Yesterday truly was a day of “Joan On The Road”! 230 miles, 2 doctor appointments and dinner out …from Hemet to Oceanside to Long Beach and home!
Jim woke up with a painful right eye and no vision in that eye. That’s the one with macular degeneration. So immediately he thinks “the eye is gone”…something blew out! Big decision. Should we go to the scheduled chemo appointment or head for the retinal specialist? One is in Oceanside, other is in Long Beach. Hours and miles apart. He decided to do the chemo, called the eye doc and couldn’t get in until Wednesday (today). Besides, we figured we’d never make it to Long Beach in time.
Off to Oceanside we go. Alas, when they checked his blood the hemoglobin was too low so he just got Vit. C and a blood booster. That took about 3 hours. We were done at 1 pm and just on the off chance called the eye doc and they said they would squeeze us in at 3 pm. Renee had already checked for us…75 miles to Long Beach on the 5 and 405. Now if you know the area you know that it could be done in an hour or so if the traffic gods cooperated! Otherwise if could take forever 🙂
We said we’d be there and headed up the 5 freeway. I was doing all the driving and I was flying along. 75 was not fast enough for all the people zooming past me! Somewhere North of Costa Mesa traffic came to a dead stop. I thought to myself, “We’ll never make it. We’ll never get home!” We sat there for 10 minutes and suddenly started to move and then it was free flowing. Who knows what the issue was?
All this time, all this driving I am so stressed I can hardly talk. My mind is abuzz with what the future holds. Why do I go there???
The doctor took Jim right in and after about an hour of dilation and testing determined that he has an eye infection!! Yippee!! That’s nothing compared to retinal damage. Jim got injections of antibiotics (right in the eye; I could not watch) and we go back for a check up tomorrow. They took a sample of fluid from his eye and one of the techs volunteered to run it over to a lab. I guess when the girl asked me if we could take it to the lab and were we prepared to spend the night in Long Beach she could tell by my face that I was on the brink of falling apart!
By now it’s 4:30 and we had not eaten since breakfast so we headed home and stopped at our favorite Olive Garden. Hot tea, appetizer, spaghetti with meatballs, chicken Marsala, salad…good to go! Relaxed and much less stressed.
And at the end of the day, walking out of Olive Garden, a well fed, well coifed, well dressed young man asked us if we could give him money to feed his little son or at least give him our leftover dinner. What? I wanted to shout at him, “Look! I’m 90 miles from home, it’s late, we have cancer, my husband is blind in one eye, and you want my help?? ” But it’s really not in my soul to do that. I told him NO and he grumbled and we walked on.
7 pm and the traffic is so much better. We headed home with no delays. I think I fell asleep the minute I sat down in my recliner. What a day!
