Yesterday, June 3rd, would have been my father’s ninetieth birthday. An important milestone for the family, of course, but one which brought into sharp relief the fact that we are not here for eternity, but have a limited time in which to do the things we are able to on this earth. Not only that, but the tools which we have to do this with are not without their ups and downs, physical and mental.
Last week, a couple of days after my fundraising barbecue mentioned in the last posting, I suddenly lost focus in my left eye. Considering I have a strabismus, and my brain cuts out as it were the signals from my right eye (I normally only see out of my left eye and in fact I doubt that I’ve ever had binocular vision) this was obviously an extraordinarily serious turn of events.
My ever reliable GP diagnosed what had happened very quickly, and sent me off to the Sydney Eye Hospital as a matter of urgency. I saw them on Wednesday afternoon, came back the next day to the Sydney Retina Centre and by lunchtime had had a significant retinal detachment in the eye repaired by the best surgeon in the business. I then had to spend 22 out of each 24 hour period for the next five days looking down since the detachment was at the bottom of the eye. I can assure you sleeping on my stomach with a special attachment designed to keep my head pointing down when I sleep is not something I found easy at all.
My eye will not return to anything near normalcy for the next few weeks but it is improving and the portents are good at this stage that longer term my vision will be OK. At the moment, my brain has done the right thing and I’m now looking at the world through my right eye … a bit dizzying at the moment but it will get better.
I’ve been very lucky. For a pianist, ears, eyes and fingers are the lifeblood of the experience. Without treatment I would have quickly lost vision from the eye and eventually the eye itself. It struck home just how fragile the human body can be, but also just how advanced medicine can be. The operation I had would have been much more complex even only a few years ago. Delicate it certainly was, but this operation now has a 98% success rate.
How it will affect my piano playing I don’t know. This afternoon, I will try to find out.