Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore

My ophthalmologist has suspected for several years that I was on my way to glaucoma, but he never could get intra-ocular pressure readings in line with that diagnosis, so he kept having me come in every six months so he could check again.

In 2009 I ran out of time, money, and patience all at the same time and didn’t keep one of those appointments—or the one after it, or the one after that.  And in this way twenty-one months went by.

But M needed to get her eyes checked so we could get her a pair of glasses to replace the four-year-old ones she dropped, or stepped on, or something.  And if I was taking her, I didn’t have any excuse for not getting checked myself, so I made appointments for us both to go last Tuesday.

Tuesday, the doctor finally got the readings he’d been anticipating for so long:  20 mm Hg pressure in the left eye (VERY high normal) and 22 mm Hg in the right (early disease range).  He’s still not proposing to do anything precipitate at this point, just told me to come back in ninety days and we’d check again, to make sure the reading wasn’t an artifact.

While I appreciate his restraint, the little man who lives right above my belly button and gives me gut feelings is saying this wasn’t an artifact, and I do have early glaucoma—and the more so after the doctor told me glaucoma, like prostate cancer, is one of those diseases whose incidence increases sharply with age.  For example, people aged 70 or older are thirteen times more likely to have glaucoma than at 50.  Live long enough, very good odds you’ll get it anyway.

The good part, and I keep reminding myself of this, is that there are lots of good treatment options now—you aren’t sentenced to eventual blindness or Coke-bottle spectacles.  (I remember that in my childhood a local bank president wore such glasses after cataract surgery, and his expression always put me in mind of my great-aunt’s Boston terriers.  Same jowly, bug-eyed look.  The only difference in the two was the bank president didn’t have perpetual sinus problems.)

So I’m consciously working not to flip out about the diagnosis, and not to act like I’m gonna be the next John Milton, with M having to read everything to me.  So if you catch me doing that in a down moment, positive reinforcement would be good.

Instead, I’m having my annual case of winter bronchitis, which I’ve already been to the doctor about.  This is proof that for me, flu shots work.  Last year I got one (for both flus) and sailed right through winter without trouble.  This year, I failed to get one until too late, and here I am in bed again.

You say that everybody you see seems to look like a rabbit, Mrs. Jones.  Fnord.