Patch

I can't see it I say as Mr H repeats: it's on the left near the bottom

No I still can't see anything I moan - all I can see is black.

Let me look again it's probably moved... no it's still there he says with furrowed brows as he adjusts our birdwatching scope at a Dorset bird reserve in the summer of 2016...you can even see the snipe's stripes . try using your other eye...

Back home I booked an opticians appointment and after testing then retesting my eyes and the promise of a warning letter to my GP, I left the shop with a pounding heart. 

The following couple of weeks I squinted in and out of hospital doors to attend appointment after appointment and was soon lying flat in the noisy hoop of an MRI. With my brain tumour history; blurred vision could not be assumed to be just that; blurred and cloudy vision.

But at the eye hospital, my pupils were dilated with dripping drops and peering inside them the eye hospital consultant said; you've got rapidly progressing posterior capsular cataracts. This type of cataract is usually caused by steroids...I had steroids during my brain tumour and breast cancer treatments I say with a shoulder shrug and wry smile - no one warned me I mutter...

I stumble through the weeks and months with my unfocused camera lens vision. People give me puzzled looks as I develop a habit of flirty winking! It's hard to resist a constant check to see which eye is worse, which one is more out of focus... it's like looking through a peasouper fog! 

I grumble to Mr H that I can't see the pavement cracks and potholes swim in and out of focus, adding layers of risk to my wobbly walking. I grumble that I can't read books anymore as the words hide behind cloud covered pages. I grumble when, in the dark,  I crash into our gates as I walk down the drive and at the dazzling super moon of light around every headlight...

This year large print letters plopped onto my mat and after two further trips through hospital doors, my name is, at last, added to the cataract surgery waiting list. Two weeks and a phone call later, I have a date for the following Wednesday, and it's not with Mr H, wink wink! 

I have to tape an eye patch over my eye at night for two weeks after the surgery I read out loud to Mr H. Will you still love me as I get more and more like long John silver? He laughs; of course it's the person not the patch that I love!

Back home last night in time for fish and chips

You don't realise how important your vision is until it starts to fail

So relish the colours of summer flowers

delight in the blueness of the sky

take pleasure in swishing grass swaying

and be thankful for the gift of sight