour later, when the battery for the cordless drill was being put back on the charger for much needed rest, I was brought out of sedation and had an epiphany.
This year has been a season stuffed with sideways surprises and calamitous curveballs. All this time I thought I was rolling with the punches. In reality, all the complicated clutter and destructive detours manifested physically in my tear duct.
Just as a reminder, alliteration almost always annoys.
I’m willing to suggest the first fifteen minutes of the procedure was spent clearing out the easy stuff.
The extensive electrical work we had done on the house and the work on my ulnar nerve just before Groundhog Day was dispensed within a few minutes of the drill bit being inserted. The wreck that totaled one of our cars (the newer Edge) took around nine minutes, forty five seconds to clear out and then a few more minutes to remove the stresses of replacing it with Lincoln’s version of the same model. Even the build-up from the aggressive dental cleaning I had in the fall was dispatched pretty quickly.
Some loved ones were diagnosed and treated for cancer this year, and that layer easily took close to twenty minutes to remove.
With all of the usual stuff out of the way, it was time to work on the granite. By “granite”, I mean March and June.
The loss of Mag-B the SLab in March came suddenly. We knew Charlie was on the decline, but we didn’t expect her to tell us on a Friday morning in the middle of March that she had to go.
June arrived a few months later. We knew that month was going to be busy with three different memorials scheduled for Mom, my Aunt, and a family friend. In the lead up to June, a colleague at work passed on Memorial Day. By June 13th, we had gone to the service for the colleague, Colorado for Mom (complete with a TSA pat-down), and San Angelo for Aunt Sher. We had one more service scheduled for the family friend on the 20th.
On Saturday the 14th while we were in San Angelo, we got a call from back home. My Brother-in-law had been besieged by his own challenges over the last few years and had succumbed to them.
Saying goodbye to five people like that in one month amounts a tear duct blockage significant enough to turn a routine procedure into a full-blown excavation of sorrow.
By the time the ophthalmological artist had finished her excavation, the drill was toast and she was consulting the Book of Billables to see if “lacrimal reaming with battery depletion” was reimbursable.
In all of my efforts to put on a display of silent strength and resilience this last year, I inadvertently created some loud scars.
Those were the epiphanies I had in a post-sedated state as I fended off admonishments from the post-op nurse about snoring and sleep apnea.
Yet as bad as things have been, this year has had its share of triumphs too.
Our loved ones fighting cancer have beat it for now.
I started using a Water Pik to forestall those aggressive dental cleanings.
Circuit breakers don’t activate when I charge the batteries for my cordless drills.
I finished Artificial Monsters and got it published.
I’ve published an improved version of The Outback Diaries.
In a few months, I’ll get to resume digging at the corner of my eye whenever I have an itch. Of course that will be after the doctor’s appointment where the process of blowing my nose will be billed to my insurance.
If there’s any question about the process of digging at my stent-free tear ducts as a potential cause for the Great Lacrimal Logjam of 2026, understand that it’s already crossed my mind.
On that day in June after we attended the fifth memorial service, we did something which had been on our checklist since late March.
As we drove home from the Humane Society where we first met Faith the TharpSter TreadMill in 2006, Tonka, the three month old Weimaraner sporting the veterinary version of an Elizabethan collar sat in my lap yelling something in italicized Latin that he still utters occasionally in his sleep.
“Medicōs testiculōs meōs abstulit!”
One of these days I’m going to look that one up. In the meantime I continue to meet with him regularly to discuss his ambitious marketing plan for high velocity, tactical footwear.
At this point, you’re wondering which universe you’re in. Did I keep it high level or excessively pedantic? Let’s just say that beans on nachos and mayonnaise on a burger is all up there with heresy and witchcraft.
Regarding the tear duct, it’s in a soft launch phase right now and will be fully open in January, 2026. By then, all of the manifestations of the challenges which 2025 gave us will reside in the twisted, helical grooves of the lacrimal reamer.
