I knew immediately something was wrong. My left eye wouldn’t move in sync with my right. After a couple of minutes my vision cleared, and the movement of my left eye seemed to return to normal. I shook it off and began my day, slightly worried, but sure it was nothing. By midmorning I was busy at work and had completely forgotten about the whole thing.

Late the following afternoon, I noticed a curtain of blackness in the lower right corner of my left eye as I was walking down the hall at work. The blackness was as if someone was standing in front of a movie projector and blocking off the lower right-hand corner of the screen. I ran into my office and frantically called my ophthalmologist. Trying to stay calm, I raced across town and made it to his office within 15 minutes. I feared blindness would set in at any moment. My ophthalmologist ushered me immediately into his examination chair and quietly explained that my retina, which sends visual images to the brain through the optic nerve, was pulling away from its usual position on the back wall of my eyeball. If I didn’t get it repaired right away, he told me, I could lose my sight in that eye.

By 5:30 that evening I was 40 miles away in a retinal surgeon’s waiting room with five or six other patients. I spent the next several hours filled with anxiety. What would the surgeon be able to do for me? Would it hurt? Would I be able to go back to work? Would I have to spend the rest of my life blind in one eye?

The surgeon told me my eye needed to be repaired right away, and he gave me two options. The first option was to have my eye repaired right there in his office. But that would mean injecting my eyeball with a very large needle and then enduring several agonizing hours of surgery while my retina was being repaired. All while I was fully awake! No way.

So I chose option number two: surgery at the hospital with general anesthesia. Whatever they did to my eye while I was unconscious was up to them, as long as I didn’t see it or feel it. So, after a sleepless night, my boyfriend drove me to the hospital just before dawn. I undressed and put on a faded hospital gown while the nurse tucked my hair into a cap. The surgeon came in and marked my forehead with a large black arrow pointing down at my left eye. The anesthesiologist, holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee, flirted with the nurses while I lay there. As they wheeled me into the operating room, I looked back and saw my boyfriend waving goodbye. During my three-hour surgery my eyeball was pulled out of its socket. A “buckle,” or strip of tissue, was inserted over the area where the retina had pulled away from the wall at the back of my eyeball. This secured the retina in its proper position for the healing process.

Recuperation was slow. I couldn’t lift my head for the first week, and the pain medication made me nauseous. I had to sleep face down for the first month to give the “buckle” time to heal in its normal position. While the bandages covering my eye were frightening, I was shocked when I actually saw my eye. It was bloody and swollen. I felt ugly and disfigured.

While I recuperated, life went on. My boyfriend took care of me and our dogs, Homer and Harry. He took me to doctor’s appointments and filled my prescriptions. After a full day at work as a law-enforcement officer, he fed us, got us everything we needed, and then went to the hospital, where his mother lay dying. She sent some of her flowers home with him to give to me. I never got the chance to see her again. The first time I went out after the surgery was to attend her memorial service.

The month following my surgery, Hurricane Charley hit our home. We were lucky. While our roof was damaged and the rain permeated the drywall inside, we were unharmed. Although we didn’t have electricity for 10 days, we had a generator to run a small portable air-conditioner in the stifling heat. My boyfriend made sure we had plenty of food and water, and enough gas to power the generator while he worked overtime to help other people regain their lives in the aftermath of the storm. Many people weren’t as lucky as we were. Some lost their homes. Many were poor and elderly.

I returned to work after three months at home. Soon afterward, my boyfriend’s father became very ill. His father passed away at the same hospital where his mother died. Since then the vision in my left eye has returned, and you can’t even tell I had the surgery. Harry doesn’t sleep above my head anymore, although he still shares our bed. I appreciate a lot more since my injury: the ability to see the world; to have a safe home and roof over my head; to be cool in the heat of summer; to have both my parents alive and in good health; to laugh at my sweet, silly dogs; and to be fortunate enough to share my life with someone who loves and cares for me.