Medical Emergency Begging

I'm in very dire straits. The problem that is screaming for relief (almost literally, haha, gotta keep laughin', right?) is my eyes, the right eye in particular. I had thought it was just some kind of minor irritation, but it's been going on for several weeks and it's steadily getting worse. At this point, I can't even use eye wash, which only makes it much more painful. It feels as if something is lodged in the eyelid, but who knows what's going on.

I dread going to a free clinic about an eye problem. I've read the writeups of my local free clinics that appear online, and they're uniformly dreadful. And given my past experiences, I'd strongly prefer to avoid the ER. So I'd like to go to an opthamologist if at all possible. I've located what appears to be a good one nearby, and he seems to be reasonable financially. I figure it will be around $300 for the initial consultation and exam, and then another several hundred dollars if I need a comparatively simple procedure. (If it's something much more complicated, well...who knows, again.)

At the moment, I almost have enough for next month's rent (a couple of hundred dollars short), and that's it. So if I spend what I have on the eye doc, I have nothing left for rent or for anything else.

All of this has been made much worse this week because the awful back pain that I had during the holidays came back on Monday. Seems to be the same exact thing, in the same location. Last time, it was completely agonizing; this time, it's only semi-agonizing. Until today, I wouldn't have been able to get to a doctor anyway; I was lying in bed almost all the time, only able to move a little bit now and then. Now I can manage a few steps, very, very slowly. So I'd like to get to this opthamologist guy ASAP.

PayPal is okay, and I can manage to move enough, albeit slowly and with great care, to withdraw any donated funds promptly. Mail is fine, too. (As before, please write me at arthur4801 at yahoo dot com if you need the address.)

Meanwhile, I have a couple of posts hanging fire. I've tried to work on them, but all I've been able to manage is a few minutes once in a while. After that, words become very blurry and start swimming around, and/or the back pain is too much, so I have to stop. I'd like to be able to finish them, and to write a bunch of other stuff I've been thinking about.

I told a friend that I can't imagine what past sins I'm paying for, but whatever I did, I should have had a lot more fun! My friend, wag that he is, suggested that perhaps I enthusiastically went to work for one of the leading fucking oligarchs on the whole damned planet. Ha. Ha.

Actually not funny at the moment. My good pal Petey O. could sneeze enough money to change my life forever, along with the lives of a number of other people. Fuck him. I mostly feel like smashing a whole lot of stuff. But to do that effectively, I need to be able to, ya know, see it first. God damn it all to hell. (Writing even this is an unbelievably momentous chore. I'm squinting all the time, while my right eye never stops watering.)

Many thanks for listening. I'll let you know how I'm doing in a few days.