Long Story Short, I Poisoned Myself

So I poisoned myself. How was your day?

Last night I noticed, as I started to work on a new D&D character, that I was having trouble focusing on the high-contrast character sheet. So I cleaned my glasses. It needs to be done every week or two, I find. Strangely enough, it had little effect.

So I went to the mirror to check out my eyes. And WHOA! The pupil of my right eye was ENORMOUS! Left eye was fine, right eye, enormous. Hmm. (Well, hmm, and yikes!)

Nevermind the yellow.. that's from the optometrist's drops. But look at those pupils!
(Click to embiggen.)

So I went upstairs and pulled up my handy-dandy version of this here internet, and what did I find? Well, a lot of things, but the very first was the suggestion that I was having a stroke.

I didn't feel like I was having a stroke. I did little exercises with my fingers and toes, with the expected results. No tingling, no slurred speech. I looked further online... and there was a suggestion that it might be panic-related, or caused by a blow to my head. And I was panicking--a writer was way over deadline and I wasn't able to get in touch with him, and we ship the magazine next week--so that seemed like a possibility. There was no blow to my head that I could recall... but could the very lack of memory of the impact be proof of its existence? I was going in circles. Also, a few sites mentioned yard work.

And well, I had done yard work yesterday, too, cutting back the jungle that had been hanging over the driveway all summer. I felt like Indiana Jones every time I went out to my car.

So I gave it some thought, and seeing how I was exhibiting no other symptoms of a stroke or any other neuorological tomfoolery, decided to not see the doctor until today. But, to be on the safe side, I wrote a note to Kathy, explaining what was going on, telling her I love her, and documenting my symptom and its progress in case Dr. House asked.

Then I went to bed, hoping it would be gone by the time I woke up.

No such luck. So I went into work and called my optometrist for an appointment this afternoon. She refered me to another doctor who would be open by the time I got home, and they refered me to their New York City branch, which happened to be four blocks away from where I work. So I left early (summer Fridays) and walked on over.

The doctor went through all sorts of possibilities, and methodically eliminated the possibility that it was neurological. (This was a looooong visit. The only doctor I've ever spent more continuous time with is one I play D&D with.) We talked about the yard work, and she mentioned belladonna, a plant 1930s starlets used to grind up and put drops of in their eyes to make them sparkle -- which, physiologically, meant dilating their pupils. The doctor's staff was doing internet searches on possible culprit plants. Eventually we concluded that, by process of elimination, it had to be one of the plants in my driveway--probably the pricklyburr, which Kathy & I knew to be toxic. (Another name for belladonna is nightshade, and the pricklyburr flowers open at night, so I thought there could be a connection there.) The toxin to look for, said the doctor, was atropine.

And sure enough...


Pricklyburr contains atropine!

Mystery solved. Poisoner found. And my googly eye should calm down in a few days.

Rob

P.S. You can draw your own conclusions about the virtues of yardwork.