October 25, 30 ANM
Celestia is mad at me again. What's an alchemist to do? All I did was follow orders! Now I have to fuss around with medical textbooks I've never touched to fix a magical problem I have no training in… and I'm not allowed to just use dark magic to fix it, either!
So, the apothecary at the hospital has been out with the feather flu for the past week. Naturally, the director asked me to fill in for her. Because I'm a unicorn who totally doesn't have wings. At all. And the one time I did was… Celestia said I need to say it was a side effect. I still have nightmares about the lynch mob calling me a 'freak who does not deserve wings' and trying to kill me for 'being possessed by Nightmare Moon'. Ugh, I need to go for a walk and try to get that memory out of my head…
...Anyway, since I CLEARLY don't have wings I can't catch the feather flu, and even if I did I have a grand panacea on hoof that can cure any and all ills. So I was asked to sub in for the normal medicine pony. I thought it was the best idea ever! Why the director was so hesitant I'll never know.
So this unicorn mare comes in, yeah? To my little counter where I've set up. Mostly I've been dishing out anesthetic potions and pain relief gels, but this mare is different. She walks up holding a diagnosis paper, not a prescription! And yeah, I know only the doctors are supposed to read those. But I have a doctorate! In alchemy, not medical science, but still! What's the difference between highly invasive surgery and mixing a few explosive chemicals in a vat? None!
So she walks up, and says, "Can you help me?"
And I ask, "Sure. What's your issue?"
"I have macaroni dominoes… no, musketeer dalmations… you read it." So I take the diagnosis, and I say,
"It says here you have macular degeneration. It's a vision problem."
"Ah, I see."
"Not with macular degeneration you don't."
I'm not sure why she was suddenly glaring at the wall. There weren't any paintings, and I wasn't standing there. Was she mad I came up with that joke first? Eh, I digress. I decided that since I can't do eye surgery without permission, I'd fix the issue with potions! So I set to work. I had a working potion within a few hours! And it restored her sight using the biggest workaround I've ever thought of.
You know that one spell that unicorns learn at like… third level advanced thaumaturgy studies? The one usually only used on a theoretical basis because of the sheer quantities of mana it needs? Yeah, the one that lets you see the magical signature of living things highlighted in color based on their emotions.
I enchanted her left eye with that.
So, it turns out pouring the mana reserves equivalent to roughly 50 unicorns directly into somepony's eye is very painful. And bright. All the staff on the first floor are being treated for temporary flash blindness and you could see the flash from Canterlot Castle. I don't think I've ever seen Celestia move as fast as she did. She wasn't pleased.
Long story short, macular degeneration is incurable! You only manage the symptoms until you go blind. So I kinda did the right thing? I still got in a lot of trouble and had to pay a few thousand bits in damages, but the hospital also got slammed for 'borrowing the royal alchemist without notifying the royalty'. Apparently I'm mentally unstable? I feel fine. Anyway, since the effort required to un-enchant her eye is too much even for me (unenchanting is WAY tougher!), we left her eye as it is. It gave her a lazy eye, though, although I bet she could still see though it if it worked. Regardless, at Celestia's suggestion, we are working on a list of things I am not allowed to do. So far all we have is 'Arca may not perform any medical procedure he is not qualified for, unless it is a life or death emergency.' It's a start. Maybe we can make lists for specific places? I dunno.
As a side note, I asked around, and after getting laughed out of ten different eye doctors because "There's no way you can enchant an eyeball!", one well regarded doctor said that IF it was possible (it is), the enchantment might be able to be passed down. So if I ever meet any gray ponies with wonky yellow eyes, I may need to ask them a few questions...