Seeing Fear, Part II - A Ray of Hope

I took my parents to my dad’s follow up appointment today. The place felt like a factory. First, we sat in the waiting room for what seemed like an eternity. Then, they called him in. I waited while my mother went in with him. The nurse removed the bandage. He can see light but he still cannot see shapes. My mother called me to sit with them in the hallway while they waited to speak with the doctor. We waited for what seemed like another eternity (although I did thumb through a good article in this month’s New Yorker about the similarities between the government’s role in helping the farming industry and what it might be able to do for healthcare.. but I digress).

All we saw were doctors and nurses walking up and down and hallway, not making eye contact, which made even my father chuckle. My father was nervous. My mother was driving him crazy with a ton of questions. I just kept flipping through the magazine trying to focus on one article at a time. At last, we heard, “Leon Sherman.”

We all piled into the very small examination room where the doctor looked into his eye again and then made his next assessment. He used a model, which was helpful. He said that my father’s eye was filled with pus. The doctor was able to remove about 95% of it. The other 5% is sitting too close to the retina, and there was too much of a risk to try to go there. It’s a matter of blasting it out with antibiotics and letting the retina heal. This happens one in every 1,000 cases (sorry, I said 10,000 in my prior post).

The bad news is that he cannot see out of that eye now. The good news is that there is a chance he will be able to see should the infection clear and the retina heal. That might take another two weeks. In the meantime, my father must take three different kinds of drops several times per day to help fight this. He must also wear an eye shield at night and sun glasses that practically wrap around his head when he goes out during the day. He hates these glasses. He says they make him look old.
To answer the question of whether or not he will play tennis again? I am betting on yes. Should he lose sight in that eye, he will also be able to drive. But let’s take it one step at a time.

He has another appointment next Tuesday. As long as the eye doesn’t get worse or hurt, he very well might be on the road to recovery.

Stay tuned… and thank you for your well wishes. They mean a lot.