Coming Back?

I've had a lot of injuries in the last two years that kept me from running.  I strained my achilles tendon two springs ago and that forced me to the couch for nine months because I couldn't run through it, or run at all, and for two months two summers ago I was in The Boot, which helped my healing.

I came back to running last spring and was slowly kicking up my pace, mileage and conditioning when mid-summer I was felled by a detached retina which required four surgeries, two of them emergency operations and two more that were delayed for weeks or months because of various circumstances on the surgeons' part.  

The first surgery hurt a lot (I don't believe I was sedated properly, if at all) but the second was the worst although I was out so I didn't feel a thing.  They filled my eye with oil to keep my eye pressure sufficient for  the retina to heal properly without deteriorating further. Reinas heal slowly, believe me.

But worse still was the feeling it engendered within me.  There was an organ in my body (my eye) that was foreign (filled with silicon) and my body wanted it out.  A few times a day I experienced white flares in my vision, good as it was in its permanently impaired state, that rose from lower left corner of my affected right eye like a nova and I would still all motion until it subsided and went away.  Exposure of my optic nerve as the oil in my eye sloshed around?  I don't know, I just got a vague answer from my ophthalmologist when I complained to him about it and he just told not to do it.  Well!

Worse still was that it felt like if I fell hard due to my shaky vision, say I pitched forward by tripping on broken  or uneven pavement, that my eye might split open.  Yep, that's what my foreign eye felt like, very strange, and I stayed on the couch till my third operation in December when they took the oil out (or at least most of it--I have these maddening residual small silicon globules floating around through my vision permanently like tiny astroid clouds from the oil they couldn't completely flush out when they operated).

Then I had cataract surgery on that eye last month, a cataract that developed suddenly and rapidly due to the eye trauma I experienced, as is normal with retina detachment repair, and I feel now that my eye, and my vision, is as good as it's going to get and my eye is healed.  

So on May 1, I went out for an intended slow half-mile run, after stretching assiduously.  I made a quarter mile before I had to walk a block, twice.

That first week I ran a second time and that time I pushed through my overwhelming urge to stop after a quarter mile and finished my half mile run, getting my second wind on the backside of the run.

This week I was going to run a half-mile three times.  I ran a slow half-mile on Monday and it went okay.  I even picked up the pace a little the last two blocks.

This morning I had to wait for an electrician to come deal with a problem at my house, so the morning was used up before my thoughts turned to adhering to my running schedule.  Here was the crisis, I wanted to have lunch instead and I didn't feel like getting into my running togs.  But I changed and went out into the street and started stretching my achilles.  The neighborhood steady runner ran by and stopped to talk and our discussion soon turned from politics to running.  I told him I was trying to return to running and my planned slow schedule.  He nodded approvingly and asked if I was returning from my run or about to set off.  I truthfully told him that I was "procrastinating."

He laughed and said I should make sure my pace wasn't too fast.  "You're going to run, right?" he said, looking dubiously at me.  "Yeah, yeah," I said as he set out on his run and I started stretching again.  I sure didn't feel like it.

But I walked over to the W&OD Trail and got underway at a slow shuffle.  My neighbor passed me going the other way on his eight mile run, having entered the trail a different way half a mile up.  Here I was just starting my half-mile run.  He said, "You're going too fast!" as he ran by.  "Slow down."  

I decided he wasn't mocking me but that he was right, and I slowed down to barely past a walk.  But I made the half mile run feeling good once I got underway and again, I picked up the pace at the end.  Best of all, I haven't injured myself or lazily gotten off schedule--yet.  A half-mile on Friday, repeat the schedule another week, and then I'll kick it up even further, I hope.  It seems pathetically slow (literally) but otherwise I might stop in discouragement if I put on too much mileage or pace right now.

Done?

Early this month I had my fourth and hopefully last eye surgery shortly after I returned from  Europe, removing the cataract in my affected eye and putting in a plastic lens that I will have for life.  It's pretty standard surgery but it's a little more tricky when the eye has suffered prior operations because the resulting trauma can damage the "platform" that house the lens.

I was more than apprehensive.  Not only did I have the after-effects of a cold which caused me to need to cough every few minutes to clear my chest congestion but my three prior eye operations were definitely a mixed bag.

The first operation was dreadful, it hurt and I felt every cut and was ordered by the doctor several times to "Lie still!" which I did to the best of my pain-wracked ability.  The second operation a week later after the first one failed, I was put to sleep, at my insistence, and they filled my eye with oil to keep the pressure up while I went through a week of dreadful face-down convalescence and while my retina slowly healed.  The third operation, to get the oil out, they insisted that I be alert with only a local anesthetic, just like the first operation, so I could cooperate with the surgeon if necessary.  I fell asleep on the table (or went out) so I only remember being wheeled in and waking up as I was wheeled out.

This time I had to cooperate with the surgeon again and I was awake throughout and did stare at certain lights upon command or moved my eye as directed.  I felt pressure but no pain and had no distress; it helped that I knew what they were going to do (smash the existing lens with ultrasound to liquify it, remove it, then drop in the artificial lens through the cut in the cornea where it would unfold like a blooming g flower) thanks to an hour-long class I was required to take.  I felt liquid, cold liquid, being splashed or washed over my eye several times and I was gripping the edge of the gurney in a death grip waiting for pain to intrude (sort of like when I'm in the dentist's chair) but it never came and then I heard the surgeon say, "It's finished," and I was wheeled out.  In a few weeks I'll go to the optometrist to get a new prescription for corrective lens and see how well I'll be able to see again.

A trip to a picturesque coastal town

Last month I took a trip to North Carolina to visit my college friend Jimmy for a few days, after visiting with my cousin overnight in southeast Virginia.  On the penultimate day of my trip, Jimmy and I went sightseeing in a picturesque seaport town on the North Carolina coast to see if Jimmy, who is considering moving to a more lively town than the one he currently lives in, would like to move there.

His girlfriend lives near there, and it is in that town where he presented her with a ring a year or so ago to represent the current state of their relationship.  Plus, he told me, there is a restaurant on the main drag in that town which has terrific loaded hotdogs for very cheap.

Disappointingly, the establishment was closed since it was a Monday.  I guess we should have checked the Internet about that, as many other places in town were also closed due to it being Monday, such as the restaurant on the water where he and his girlfriend went to have a drink to celebrate their relationship after he gave her a diamond ring at the local Episcopal church, which was also locked up tight when we went to visit.

So we spent the day walking about downtown residential streets to get a feel for the town after we perambulated its small business area and waterfront park.  Then we drove around town to look at houses one last time before we headed out to return to his house, since one of the bridges to nearby Oak Island, where his girlfriend lives (she was away taking care of her father's estate), was out due to hurricane Florence and we feared that driving there as we originally intended to would delay our return trip so much that it would cause us to get home long after sundown, since I was driving and my eyesight for driving after dark hasn't been tested satisfactorily yet after my spate of eye surgeries last year.

Some Good News for me

In July I started on a long medical journey to save my sight when I started to lose vision in my right eye and I called Kaiser Permanente on a Saturday for an eye appointment, which it gave me within the week, with an optometrist. By Monday I determined that I needed more immediate assistance and I called back and after describing my deteriorating eye condition, it gave me an appointment for the next morning.  Kaiser called me back that evening and told me not to eat or drink anything after midnight, never a good indication for an upcoming appointment.

Thank God I have excellent insurance, a byproduct of working for a quarter century for the federal  government, one of the few so blessed people in this great, rich country where lifetime beneficial health insurance is so niggardly given out.  The next morning, after my $20 co-pay, I was seen by a surgeon ophthalmologist who scheduled me for eye surgery that very day because I had several tears in the superior region of my retina and was losing sight in that eye rapidly as the aqueous humor fluid got behind the retina through the tears and was shutting my eye sight down.  I paid a $75 copay and was rolled into vision saving surgery.

That surgery didn't take and on my week-after visit, where it was determined that my retina was "rolling up," I was slapped back into surgery that very day after paying another $75 copay and they surgery filled my eye with oil (which would have to come out later in a third surgery, another $75 copay) to keep the retina in place during the healing process.  That third surgery to remove the oil was last week, and I went to the doctor's office today for the week-after checkup full of trepidation that I would be slapped into a fourth surgery if my retina was still "rolling up."  As I silently sat as the doctor examined the inside of my eye with his lighted magnification helmet, I heard him say, "Looks good, the retina is still adhering full."

Relief flooded over me, because eye surgery and its onerous recovery (google Face-Down Recovery) sucks bigly.  The doctor cautioned me that I'm still "not out of the woods yet" as I face two months of sedate living without lifting anything over five pounds and then another two months of non-strenuous activity.  But I am so encouraged that finally I might be on the road to recovery in trying to save my sight, at least in one eye, no matter how diminished the sight in my afflicted eye comes out to be (right now it's 2400/20).

At best, it's going to be a long four months.

I saw the doctor yesterday for the day-after appointment, and he said the retina looked alright, that it was still adhering to its wall of cones and rods so that was good.  The pressure in my good eye is normal at 18 and the pressure in the recovering eye is 5, which he said would come upon by the one-week appointment.

There's blood in the eye and I have maddening tiny bubbles floating all around my field of vision which he said were silicon oil globule since they can't get all the oil out so I guess I better get used to a moving cloud in my eye.  If the recovery proceeds well, I will have to be on severe restrictions for 8 weeks--no sneezing, coughing, bending over, picking anything up over 5 pounds, and taking eyedrops every 4 waking hours, ointment at night, a daily stool softener, with travel restricted and no driving for now.

But, no face-down period of recovery.  I am grateful for small, or perhaps big, things in light of this misfortune.  After that down period, for two more months I have to take it very easy, no running, workouts or strenuous activity.

Then if all goes well, sometime next spring, I can start getting back with my life.  I'm starting to think that my big car trip around the good ol' USA that I thought I would take after I retired will never happen.

Surgery

Tomorrow's the big day. Report at 6:30 am to pre-op to save your sight.

Anxious?  Yeah.

Didn't get your bloodwork done this week?  Oops, I forgot, I'm old and can't remember things.

Maybe they'll send me home because I didn't get it and push the eye surgery further down the road.  Couldn't be worse than obviating the October 30th surgery because the dock broke his arm right before that date, necessitating a delay because of him.

I'm O+ anyway so any old blood will do, I think. At least they keep calling me to donate because they love my blood.

The first (of three, counting tomorrow) eye surgery didn't go so well, it hurt a lot and failed to boot so I am leery, to say the least.  They won't tell me exactly what went wrong but I think they blame me for both aspects of the botched surgery.

Me, I blame the first anesthesiologist, because I never felt such shocking pain, in my eye no less. I wasn't expecting it, having had several surgeries before, including where I've been aware of my surroundings, where I never felt a thing.

But this was different, and I never willingly want to experience that again.  Unless I was forewarned, so I could be forearmed.

Perhaps I am wrong, and every so often surgery hurts so much that you'll never forget that first cut for the rest of your life.  Luck of the draw maybe, or perhaps I pushed my so-many-times-painfree quota past its limit.

Or perhaps I got someone who went to Western Florida State instead of Harvard and skipped most of her classes.  I certainly never saw her after the surgery (the surgeon called me as I was being driven home) and although I have voiced my suspicions about the reason for my difficulty in lying still for the surgery, no one has confirmed or disputed my stated inklings.

I can safely say that I never want to get operated on again.  But I'll show up tomorrow and hope (trust) that I won't suddenly feel crushing pain.

Anxious

I am a lawyer.  Do you think I ever get completely accurate information from doctors?

My 3d eye surgery comes up next week because the first emergency surgery, for a retinal tear, failed and the second emergency surgery filled my eye with oil which now has to come out.  I can't wait for it to be over because I am dreading it.

Why did the first surgery fail? There was no reason given except that, me being an anomaly of that one in 10,000 people who inexplicably develops retinal detachment, I was further statistically unlucky in being in the ten percent of recipients of corrective surgery whose procedure did not adhere. How well I remember the first surgery where, having been given a local anesthesia, I shockingly felt the scalpel go into my eye like a hot spike and the doctor yelling at me as I thrashed around on the operating table to Be Still!

The surgeon explained to me on the day-after follow up checkup that I was extremely "anxious" about the surgery and therefore I reacted badly to the operation as it occurred and he wasn't able to fully "cement" the "background" of my eye with his laser as he wished to because I was moving around too much but he was able to fully zap the tears in my retina so the operation was a wrap although shorter than he wished. Except that a week later I was under the knife again because at the one-week checkup the retina (but not the tears) was detaching, but for that procedure I was totally under so I didn't (obviously) feel a thing. 

For the third operation next week I am going to get a local again because for some reason, I have to be sentient during the delicate procedure while they swap out the W-40 for saline solution because otherwise I might retch involuntarily under general anesthesia but such an unlikely occurrence would "ruin" my eye if they had to . . . what, work to revive me?

Furthermore, with the white flares that erupt in my right eye several times daily bedeviling me, which the doctor said was my retina "flexing" and therefore exposing my optic nerve, I wonder if when the eye is cut open to drain the oil, whether my retina will "roll up" as the doctor explained to me might happen, in which case he would insert the gas bubble to keep the eye pressure up, which returns me to the July 31st surgery, the very first operation (that failed) and two weeks of face down recovery.  Did you ever watch Groundhog Day?  Go straight to Jail and do not pass Go.

I greatly fear the possibility of a stabbing pain in my eye during next week's operation similar to what I felt during the first operation because my memory of it is strong and my control of my body in response to such sudden intrusive pain is weak.  But I have also come to think that the anesthesiologist for the first operation might have botched her part and they're not telling me that, and in my sudden pain then I moved involuntarily and that ultimately caused the first operation to fail, because it wasn't completed fully.  I hate to be fearful, and I am wont to be suspicious, which leads me to be anxious.

Why, how nice of you to call me, doctor...

The phone rang and although I didn't recognize the number, it was a Virginia area code so I answered it.  It was my eye doctor, an ophthalmologist, the one who is going to be operating on me next week to remove the oil from my eye which has finally healed from the two retina detachment surgeries I underwent in July and August.

I am anxiously looking forward to having that third operation, despite another potentially painful surgery and onerous recovery period, because my oil-filled eye is driving me crazy with its occasional white flare bursts inside it, the lack of clarity of vision from it and my inability to see much in very low-light situations where all distant lights, such as street lamps or approaching headlights, look like blurry kaleidoscopes.  But I was suspicious as the doctor and I exchanged phone pleasantries, and I waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Sir, I am sorry to tell you but I had an accident over the weekend and I broke my arm.  I must postpone your surgery for eight weeks or more until it heals, although this time period will not have a deleterious affect upon your eye in the lest."

I earnestly wished him a speedy and full recovery as we ended our call.  As I hit the call-end button, I suddenly became very depressed.

I haven't driven at night yet... .

At my one month check up last week following eye surgery last month, my doctor gave me an out for a third eye surgery in the fall to remove the oil filling my healing eye by telling me at the outset that he had clients who have left the oil in their eyes for years and even decades, although he didn't recommend that because the vision isn't so good out of that eye and it leads to cataracts.  He might as well have winked at me.

But more eye surgery is coming up in October or November.  Maybe I should schedule it around Thanksgiving to thank providence for restoring sight in that eye to any degree or to be thankful for the character-building process of another two months of sedate, careful recovery.  You know, the Romans 5 passage about tribulation/patience/experience and hope.

The surgeon suggested that I might want to travel now because after that surgery I'd be in recovery mode for many weeks.  But then, if all went well, the repair would be permanent.  Thank the Lord.

Where would I go, since I'm not in shape to work on any campaign, which had been my intention earlier in the summer once September came, and I haven't tried any turnpike driving nor driving at night yet.  Although I'm healed or mostly healed, I still have trouble with my eye (momentary white flares, steroid eye drops twice a day) and it feels funny so I'm mostly stick-at-home right now and I can't wait to get this oil out of my eye.

  

Good News and Bad News

About three weeks after the last surgery, my eye started feeling better and driving wasn't a totally exciting adventure.  Oh yeah, I could drive, I just had to be careful because my vision off to the right was distorted and lacked depth perception because of the blurry picture I received in my brain from my healing, oil-filled eye.  I have a powerful truck so if I wasn't poking along stubbornly in the right lane, I would have to memorize what the closest car to me was in the lane off to the right, identify that car in my passenger mirror before I moved over to the right and goose the car to stay ahead of it as I moved right into the free space.

But then my anxiety went into overdrive.  My first surgery had failed after a week, but my second surgery was okay at the one-week checkup but then the next check-up was scheduled for two months away.  I decided to move that consultation up to see if this delicate surgery was holding, in light of my daily effort not to strain myself or pick up more than five pounds, which was an impossible standard to meet unless I stayed in bed all day.  For instance, my vacuum cleaner was in the basement; it probably weighs twenty pounds but I waited three weeks before I brought it up to the main floor for some much-needed vacuuming.

When I called for an earlier appointment, they gave me the first available opening, one month out instead of two months out.  As my eye continued to heal, I saw or imagined all sorts of ominous warning signs--floaters, tiny clear bubbles in my field of vision, occasional sudden, momentary flashes of white light.  The day of my late afternoon appointment late last week was totally anxiety-ridden, as all day I imagined what the doctor would see when he looked into my dilated eye.

However, the examination left me feeling giddy because he said my eye was healing nicely.  Then he asked when I wanted to schedule the third surgery, to get the oil out of my eye.  It would be like the first surgery, he said, where I was sentient during surgery and in great "discomfort" unlike the second surgery when I was out, but he said he would give me more or different drugs to put me in la-la land.  The old good news, bad news routine, although this was obviously great news because the eye was healing and my sight was returning to close or closer to normal vision.

Half full

My first eye surgery was on July 31st, and the second was on August 9th.  The first time I was awake and aware in the OR, by the doctor's design, and although sedated apparently, I suffered a lot of "discomfort" during the procedure as he later termed it.  The next time I was under and it went much better for me because I didn't feel or remember the surgery.  The night following the surgery, the most difficult point in the recovery period, was much better the second time.

Standard procedure for worsening retinal detachment or tears is to replace the vitreous humor with a gas bubble and wait for the lasered retina to heal and the gas bubble to dissipate and sight improves as it heals.  It takes 4 to 6 months to fully heal and don't fly too soon or your eye might burst.  They give you a green wrist tag to wear with this vivid warning.

If this surgery fails, an oil bubble is inserted into the eye which keeps it inflated for 2 to 4 months as the retina heals.  This oil has to be removed with additional surgery which necessitates another two-month recovery period for the eye to heal from that.  Then, yay! it's a permanent fix.

But if the oil ball treatment doesn't work, then as my doctor put it, there's only "one more bullet in the cartridge belt," surgery to band the eye.  I don't know what that procedure is and I shudder at the sound of it.  But I don't believe I'm headed in that direction, despite horror stories I've heard about this surgery being repeated several times that I hope are outliers.

I had two eye surgeries in a week--don't try that at home!

Shockingly, eight days after emergency eye surgery on my "bad eye,"which was definitely rapidly going blind by the hour (three tears in the retina in the superior region), I was undergoing emergency eye surgery for a second time to save either my typical-or-less normal eyesight or to save my dominant eyeball. I was apparently, according to the ophthalmologist, a bad actor who didn't adhere to the severe recovery routine, but remember that he was the surgeon whose operation had failed, and I was discharged from this second surgery within the hour for my most important sense, sight.

My friend Steve drove me to my friend's apartment (all on one floor) (she was away for a family wedding) and I underwent a week of intensive eyeball-saving recovery routine.  Oh yeah, I did.

What had transpired was that I had had the first hopeful surgery to retain my sight, the insertion of a gas bubble into my eye (to keep it inflated) (90 to 95% success rate) (surgeons lie) fail, so now an oil bubble occupied my eye.  It would have to be removed, if the secondary procedure was successful, with a third eye surgery (the gas bubble dissipates, ending the surgical merry-go-round) to remove the oil.

An excruciating week followed wherein my head was flat on a table for 14 hours a day, forehead down.  It sucked hugely, and I went to my one-week-after doctor's appointment with great trepidation, because it seemed that every time I went to Kaiser they slapped me into the OR.

I can fit you in for surgery at noon. It's 11:15 now. Who can come pick you up afterward?

After eight days of lying around miserably following my emergency eye surgery to stave off blindness in my right eye, keeping my head parallel to the floor for as much and as well as I could, I presented myself to the doctor for my one week check-up.  It did not go well.

"Your three tears in the superior region of the retina are still adhering due to the lasering I performed last week but your retina is detaching in the inferior region of your right eye, perhaps due to the inflexible nature of the scarring as the surgery heals which can produce a tension that pulls on the rest of the retina, which is a very delicate covering of the interior of the eye that has the width of only one third of a single layer of an onion skin.  You're going to need immediate additional surgery."

I was shocked and dazed at the doctor's words.  The surgery a week ago had hurt a lot, and the recovery so far had sucked, and it had all apparently been for naught.

"I can fit you in at noon today."  I looked at my watch, it was 11:15 in the morning, my second emergency surgery in eight days was in 45 minutes and I was there alone, as the friend at whose house I had been staying had gone to Florida for a family wedding the night before.

A long week

After my eye operation, I was shut up for a week in a friend's apartment (no stairs) where she made me meals while I lay around trying to keep my head parallel to the floor for fourteen hours a day.  It was exhausting work.  Anyone who has ever had intrusive eye surgery or cared for someone who did knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Apparently I didn't do it well.  Or maybe the operation didn't go well.  It's hard to tell, and it's water under the bridge, it ain't comin' back again.

I listened to The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne on tape.  I have no idea what went on in that book as characters came and went confusingly over the generations but there was at least one very bad man in it, or perhaps several, and justified revenge was exacted.  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which I had read previously a long time ago in ninth grade, went down easier because the action was more straightforward and there was one very good man, or perhaps several, in it although no justice was achieved.

Towards the end of my week in a coma I did take two walks outside for about 20 minutes each, delighting in handling cool packages of cold cuts in a store I stumbled around in for a few minutes.  I tried to use Apple Pay, newly installed in the "wallet" on my new I-phone, to pay for some pasta but I was incapable of successfully negotiating that transaction and paid with cash as the people on line behind me started staring hard at me as the bumbling minute turned into three or four minutes lost forever to all of us.  At the end of the week I went back home for the night, halfway back to the Kaiser Permanente facility in Northern Virginia where the surgery a week before had been performed, so I could present myself the next morning for my one week eye exam.

Nothing like it

After a restless night when I finally fell asleep for a few hours early in the morning, I went back to the doctor the next day. He wanted to check on whether the surgery was taking, and it appeared to be.

The technician ripped the tape off my closed eye, checked its pressure, which was okay, and held up various fingers for me to count.  I could see out of my affected eye, which was encouraging because the afternoon before, when I was wheeled into surgery, about 7/8ths of the vision was occluded in that eye.  Then the doctor came in and explained the surgery which he said had inserted a gas bubble into my eye to replace the vitreous humor and the bubble would dissolve over time as it was replaced by eye fluid during the healing process, and my vision should gradually improve as that occurred.

We discussed my discomfort during surgery the night before.  I don't think he appreciated me as a surgical patient because when he had cut into my eye I was awake and aware and I reacted badly, moving my head in response to the pain ("Lie still!  No talking!"), which I felt palpably, and I moaned softly as he worked, which allayed the incredible anxiety I felt as a burning sliver of metal was jabbed into my eye and thrust about (at least, that's what it felt like).

The doctor was reassuring although he considered the job incomplete because despite repairing the three tears in the retina with his laser, he hadn't fully cemented to his satisfaction the background or "wallpaper" as he called it because I was a moving too much.  But he cited the 90-95% success rate with the procedure as he assured me it was going to be an onerous recovery, and he said he would see me in a week.  Oh what a visit that would turn out to be!

It hurt

By Tuesday morning I already knew I had retinal detachment, as I had consulted Dr. Google. But it was worse, I had three tears in the superior region of the retina which was ruining my vision, probably permanently. There's no telling why it occurred.

I was scheduled for surgery that very afternoon and whisked off to the pre-surgery ward and given that famous surgical open-in-the-back garb in the doctor's hope that a surgical window would open sooner. "Who's going to come pick you up after surgery," I was asked.

I frantically made calls and imposed myself upon a good friend, who left work, stayed with me and took me home afterwards. She is a true friend and if my sight in that eye is saved, she will be responsible for that. I spent a restless night as my eye was taped shut and it hurt.

My recovery instructions were to keep my head parallel to the floor 12-14 hours a day for two weeks, then very sedate physical activity for six weeks, and no strenuous physical activity for four months in the hope the repair would take permanently upon the delicate structure of the eye. Try keeping your head very parallel to the floor for 12-14 hours, then extend that for 13 more straight days.

He'll see you tomorrow

Bad things always seem to happen on weekends when the co-pay is double. A black spot had inexplicably developed in one eye.

I called my health-care provider and was given an appointment with an eye doctor for Wednesday. It didn't hurt, and I pretended that my vision was returning to normal.

On Monday I realized my vision definitely wasn't improving, it was getting worse. I called my health-care service again and said I couldn't wait until Wednesday, that I was losing my sight.

I was given an appointment on the morrow with an ophthalmologist, not an optometrist as formerly scheduled. Most ominously the advice nurse shortly called me back and advised me not to eat or drink anything after midnight.