Mall Pretzels

I was twenty-something, fresh off my first posting in San Francisco. New career, new benefit I didn't understand yet: health insurance.

One Saturday at the mall, pretzel in hand, I saw a sign at Sears Optical. Free vision test. We accept all insurance. Free glasses, on a benefit I already had. Girls like a guy in glasses. No downside, I thought.

Puff of air in both eyes. The doctor said my pressure was 19. Too high for someone my age. I need you on drops, he said. Stay on top of this now.

I got the glasses. I looked at the price of the drops, and I looked at the pretzel in my other hand. The drops were the better decision. The pretzel was the easier one.

You probably already know which one I chose.

For years, that's how it went. A number a doctor mentioned once, easy to forget between one paycheck and the next. My career moved me to Bogotá. The eye pressure moved with me, quietly, and I didn't think about it at all.

Then I went to see my parents in Idaho for a long weekend. Two days, tightly scheduled — people were counting on me back at the embassy. I'd asked my mom to book me an eye appointment while I was in town, just to update my reading glasses.

The doctor went quiet mid-exam. Then: "42."

I knew that number. Jackie Robinson's number. Not what I expected to hear about my eyes.

"How long are you in town for?" Two days, I said. "You're not going anywhere. You need surgery." I told him people were waiting on me, that I had a flight, that I'd sort it out once I got back to Bogotá. He told me, flatly, that he wasn't putting me on that flight.

Eighteen is normal. I was more than double that.

Drops that night brought it to 41, then 35. Not fast enough. Surgery. A shunt, to relieve the pressure before it cost me my sight.

It worked. But it was the start of something, not the end of it. Weeks of healing in Idaho. Then the harder part: finding someone in Bogotá who could keep watching it once I went back. My country doctor in Idaho knew a colleague in Cali. I called a friend in Bogotá who knew Cali. Between the two of them, they found a doctor there — who, without hesitating, sent me to Dr. Fernando Gomez Goyeneche in Bogotá.

Five years, Dr. Gomez and I worked the problem together. Drops, timed to the hour. Visits every other day after each procedure. When one approach stopped being enough, he had another one ready — surgery, a new drop, a different plan. He called after every procedure, checking. He came to see me once on his own vacation day. I don't know many doctors like that. I miss him.

Today I see an eye doctor in Georgia, every four months. This morning left eye, pressure of 5. Right eye, 9.7. I ask the same question every visit: "Is there anything more I should be doing?" Every time, the answer is the same: no, keep doing what you're doing.

Blue drops when I wake up. Purple an hour later. Repeat by six, and again before eight. The last drop lives in the refrigerator, next to the butter — it has to feel cold going in, or I haven't done it right, and I go back downstairs until it does.

That's what it takes to keep what almost went away over the price of a pretzel.

The test that would have caught it at 19 instead of 42 takes about a minute and doesn't hurt. You don't need a country doctor, a friend in Cali, and a referral chain across two continents to get there — that part was luck, not a plan. The plan is just: get it checked.

Next time you're at the mall, feel free to get the pretzel. Just get your eyes checked first— and choose wisely.