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<fiction>

I became a deckhand as part of Captain Katanga’s crew for his pirate ship.  As such, I thought wearing an eye patch would help me better fit into my  role.

This renegade archaeologist, his lady friend and some mysterious cargo came aboard while we were docked in North Africa.

At first their presence didn’t excite my life at sea much.  The only change I noticed was that I had to remove a lot more rat carcases after we set sail.  I assumed the captain found some new poison for the vermin at port.

The next morning did bring on excitement.  A Nazi submarine had forced us to stop.  They boarded the ship to steal the strange cargo and kidnap the archaeologist’s lady friend.  I did not know what happened to the archaeologist himself until I saw him climb aboard the deck of the Nazi sub.  That was one crazy son of a bitch, I thought.  I liked him.

Not having his lady with him any longer, I felt like he’d need some backup.  Especially if that sub were going to a Nazi base; the lion’s den.  I jumped overboard and swam after it.

I made it to the Nazi base, but was quickly captured.  I don’t know why they didn’t kill me immediately.  Instead, I was forced to attend this pointless but elaborate ceremony performed by another archaeologist in their party.  I saw that the renegade archaeologist and his lady friend were also forced to attend this ceremony.

Some crazy shit started happening during this bizarre ritual.  The generators started whining so loudly I could not hear what sounded like some kind of warning the archaeologist shouted to his lady.  I looked to see what the other archaeologist, Belloq, and the lead Nazis were doing about the ghastly occurrences.  That was when things got really weird.  They were unable to alter the course of this ceremony because they were too busy getting their faces melted off.

I later learned that the only protection from all the harm this ritual caused was to keep your eyes closed.  Luckily for me, I still wore my traditional pirate garb so only one of my eyes was exposed.  While this did protect my face from melting off, I did not escape the event completely unscathed.  I lost vision in my right eye, the one the eye patch did not cover.

</fiction>

That is the story I would like to tell about the lack of vision in my right eye.

The real reason isn’t completely known to me yet, which is why I felt the need to invent my own above.

While camping over labor day weekend this year, I noticed my vision was blurry.  It took me a couple days to notice that this problem was isolated to only my right eye.  I then went to an eye doctor who assumed it was due to complications from diabetes.

One of the things I always hated about being diabetic was that anything that happens to you is assumed to be caused by it.  As an example, I was rough-housing with another kid in middle school during recess one day.  I jumped on his back and he flipped me over his back and rammed me into the ground with a very WWF-esque move.  This maneuver broke my collar bone.  When the nurse called my Mom to tell her about the incident the first question out of her mouth was, “was his blood sugar low?”

Back to the here and now.  The first eye doctor referred me to a second, who also thought the vision problem was most likely diabetes related, but wanted to rule out anything else.  While ruling other things out, they found symptoms of me possibly having MS.  I have a neurology appointment this week, and another ophthalmology appointment a week after.  Hopefully between those two I get a more definitive answer.  The good thing about it possibly being diabetes related is that my vision will return, or so the doctors tell me.  I haven’t heard or looked into what the outcome will be if its MS, but I’ll obviously have bigger problems to worry about.  The moral of this story is be careful what you wish for.