Undesirable new experiences
A few days ago I was out with hellhounds just before twilight and realised that not all the drama of what I was seeing was a result of that long late golden light. Some of it was happening in my eyes.
I have for some years now had what I think are called ophthalmic migraines: you get the weird visual disturbances without the headache.* So while whatever was happening now was a little more intense than usual I didn’t think a whole lot about it. It sparkled and shimmied, it was on the left side, I’ve been here before. Except that it didn’t move slowly across my line of sight and disappear off the opposite periphery. It just sat there. And it didn’t go away. Indeed it invited friends. The whole chorus line from Minnie the Moocher.** But it didn’t hurt and it didn’t seem to effect my actual vision—I’m afraid I’m used to peering through floaters; I’ve always had ’em.*** So I ignored it.
I ignored it for about two days. I was beginning to be vaguely alarmed by its persistence and theatricality but it still didn’t hurt and it still wasn’t affecting my vision. Then last night coming out of Wednesday tower practise† in the dark—whatever it is is much more action-packed and sensational in the dark—I realised that it was (a) worse and (b) not really very much like my ophthalmic migraines. Including the fact that it had now gone on for about three days. I particularly didn’t like the flash of lightning down the left periphery of my left eye every time I blinked.
Oh gods, it’s the brain tumour.
I went home and looked up peripheral flashing lights and small spidery galumphing monsters. And I found detached retinas.†† Aaaaugh. Well, at least it’s not a brain tumour. †††
This morning at 9 a.m. sharp I rang the lady who examines my eyes with an assortment of Minority Report contraptions every other year and asked her what I should do, and she said I should not waste time passing go or collecting $200 but should proceed directly to the eye clinic at the county hospital. And gave me their phone number. Which I duly rang. Now here is our beautiful NHS in action. Please take a memo for Mr Obama: this is not the way you want the shiny new socialised American medical system to run. They asked me my name, address, and date of birth, and discovered that I have not been to the county hospital in the last several years. True. I try to stay out of hospitals.‡ But since I’m not on their recent records they won’t see me. What? I’m not burning taxpayer money by going in for endless scans of dubious efficacy‡‡ . . . and so my local hospital goes into a snit and won’t have me when I have some real symptoms? What? Talk to your GP, they said snootily.
I haven’t been to see ‘my’ GP since I may or may not have broken my hand two years ago‡‡‡. But I rang the surgery and they said oh yes, fine, come over now. So I raced hellhounds once around the churchyard, bundled them protesting back into the kitchen, and pelted for the surgery. Where I saw some nice polite teenager masquerading as a doctor who said that’s ridiculous, on your story alone of course you should go to the eye clinic, and she rang them up . . . and they proceeded to mess her around, which was good for my morale.
The eye clinic deigned to book me in for this afternoon. At this point I did tell Peter because I wanted him to come with me, not for any practical purpose but just to Be There. And because I was an emergency referral they were going to fit me in when they could, and I sat in the waiting room . . . with the first two leads of Kent Treble Bob Minor on the treble-two laid out on my knees.§
I haven’t got a detached retina.§§ Altogether now: W H E W. I have something called Posterior Vitreous Detachment which isn’t nearly as scary although the symptoms are unnervingly similar. It’s one of these getting older things, yatta yatta yatta, and especially common in the short-sighted (yatta etc). It doesn’t go away, but it should, they say ‘settle down’ whatever that means. It’s there or it isn’t, isn’t it? And it’s there. And while it could lead to retinal tearing, there’s no reason it should, and the doc§§§ says there’s absolutely no sign of any such progression.
Peter and I came home again and collapsed in our various ways. Mine included ringing the first two leads of Kent Treble Bob on the one-two with Niall and Colin this evening. I was not the only one who went occasionally astray. But our relative success has only led Niall to order me to memorise the next lead for next week: I’m the only one of the three of us who has to. Ah well.
And may I please sleep better tonight. Now that it’s Posterior Vitreous Detachment and not a brain tumour. Or even a detached retina. I was so not looking forward to the laser surgery.
* * *
*First one I had was in Manchester at the Pre Raphaelite Women exhibit. Bet you didn’t know there were any Pre Raphaelite women painters. You only know about the guys, right? And maybe that Lizzie Siddal may have had her life shortened by floating in an icy-cold bath while John Everett Millais painted his Ophelia. Women were models. Stoic models. Anyway. I had my first ophthalmic migraine while walking around the show: I discovered that I couldn’t see through the middle of my field of vision, and the missing middle was surrounded by flashing glittering faceted something, like a czarina’s necklace spread out for a museum show with a spotlight on it. I’d had a really spectacular migraine headache the first time I ever had a sip of coffee^, and I’d had a spell of migraines a couple of years during finals in college. So I knew what was coming. I was doubly frelled: I couldn’t see what we had driven 200 miles^^ to see, and furthermore I was about to be laid out with extreme depersonning pain 200 miles from home in a small shared B&B room.
And then the czarina’s necklace corkscrewed slowly across my sight, left to right and . . . went away. Took about half an hour. And nothing else happened. So I went back and looked at the show all over again, including all the middles. These headache-free migraines are much to be preferred.
^ I spent decades living in fear of secret coffee flavouring—a lot of baked goods out there have just enough coffee in them to enhance the flavour without revealing itself as coffee. You know all those stories about the hero (or heroine) Facing Their Worst Fear? You can’t get much narrative tension out of the heroine throwing down her weapons and running away from a large bowl of coffee ice cream.
^^ And it’s a bad 200 miles, between here and Manchester
** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaZOXF83zBg And I’m afraid I’ll take Cab Calloway to Michael Jackson any time.
*** The short-sighted are prone to them, and they get worse as you get older. I am very short-sighted. My ordinary vision is not unlike being trapped in an aviary with a lot of small alarmed birds.
† We didn’t even ring Stedman. Wasted evening.
†† Which the short-sighted are also more susceptible to. The first useful web site I found added, with its clear description of the symptoms of a detached retina, the bracing advice that you need to get yourself to the eye doc within twenty four hours of the first manifestation. Oh. Great. —I can’t now find that site again. I’m a trifle inclined to feel that this is fomenting riot, not to mention panic and terror^, and irresponsible. I get it that you need to be seen as fast as possible but to imply that if it’s over twenty four hours you’ve had it is neither accurate nor friendly. The only reasons I didn’t lock up the hellhounds and drive myself over to A&E is, first, I was well over the twenty-four hours and I might as well wait another six, and second that I’d had a friend years ago who had a detached retina that they did not deal with immediately but waited to see what it would do. But I did not have a great night last night.
^ You will have noticed I did not write about this last night. I didn’t tell Peter either. Why give him an unnecessary bad night? I can have one for both of us. I may have whimpered to the hellhounds a little.
††† Probably.
‡ Well, I’ve visited a couple of convalescent friends. And am totally creeped out by the sixty-three gates you have to go through with anti-MRSA dry hand washes at every checkpoint. I understand the need for some barrier but I like soap and water and fresh air myself and do wonder if the bunker mentality is the best choice.
‡‡ I have some genes with large question marks over their heads and some fairly dramatic manifestations of my very own original invention in the exciting last fifty-seven years and when I was first over here and made the mistake of telling my first surgery something of my history their eyes started to glisten and they signed me for gods know what all. I went along with this for a while and then got tired of the whole piece of malfunctioning meat thing—actually most of me works pretty well, thanks—and said bye-bye.
‡‡‡ Which long-term blog readers will remember: the day after Dentist from R’yleh sedated me with a vile turquoise mixture I fell down and didn’t snatch my hand out of the way fast enough. Being still half sedated.
§ I was longing for someone to ask me what that was and what I was doing. No one did. But Niall’s latest madness is that learning to ring Kent both in the tower and on handbells at the same time is a really good way of learning it really well. He wants me to believe that this is a better way than the mere slapdash tower practise that he and Colin had to settle for.
§§ The eye doc was very young and very cute. Just by the way. I felt like saying, you know, there’s a nice young teenager pretending to be a doctor you might like to meet. . . .
§§§ Cute. Young. This is one of those strange advantages of elderly haghood that I am guessing no one who isn’t there yet is going to believe, but I like being out of the cute race. I like admiring cute young things like admiring works of art. Very pleasing. Nothing to do with me. I can get on with memorising Kent Treble Bob.
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