Good quiz, not so good eyes

It was a good quiz last night, even though we didn’t do especially well at it. The questions were entertaining and challenging, but seldom of the dreaded “so what” variety. We’ll miss the next one in April as we’ll be out cruising, even though we’ve had to drastically alter our plans in the light of events today.

Travelling to Derby Royal by bus turned out to be straightforward, though as we caught the 9.25 V3 we actually had to pay a fare for the first leg into Littleover. From there we walked round the corner onto the ring road and caught one of the frequent buses into the hospital. We arrived in very good time, so went for a coffee/hot choc in the cafe.

It still meant that I checked into the clinic with half an hour to spare and (for the very first time ever, I think) was seen bang on time by my new consultant. After that, things were not so good. No problem with Mr Tildsley, who was one of the better ophthalmologists I’ve encountered in 24 years of having my eyes checked, but because of what he found, which was that my pressures are way up, threatening my sight if left like that.

All the long term medication options are now exhausted, so he’s started me on some stuff by mouth that can be used short term but which would have unacceptable side effects if persisted with for more than a few months (acetazolamide for those who know about these things), as well as yet more drops. I’m going back in six weeks to have a visual fields test and a recheck of the pressures, but then will almost certainly have an operation (a trabeculectomy) to one eye the next week.

The other will be done four weeks later, which means no Crick Show for us this year, the first time we’ve missed working on the Braidbar stand since 2004. It’s a blow, but of course going slowly blind would be much worse.

The upside is that if all goes well, I won’t need to use drops any more.

And there’s always the Open Day and Owners’ Weekend to look forward to in September.

So the plan for the next few weeks is to stay here for a week; my sister Jane is visiting from Monday to Wednesday, Sheila has a screening appointment on Thursday morning and then there’s the residential moorings meeting that night.

Then we’ll escape for a few weeks, taking Sanity Again down to Calcutt to get her Hurricane fixed and returning in good time for my fields test and subsequent op. After that, we may well get a brief further trip out before the second op. We’ve not made any plans beyond that except to get up to Poynton in September by hook or by crook.