Blog 6.1 - The One I Didn't Want to Write

12th March 2024

Today is the day that we were scheduled to travel to Portsmouth, and thence, via the ferry, to Santander, Spain.

However, it ain't happening.

The ferry was booked and paid for, but we're not on it.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the eye clinic at Leicester Royal Infirmary, and received a somewhat life-changing diagnosis of Advanced Glaucoma in both eyes.

Shoite.

In case you don't know, glaucoma is a disease which causes the fluid within the eye to fail to drain correctly. That doesn't sound, on the face of it, to be too much of an issue - but far from it.

The fluid is there to keep the eyeball in the correct shape. If it fails to drain at the correct rate, pressure builds up within the eye, and places pressure on the optic nerve. This then causes irreparable damage to the nerve and gradually destroy peripheral vision, and if allowed to advance will cause tunnel vision, and ultimately, potentially, blindness.

My condition turns out to be pretty poor, and being in both eyes, necessitates reporting it to the DVLA.

I had an assessment this morning by a DVLA-appointed opthalmic optician to determine whether I will be allowed to keep my licence or not - which is quite scary to be honest. Results awaited...

Obviously this has meant remaining in the UK, otherwise without an approved assessment the licence would be revoked anyway...

I remain hopeful that the disease has not progressed to the point of it being a game-changer (and so far my peripheral vision remains quite good, as far as I can determine) but obviously I can't be totally sure.

Whatever happens, this has knocked the stuffing out of me somewhat. I'm not used to having health issues (apart from raised blood pressure - which I am assured by my specialist, the wonderful Joris Dehaene, is not at all related to glaucoma), so, at the age of 70 it is a bit of a bitch.

The other thing, and what I had noticed and had caused me to seek a diagnosis in the first place, is noticeably 'milky' sight in part of the right eye's field of vision. It turns out that I also have cataracts in both eyes.

Bugger.

Cataracts, while being annoying, are usually totally fixable, so I'm not unduly concerned on that score, even if Joris won't schedule surgery until the eye pressure issue is stabilised - which, with twice-daily application of drops for the rest of my life - ugh - should happen. Fingers crossed anyway.

So, what now?

Well, after a lot of soul-searching, regrettably we've decided to sell the van.

This, of course, as detailed elsewhere in these blogs, follows much work on it, making it capable of being used off-grid, and also completion of other improvements. It may seem extreme, and I'm sure that people will be thinking, "well, what about Admin? Surely she could take over the driving role?"

It crossed our minds of course, but, being pragmatic we came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn't work.

She's never driven anything larger than a Toyota Avensis, and certainly nothing like a 3.5 tonne widened and lengthened (and heightened) van. Furthermore she's never driven on the other side of the road, and is, more importantly, nervous about doing long distances day after day given the state of her knees (new ones beckon - when they finally agree she's old enough).

As soon as we've cleaned and cleared everything, it'll be on the market.

Footnote: Rather than lose our expensive crossing, we've booked an apartment on the north-western Spanish coast in September, so at least there's that to look forward to. Hopefully I'll still have a licence so we can share the driving, but if not, M feels she'll be ok for this trip. There'll be no real necessity to put major miles in, but at least we'll have the car to bimble around in.

And we should be doing plenty of UK camping during the summer, so not all is lost.