For two weeks late in March, much pain from the right eye during recovery from prostate surgery and what I assumed was COVID19 (impossible to be tested here). Much pain! Then on April 4 all went brown and here and in SLO a lesion on the retina was assumed to be cancerous. When I walked at night a big scary shape rolled along the wall or if I looked down it rolled ahead of me was big as a tumbleweed. On April 15 at Stanford, the best place on the West Coast, I was told that it was not melanoma. Oh, no--I had chosen a picture at the end of January because I did not want then to be dilated. So there was this comparison: perfect in January, almost February, so NOT melanoma. No, this was a metastasis from elsewhere in the body, presumably a chest riddled with cancer. An assistant reassured us that the removal of the eye might keep the bad left eye from becoming cancerous. The caregiver got us home and bought an eye patch at Rite-Aid on April 23. That one was scratchy, so I ordered 2 on Amazon at 2-day delivery. They were delayed. On April 27 the local oncologist put me on Fluconazole to fight Valley Fever in the body. Eye perhaps independently cancerous. When the good eye patches came I had taken Fluconazone a few days and did not need them. 11 May, many picture of the eye in Santa Maria all of which showed a great shrinkage of the lesion since early April although when I closed the left eye I saw a big watermelon shape on the wall, the lesion projected. The gray-brown film was still there, but I could read and see well enough. Then nothing happened that I could determine, not for several weeks. On June 25 new pictures showed that the lesion had healed still more, and I was seeing a blur on the wall of a human foot, where the arch marked improved vision. Finally on July 4 the blob was down to a human heel, then by July 6 to an oblong lozenge shape and now on July 6 still further reduced, from the watermelon to the foot to the heel to the lozenge and to a teardrop, like a jewel on its side, the pointed end going west, away from the macula. So the Fluconazole was working in the body and decided it could do a little more on the eye. Gray film still there, but once again the right eye sees farther and better than the left, after some shifting back and forth. What will become of the teardrop?
The upshot is that I almost surely get to keep the eye and that it will be as good as it is now or better. What a change from that drive home from Stanford and the 3 weeks afterwards dealing with the diagnosis of cancer.
The upshot is that I almost surely get to keep the eye and that it will be as good as it is now or better. What a change from that drive home from Stanford and the 3 weeks afterwards dealing with the diagnosis of cancer.
