[acprinter]

I woke up this morning and I was partially blind in one eye. The ophthalmologist when I called asked me how fast I could get there, well it was pretty darn quick. The diagnosis was detached retina; the problem is I live in a small community without the facility's to fix this, so it was a 50 mile trip to the nearest retinal specialist.

After the surgery it was a slow trip back home; at the end of the surgery a gas is injected into the eye creating a bubble that in a sense acts as a band-aid to hold the repair in place till healing occurs. The problem is that the surgery was done at 300 ft. elevation and I live at 1600 ft elevation; gas expands at higher elevation. The doctor tried to compensate for the higher elevation but told me to drive home (my wife drove) slowly and when my eye become painful or blurry to stop and go back down a a ways. The trip home took 2 hours, but I am home and my kind wife has posted this message.

So for the immediate future I will be listening to audio books on my ipod and spending very little time if any with the computer or reading. To those of you who have experienced a torn retina I was lucky and the bubble in my eye is almost straight at the top meaning I do not have to sit at a strange angle for the next couple of weeks.