Gratitude

Gratitude

I have to offer gratitude to my higher power and my doctors for saving the vision in my left eye yesterday.

On Thursday, I started having big problems seeing with my left eye. There was all sorts of “junk” floating in my eye, along with searing flashes of white light and all overlaid with opaque black specks.

Bummer.

I had heard of “floaters” and thought I was just having my first bout with them. But this was REALLY bad.

What was happening was called a “posterior vitreous detachment (PVD) with retinal tears.” I had two rips in my retina which were trying to play “connect the dots.” The holes in my retina were hemorrhaging which was allowing blood to contaminate the clear fluid inside my eye.

Now I’ve discovered that this problem runs in my family.

This condition could have lead to a complete retinal detachment and the loss of sight in my eye. Even without a detachment, the blood leaking into my eye could have greatly decreased the sight from my eye.

I called my friend Dr. D. Wayne Bell who explained what was happening to me and told me that I had to get it repaired IMMEDIATELY.

Doc Bell is from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada and he's about as crazy about music as I am . (You should see HIS music collection!) He’s familiar with all of the incredible music ans from Cape Breton, like the Barra MacNeills, the Rankins, the MacIssacs and the MacMasters.

He was really concerned about my eyes because of my diabetes. (Diabetics face problems our eyes and our feet. And, well, everything else.)

So the first thing yesterday morning, I called my crack ophthalmologist Dr. Reed Roth, who told me to get to his office ASAP. I hustled up to his office and they were waiting for me when I got there.

He examined my eye and spotted the two rips in my retina. Knucklehead that I am, I wanted to postpone getting the repair done until after my show on Monday --but he told me in no uncertain terms that was NOT an option.

And Dr. Reed, thank you for that. As my family says, I can be a “ real butt hole” at times, but he got it through my thick skull that I had to take action at once.

He called Dr. David Kozy at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Toledo who saw me right away. Dr. Kozy used a laser to blast away at the damage in my retina to close the openings and basically “tack weld” my eye back together so that my retina didn’t detach any further. This also stopped the blood from leaking into my eye.

Vitreous fluid is clear, blood is not. So when there is “blood in your eye”, your vision is very cloudy.

This morning, my vision is already a lot clearer. As the retina heals and the blood and floaters clears out of my vitreous fluid, things will only improve. I still have some fuzziness and some floaters, but even if it doesn’t get any better, this is OK...

considering the alternative!