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 had been told to start using before I went in for 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 prayed 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 begin, at about 2 p.m. 

At 1 p.m. Walt and I 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 a toll booth on the A10 autoroute that links Paris to Bordeaux, passing just north of Blois and Amboise. We exited the circle and drove on two what we thought was the right access road 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 warning us of that. 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, get on the autoroute, and hope there would be an exit on the other side of Blois where we could get off the high-speed road and and return to the clinic.

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 drive 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 this all to whoever answered the phone and try to find a solution. I wasn't optimistic about being able to change the time of my appointment on 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 again wait four months to get another one. But it didn't come to that. 

When we got to the clinic, 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 countryside for nearly two hours and navigating our 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." For about half an hour she came to the clinic's waiting room every few minutes 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 had been told I wouldn't allowed to drive myself home after the treatment.

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