Sally Breslin: My Life: MY MOTHER GAVE BIRTH TO THE ORIGINAL "SWAMP THING"

A couple weeks ago I had a “meet and greet,” as they referred to it, with the ophthalmologist who will be doing my cataract surgery at the end of March in 2023.

I instantly liked the woman – bubbly, personable and sociable – and she allowed me as much time as I needed to discuss all of my questions about the surgery. The previous doctor I’d seen had rushed me so much, he actually told me to walk down the hall with him as he headed to his next patient, so he could finish answering my questions. I had to run to keep up with him.

Anyway, during this meet and greet, the surgeon asked me if I’d ever had eye surgery before. I told her I had, when I was two-and-a-half years old. Then I told her she probably wouldn’t believe any of the details.

I could tell I’d piqued her interest as she leaned closer and asked, “Why? What happened?”

The funny thing is, even though I was very young when I had the surgery, I still remember a lot about it, as if it happened only a year ago. So I related all of it to my new ophthalmologist, even though I figured she’d end up thinking I desperately needed a long vacation, alone on a remote island somewhere…far away from any other humans.

According to my mother, the saga of my childhood eye surgery began when she and I were out in my grandmother’s field one summer afternoon and I bent over to pick a flower. When I did, a piece of timothy grass poked me in the eye. I whined, rubbed my eye hard, and that was the end of it.

Or so my mother thought.

TIMOTHY GRASS

A couple weeks later, my eye began to look red and puffy. My mother examined it closely and saw something green sticking up out of the corner of it. She found the tweezers and used them to tug on the green thing. It wouldn’t budge. She tugged again, harder, and said the eye started to bleed. She gasped and panicked, which caused me to scream loudly enough to break the sound barrier. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital.

The doctor’s theory was that a piece of the timothy grass, which kind of looks like wheat, had lodged in my tear duct when I’d rubbed it, and the damp, moist environment in there had caused it to sprout. The doctor said it would have to be surgically removed and I’d have to stay in the hospital for a few days.

Upon hearing the diagnosis, my mother said she felt woozy and thought she might faint. I suppose it must have been traumatic for her, learning that her child was a walking greenhouse. She probably had visions of my face covered in plant-life with roots hanging out of my nostrils.

I clearly can remember being in that hospital. I still can picture the big room I was in. It contained rows of metal-barred cribs with kids in them. The tops of the cribs had nets over them. I guess the nets were so we couldn’t escape. We all looked like a bunch of little zoo animals.

I also remember daily “playtime” at the hospital. A woman, pushing a cart loaded with stuffed animals, would stop at each crib and hand an animal to each of us. My crib always was the last one she reached. Just as I would start to play with the stuffed animal, the woman would come back and take it away, saying, “Sorry, dear, playtime is over!” I can remember stubbornly trying to hold onto the animal as she tugged on it. I wasn’t about to let her take MY toy without a fight.

And I remember having to feed myself. A cart with food on it would be rolled up to my crib and left there. I had to reach out through the bars and grab my meals. I ate with my hands and I ate fast because I was sure that the lady who handed out the stuffed animals was going to show up and try to snatch away my food, too. I usually ended up with more food in my ears and hair than in my mouth.

The thing I remember the most clearly about the hospital, though, was the morning a nurse took me into a room that contained a full-sized bathtub and gave me a bath. Halfway through my bath, another nurse, carrying a little boy, walked in and plunked him next to me in the water.

I had no idea what to make of that naked little boy. I knew he looked different than I did, but I couldn’t figure out why. I did a lot of staring. In fact, I stared so much, I made the nurses laugh.

My mother said that when I finally came home from the hospital a week later, I was not the same happy, smiling kid she’d taken there. She said I glared at her and my father, communicated in grunts, and I ate like an animal, shoving food into my mouth with both fists, as if every bite might be my last. And I’d gone to the hospital all potty trained…and came home completely un-potty-trained.

Considering my dramatic personality change, I think my parents should have taken me back to the hospital for an x-ray of my brain. Heck, they might have found a cornstalk growing in there.

SWAMP THING

After I finished telling the ophthalmologist my story, she just sat there, staring at me. I was prepared to hear, “That’s one really creative tall tale,” as I usually did, after I told people how I probably could have given the “Swamp Thing” a run for its money if the plant in my eye had continued to grow.

To my surprise, the ophthalmologist said, “That’s fascinating. You know, it’s extremely rare but not impossible for foreign bodies to enter the tear-sac and lacrimal duct…and I suppose it actually would be the perfect damp environment for a seed to sprout.” She then asked me exactly what timothy grass was.

As I was leaving, she thanked me for a very memorable and entertaining visit.

I’m hoping, however, that my cataract surgery will be neither entertaining nor memorable. So I’ll be extra careful between now and then not to get anything else in my eye, like when I’m decorating my home this Christmas season.

I mean, I wouldn’t want to show up with a Balsam fir sprouting out of my body.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net

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