The adventure part

The other day, when I wrote about the drastic improvement in my visual acuity following the laser treatment I had in Blois on Monday, I mentioned there was an adventure involved. Or two actually.

The first was not all that exciting. On Sunday morning, I realized that I had forgotten that I needed to go to the pharmacy in Saint-Aignan to buy the eye drops I needed to start using before I had the laser treatment in Blois. The pharmacy is not open on Sunday, of course. I'd have to go there on Monday morning before we drove up to Blois. I hoped they would have the drops in stock, because there was no time to wait for them to be ordered and delivered.

I was lucky, because they did have the drops available. Whew! I was supposed to start using them an hour before the laser treatment was to start, at about 2 p.m. 

At about 1 p.m. we arrived at the traffic circle that is only a couple of hundred meters from the opthalmology clinic. It's also just a few hundred meters from the toll booth of the A10 autoroute that links Paris to Bordeaux, passing just north of Blois and Amboise. We exited the circle on what we thought was the right access for the clinic. It turned out not to be the right road.

Instead, it was a one-way access road to the autoroute. There were no signs. We stopped in front of the machine where you get your ticket for the autoroute, and waited a couple of minutes, not sure what to do. We hoped an agent would come out of the booth and help us. Cars were backing up behind us, so we were stuck. No agent came to see what the problem was. Pretty soon we realized that we were going to have to take a ticket and get on the autoroute, hope there would be an exit for the other side of Blois where we could get off the high-speed road and and get off the road there.

Unfortunately there was no second Blois exit. We had to drive all the way to Amboise, some 30 miles distant. There we found an exit. But we still had to back track for another 30 miles to get back to Blois and then drive all the way across the city to get to where the clinic was located.

I got on the phone and called the clinic, hoping to explain to whoever answered the phone and find a solution. I wasn't optimistic about changing the time of my appointment at such short notice. The young woman who answered the phone asked if I would be about 30 minutes late. If so the doctor would wait for me. That was a relief. I was really afraid I might have to cancel the appointment and wait another four months to get another one. But I finally didn't. 

When we finally got there, the doctor's assistant asked me if I had used all the eye drops I had been told to use starting an hour before the laser treatment. I had to tell her no, I hadn't, considering how we had been lost in the French country side for nearly two hours and navigating the return to Blois required all my attention.

Instead of saying I'd have to return another day for the laser treatment, the woman said "Well let's get started, then," she said. For about half an hour she came to the clinic's waiting room and squirted a few more drops in my eyes. 

Only then did I get the laser treatment. Walt and the dog had to hang around in the parking lot out front for at least an hour. I wasn't allowed to drive myself home after the treatment.

The treatment itself didn't require any surgery. I consisted of the doctor shining bright laser light in front of my eyes for a few minutes. It was my own private light show for five minutes or less. Then it was over. Go home and enjoy the ride and the scenery, the doctor said. He said my vision would be better (back to normal) in a matter of a couple of hours. And he was right.

Ocular mission accomplished

Yesterday Walt and Tasha drove me up to Blois, our département's capital city — it takes close to an hour to get there by car — for my appointment to have the laser treatment needed for my eyes — after my four-month wait. That part of our trip went without a hitch, but not without incidents. More about that later. For now, let me just say that it was an adventure overall.

This morning my eyesight is amazing. I really don't need new glasses, at least for now. My eyes are seeing everything in clear-and-sharp mode. I hope it stays like this for years. More tomorrow.

 

One week from today...

 .... my previously sharp eyesight should be restored. I hope the doctor is right about that. It  has been four months since I started seeking help from the eye doctors up in Blois. The laser treatment  to improve my current eyesight is scheduled for next Monday afternoon (Sept 28.)

I m really sick of squinting and trying to use a magnifying glass to read my books and and the normal-sized text on my laptop PC's screen.

The doctor says my eyes will return to the way they were six months ago just a few hours after the laser zaps them. We shall see... clearly or not. I'll let you know on Tuesday.

Progress, I think

Yesterday at noontime I had the scheduled meeting with my French ophtalmologist over in Montrichard, 10 miles downriver from Saint-Aignan. It went well from most points of view. Walt and Tasha drove me over there just in case the doctor told me I needed a driver to take me back home (dilated eyes and all...).

The doctor was genuinely shocked when he examined my eyes by shining some kind of bright light into my eyeballs. He said that a "secondary cataract" had formed in my left eye (which before the cataract surgery had always been my strong eye; my right eye had always been blurry, since childhood). A secondary cataract was also starting to form in my right eyeball, he said. Both of the secondary cataracts needed to be removed he said.

A secondary cataract is like a cloud or veil over the artificial lens implant that needs to be removed. That veil over the implant that he had put in my eyeball two years ago to replace the natural lens, which was removed. He said the removal of the secondary cataract(s) would be done later, using a laser. The laser work has been scheduled for September 28 up in Blois, he said. You will need somebody to drive you home from Blois, he added. Blois is 25 or 30 miles north of Saint-Aignan, on the Loire River.

I had suspected that the laser treatment would be done in Blois,if at all, and not in Montrichard, which is a village more than a town. Blois is what I'd call  a big town, and it has a big hospital. Driving there and back is less convenient for us, but not prohibitively so. (I happen to know that local taxi companies charge 150 euros round trip to take me from our house to Blois and back. Given those prices, Walt will just have to do the driving again.

I'll have one more appointment with the doctor in Montrichard in October as a follow-up to all of the above.

The main thing about all this is that I can stop worrying, for now, that my eyesight may never be right again. The doctor says it will. Time will tell. Maybe I can relax again, at least until further developments reveal themselves.