MY EYE!

We just came from the doctor. JoAnn was having what we thought were migraine attacks that were causing her to see flashes of light from time to time. She had that happen again a couple of days ago. Then yesterday she started seeing a shadow off to one side in her right eye. That alarmed us, so today we made an appointment with an Ophthalmologist who came highly recommended by Sister Defranchi (the family we stayed with when we first got here) who had a cataract removed by him a couple of years ago.

He examined JoAnn’s eyes and found a slight tear in her retina. The retina did not become detached; it just has a small tear in it. We have a lot of confidence in this doctor. She is scheduled to have it repaired by laser surgery procedure this coming Tuesday, January 29, 2008, at 8:45 am. It isn’t serious because we caught it in time. If we had let it go, it could have led to a detached retina which could have lead to partial loss of sight or even blindness in that eye. We just thank Heavenly Father for giving us the warning in time to have it fixed.

UPDATE:

Well, JoAnn's little escapade with the eye doctor turned out well. It was definitely an experience. Something like being in the midst of a battle in a Star Wars movie. Zap, zap, zap, zap - about 100 times. The Internet article we checked out beforehand said there would be one or two zaps. We guess the doctor just wanted to be sure that the tear was really secure. The procedure was done in his office - down in the dungeon - a small dark room downstairs. It didn't take long at all for the procedure and was relatively painless. Everything was finished around noon and we were back at McDonald's that afternoon doing indexing.

All in all, we are very blessed to have caught it early and had it taken care of so competently. Thank you all for all your prayers and well wishes. It should only take a few days to get back to full speed and then a check up in a month.

The best thing is that here in France any medical procedures are so much cheaper than in the US. The whole laser surgery cost about $140, including 3 office visits and a prescription for eye drops. Not bad.