When I lost the vision in my left eye I was still able to go to work but it meant I had a long ride on the bus. My shift was four and a half hours but what was a twenty-minute drive in the car took an hour and a half on the bus and that was just one way. As I worked the afternoon shift this meant that during winter I was travelling home in the dark. Changing buses and walking home from the bus stop was a challenge. I had never been good in the dark but this was just plain scary. There were nights I arrived at the bus interchange to wait for my connecting bus and it was too hard. I found the taxi rank and caught a taxi home. Peter was able to pick me up most of the time and a few months into this saga I changed to a morning shift where Peter was able to drive me to work and I would arrive home mid-afternoon.
My job was as a tour guide at one of the major tourism institutions in Canberra and one of my duties was to meet and greet the visitors. When I was experiencing the double vision it was a bit scary as it was hard to tell how many people were coming through the door until they came closer. When a hundred schoolkids came in, it looked like two hundred! Making eye contact with my visitors was a bit difficult, as I couldn’t see them until they were very close to me. I became very good at recognising my colleague’s body shape or the way they walked, so that, much to their surprise, I could always greet them by name and when we had presentations at our team meetings I was reminded of my school days. To see what was going on, there I was sitting in the front row, right in front of the teacher – oops, presenter.
Some of the jobs at work were beyond me, working on the computer was not an option and as some of the areas in the museum were quite dark, these became no go zones for me as I struggled to see. My colleagues were very supportive but they also made sure I didn’t lose my sense of humour and we laughed a lot!
I was continually seeing the eye specialist who was assuring me all was going well and my eye was healing. The healing didn’t mean my sight was any better and I was still fairly incapacitated. As time went on the number of eyedrops I had to use increased. Trips to the eye specialist and all the eyedrops were costing us a fortune.
I continued to go to work and we caught buses everywhere and the girls and Peter had to put up with my mood swings, which he assured me were getting worse. They were getting worse for a reason and to top off not being able to see very well I was menopausal and had some problems that meant a trip to hospital to have a hysterectomy! Peter was worried about leaving me in hospital when I couldn’t see very well and was going to have a major operation. I was very lucky and had a great roommate who helped me out whenever I needed a spare pair of eyes. My recovery was interesting as I spent a number of weeks at home before I could go anywhere.
We also went on a holiday back to Perth to visit family and friends. Our last trip had been a few years before and we thought that with the move and Peter’s change of job coming up it would be a good idea to go then as we didn’t know when we would be in a position to go again. This was a very scary trip for me. Our family and friends were aware that I had a problem with my eyes but were not prepared for how bad it actually was. I was pretty good at bluffing and not letting on how bad it was but in some situations it was blindingly obvious! I wasn’t driving at all and as we were spending a lot of time in the south west of Western Australia Peter had a lot of driving to do. We ate out in cafes and restaurants and reading menus was a problem. Peter and the girls had to show me where the toilets were and often take me to the door, as I wasn’t able to read the signs. If we were out at night, Peter or the girls had to hold on to me and tell me where I was stepping and how many steps there were and more importantly where the puddles were! One night we were walking to the restaurant at our motel and Peter forgot to tell me about the puddle. Luckily the restaurant was quiet so I took off my shoes and socks and dried them by the fire while we ate.
Little did I know that a few months later life was to change again.
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