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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Life and Family

I've been away up north in the UP visiting family for the past 10 days or so and although I've been reading your blogs, I haven't been commenting much. I took my iPad with me, but stayed with family and didn't really take the time.

Just before I left to go north, I went to the ophthalmologist because I'd been experiencing some fuzziness in my only sighted eye. He found that I am in the early stages of age-related macular degeneration. The doctor thinks the vision problems that I presented with are another iteration of my "aura without migraine" history. I was so shocked at the diagnosis that I didn't ask questions. I have since done much research and found that you don't usually go blind from this condition, but you do become legally blind. This means no driving, difficulty reading, inability to recognize faces, and problems seeing the world in color. The "good" news I found in the literature is that for most people who are diagnosed, their other eye takes on much of the sight and can be really helpful. However, I am only sighted in the affected eye. The other eye suffers from a combination of amblyopia (lazy eye) and farsightedness and is not correctable. I am determined not to let this diagnosis reduce the quality of my life until there is a noticeable difference in my vision.

I drove to St. Ignace to spend two nights with my Mom, who also suffers from macular degeneration (she is 87 and is coping quite well). We played a lot of cribbage, watched the Tigers baseball games, and visited my sister Mags who has MS and is wasting away (I am blown away by her positive attitude and feel I have much to learn from her) and my sister, Molly.


I then drove to Marquette to visit my sister, Anne, who used to live just two hours away and is now about 7 hours north. We had a great visit. I love her condo and the community where she lives. One of the days I was with her, we drove to Michigamee to visit my blog friend, Joan, of The Retirement Chronicles. What a great visit that was. We clicked right away. I can't wait to go visit her again.


I have just a little bit of art to share with you and then I have to jump on my horse and get to my daughter's house to get her third grader to school and bring Miss 4 out here. I am getting my hair cut and my first pedicure of the season this morning, so Papa will take Miss 4 to afternoon preschool later.












I will be visiting you later today and hope to really catch up with you. Until then, I hope you are doing well and that you are finding time for yourself and your creativity.


xoxo

11 comments:

  1. I am so glad you're back - you've been missed! Even folks at the exercise class have been asking where you are. I like what you've been doing art-wise. You book is coming along nicely. I can't wait to get together .... even if it's just by phone! hugs, nancy

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  2. for sure your positive attitude will get you through much...

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  3. I was wondering where you were! What a wonderful 10 days you had flitting around from place to place to visit your family. Hang in there with the eye problems. Isn't macular degeration very slow in developing? I'm keeping you in my prayers and thoughts. Your new page are lovely and very different from some of your other work. Your lines are so much bolder than they were before. Love them!

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  4. Great ti see a post and hurrah for your positive attitude. Thinking of you - especially playing cribbage, which I love to do too! Lovely art work too.

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  5. love your pages and your positive attitude. you are an inspiration. you're in my thoughts and prayers.

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  6. Glad to hear about your family visit up north...I thought perhaps you were having computer connection problems. Very sorry to hear about your diagnosis of MD...My aunt had this for many years, and although she couldn't drive, she could still "see" well enough to do many things she'd always enjoyed. She lived a very long life and was busy enjoying herself and family right up to entering hospice. I'm sending you positive vibes, and wishing you a very slow progression of the condition.

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  7. Vicki, I don't know how you fit so many things into your life!

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  8. I had wondered where you were as well. Glad you had a nice visit with your family.

    As for the diagnosis, good for you for not getting caught up in "what if"s or worry about the future. Much better to enjoy the now and let the future take care of itself.

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  9. So sorry regarding the problems with your eyes. I wish you the best with healthwise. Thanks for posting--your tickseed over the text page is very appealing.

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  10. Thanks for the welcome back! And I'm glad to see you posting again too! Love the sketchbook spread with the pitcher and fruit/portrait. That looks great opened up like that. So sorry to hear of your eye problems! I worry about that myself since my eyes are already so bad. I love the positive attitude you have though! It sounds like you had a wonderful ten days!

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  11. Nice drawings. Oh that is not good news to hear. I have one good eye because the other got pretty damaged with a detached retina. Now I have glaucome which isn't responding well to the medicine. I feel I'm too young for this - don't you? I hope yours takes more than forever to get so bad you can't see. Hopefully they'll come up with new meds to help.

    Sounds like you had a super visit with your family.

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