Thinking of death after the recent mis-diagnosis. Here, what it took to bury Grandma Ewart in 1804

Good thing I saved my masks from 1955.

Having left the Pines Warehouse for

Dying Tuberculars and visited friends in Singer, Louisiana, I was ready to drive across the country to find better treatment.

Both still seared by 2 week sentence of blindness and death. "Just" Valley Fever.

The right eye is seeing very well but still through a now-thin layer of brown. Day 19 of Fluconazole.
It always seems strange to me that you can't see the brown film.

At Santa Maria many photos of eyes and fast back-tracking

The caregiver has been awaking at 4 in a panic about what we would learn today from the local ocular oncologist.  I had decided it was not cancer but part of the Valley Fever. On Day 15 of Fluconazole I am still getting gradually better, seeing great in the distance but aware of a grayish or brownish film right up close. The film is thinning every day. The thing that worried me was that the great blob of fluid, while shrinking, might leave a circular or oblong ridge  behind it, on the retina, like trash around a pond. Well, the oncologist was downright cheery as he saw how the infection had shrunk. I explained that it will be another week or more before I can see an infectious disease doctor about Valley Fever (he is busy with COVID19), and he agrees that in the meantime I keep taking Dr. L's magic pills and forget we were told in Stanford that I was riddled with cancer. So it's a new field. There is danger everywhere outside the house, and the beach may be wholly closed, but I will find more out about living with VF, soon.  I wonder how far I can walk if I try to walk. 

The thing is, we lived for a good many days with a sentence of blindness and probable death. You don't just say, Oh that was wrong and now I can forget that time. In the academic world I knew many with great reputations who were as incompetent . . . . .

Parker quoted by editor of Dutton Bible, Book of Exodus

Day 12 of Fluconazole's Battle Against What They Called Eye CancerCa

We are still reeling from the absolutely authoritative diagnosis by the best ocular oncologist on the West Coast that my right eye was cancerous not from something treatable like Melanoma but from Something Worse that metastasized from within my cancer-ridden body. That 4-hour drive home I was a passenger only. Then the driver-caregiver wrangled a PET scan and a CAT scan here and the local doctor confirmed the diagnosis but wanted to be absolutely sure by ruling out other possibilities. The lab results showed Valley Fever (later confirmed by a lung biopsy) and the doctor immediately put me on Fluconazole. Getting seen by an infectious disease doctor is proving a little hard in this time of COVID19, so the treatment is not being managed right now. New lab tests yesterday, and eye pictures Monday, so we will know more. Meanwhile, I have gone from having an unusable right eye, all brown, to having almost normal sight. I will never forget the suggestion that it could be removed to prevent further spread. Cover my bad left eye now, I see a brown tinge on the right side of my face--like a tan, not a black walnut stain, not a brown blue. The color of the screen I am typing on looks a little gray--but shiny white with my left eye. But the fact is that I have gone from expecting the loss of my good eye (always the best) to regaining it. I don't think there is danger of losing it again.  The great mushroom shaped black blot that I saw for weeks has thinned and the lower half seems to have faded away. We will know more next week about any residual damage from the incursion of fluid and whatever else into my retina. This is the first half of day 12, only. What happy news will Day 13 bring? Now, I am realizing that Valley Fever is truly not a get out of jail free card. But better than cancer, better than cancer.

After learning that you don't have cancer in the body and probably not in the eye

you may take a few days to realize that you are seriously sick with this other thing, Valley Fever.