The one-eyed Veteran
God Bless those men who have served our country, those veterans that daily bear the physical and emotional scars of battle.
Here at the brace shop we have the privilege of serving quite a few of our country’s veterans, each with their own stories to tell, with their own battle scars to show. It is quite common for us to see those veterans who have lost limbs in war and serve all their amputation needs.
Personally for me, when I see a patient come in with a missing limb, I don’t bat an eye (Pun intended, you will see why later), I just keep going on with my day. After all this is the prosthetic shop, so seeing amputees are the daily norm.
But today was the exception.
Today I had a veteran on my schedule, but it wasn’t for any artificial limb, just a neck collar. Simple enough.
I walked into the room, introducing myself and as I put my hand out to shake his hand he looks up at me and only has one eye.
No eye patch. No scar. No socket. Nothing.
It was as if his left eye was never there at all, for his skin was so smooth and there was no evidence of any eye socket, nor of any past trauma.
The whole thing was creepy. I felt as if I was a character in a movie and he was playing the part of a one-eyed antagonist who was planning to eventually take over the world.
While I am sure he must have had an accident during war, and it is not as if I have never seen a person with one eye missing, it was the fact that there was ZERO evidence to there ever being an eye there at all that made me feel as if we were on the set of a scene out of the Matrix.
The whole thing was quite odd.
Odd 