“Ooof.”
He actually said “ooof.”
When the doctor looked at my scan, he actually said “ooof.”
Like a comic strip character taking a body blow, my doctor looked at my retinal scan and actually said “ooof.”
I was the one taking the gut punch, but I don’t blame him for that “ooof.” The image on the screen showed a familiar bubble of fluid between the layers of cells in my retina. I would have said “ooof” too. I said “shit” instead.
I knew it was coming. My central serous retinopathy (CSR) has recurred often enough that I literally know what it looks like. The fuzzy vision, the near blindness in low light, the color shifts, the need to magnify type to read it. For a while, I hoped my eye trouble was just another manifestation of the swelling in other parts of my body. But as my visual acuity dropped along with the swelling, I knew what was going on. (See “Dense Fog Warning, Part 1.”) I knew my retina was leaking again.
When the rest of my family saw numbers in the middle of this (unaltered) image of a dashboard thermometer in a somewhat cooler clime, when they saw the “88” quite clearly and I saw nothing, I knew I needed to call for the appointment. “Dr. Ooof” had been my retina doctor for about two years. He successfully treated my most recent CSR event with photodynamic laser therapy (PDT).
With PDT, a dye injected into your vein first puddles around the leaks in your retina. That same dye, when then shot with a “cold” laser, transforms into a drug that seals off the leaks. Bones McCoy stuff if you ask me.
PDT wasn’t around when I had my first bout with CSR 20-some years ago. My eye doctor used a then-state-of-the-art “hot” laser to zap the leaks. My left eye had one extremely troublesome leak. It was very close to the fovea, that damnably small part of the retina that does all of the in-focus work. We waited six months in hopes that the fluid would resorb on its own. Warned that laser therapy that near the fovea likely would cause permanent vision problems down the line, I consented to the treatment. I was young. I had no real concept of chronic disease. Plus, I would always have my right eye. No problem. The fluid went away. The vision in my left eye recovered.
Then it slowly dissipated as the laser scar destroyed many of the active cells in my fovea. Today my left eye can see well enough to help me drive safely, but it’s otherwise pretty useless. Can’t read. Can’t make out any detail. Thank goodness for my right eye.
So with no real help available from its port-side partner, righty has been doing all the real work these days: reading, taking photos, editing photos, seeing the delicious details in my granddaughter’s beautiful face. But now, my right eye is under attack too.
Can I recover my sight in my one “good” eye? I won’t know for a while. First, we wait a month to see if any of the fluid resorbs on its own. If it doesn’t, we plan the PDT laser shots. Then we wait again to see if it works and how well it works. The literature says PDT restores visual acuity in 60 to 90 percent of the cases. It also says each recurrence of the disease increases the odds that it won’t respond to the treatment. I’m rolling the dice with fewer ways to hit 7 or 11 each time.
What if I bust? I have a pit in my stomach like a craps shooter who just might lose his house to the house.
I can function (with the help of pocket flashlights, screen enlargers, and big type) at a basic level. But living in this haze is depressing. Squinting, pushing my face up to the monitor, asking others to read those damnably tiny labels or instructions – they will make this new disability constantly exasperating and frustrating.
No focus, no photos. Autofocus lenses still need to know what to shoot. Relying on those focus buttons, I took about 120 shots of guitarist Van Walks at a show a few weeks ago. Maybe 20 were usable. Only one was in focus and interesting. And I sure don’t trust my eyes to color balance and find the right image contrast in editing. Losing my camera will be a big-time gut-punch.
I know. I need to put those what-ifs aside. Change those “wills” to “mights.” Keep the horse behind the cart. Stumble through the next few months and hope for the best.
But still, “oooooof.”