Shell-shocked

In the last blog Janita and I went to the emergency room of a hospital. We got to see an eye doctor close to 11pm, a young man in his early thirties. he did extensive tests on her eye pressure, and looked inside of Janitas' eye thoroughly for quite a bit of time. At the end , what he saw was that the jelly matter inside the eye is detaching from the retina, but is not tearing it. This is why she is having all these symptoms of floating circles, golden and silver, and those flashes in her vision along with moving black bars. He asked her to come back in 6 weeks for a follow up. If something would change she was instructed to go immediately to the eye doctor on call. She said she felt both, relieved and sad. It was better to know what was happening and to hear that there are experiments with humans using stem cells to regenerate optic nerves that may give a hope for her right eye, the one that can only see about 10% of the field of vision. It may also give hope for her retina in the left eye, if it continues detaching. So, this hope that there may be a solution one day, gave her some relief. On the other hand, the very thought of being blind made her feel sad. Too many questions about the new challenges that this would represent for both. She would need to learn Braille, and to function without vision. I would need to change my heart and my whole set of values and assumptions about what is marriage and what is care-giving.

No one has ever told me that life would be without pain. No one promised me that. So I don't have anyone to whom I can direct my anger and disappointment. The only option I have is to acknowledge it and to look for ways of changing it into a constructive energy in my day to day life before it turns into bitterness, cynicism and despair. Where are thou my brother? Where are thou my God?

An adjective that comes to mind, that I would like to hang around my neck is: shell-shocked.

FC