The Retina

OK, so I got an appointment on Tuesday with a retina specialist in Portland. I drove over Route 26 without chains or studded tires. There was a warning sign that traction devices were required. I drove on anyway and got to my appointment on time.

After the preliminary exam someone mentioned injecting a dye. I feared they were going to inject directly into my eye, but they put it in the back of my hand. They took all these photographs of both of my retinas in intervals that showed the blood as it pulsed through my eyes. They also did this strange thing that showed my retina in cross section. This was really cool because it showed my right retina as a line with a dip in the center, however it showed my left retina as being flat with a convex bulge in the center and a smaller bulge on the side.

As it turned out the condition I have has a long name that takes several pages to write out in full, but basically what it is, it blisters within the retina. A retina is a membrane that is paper thin and I developed two pockets of fluid inside this membrane.

One of the cool outcomes of this is that though the sight in the left eye is blurry, when I look at words on a page or at a photograph they somehow appear to become three dimensional.

The cause is stress. I always thought I handled stress well, but I guess not. We just had a major stress reliever in our lives. You may recall that back in May or June I wrote about our income being cut in half and all the belt tightening I was going to have to do. We burned through our savings to keep the mortgage paid and even got help from a family member for the past two months. However, we just got the news last week that our claims were settled with the Long Term Disability company (my wife is disabled) and she will once again qualify for full benefits and we will be paid back for the duration where they weren’t paying us. It was good news, we get to keep the farm and be able to keep the animals and even get a few extra cable channels.

I suspect it was actually the relief of the stress that caused my eye trouble. The surgeon told me that it should get better on its own, but I have to return for a re-evaluation is six weeks.

Thank you, one and all for your concern. I try not to share bad news here. You all probably have enough bad news in your lives where you don’t need me dumping my baggage on you, but I feel somewhat obligated when something of this magnitude comes about. I communicate with many of you more than I communicate with people face to face. Thanks for listening and pass me some valium.