The Amsler chart...

...put through the KaleidaCam app and through Snapseed...

Just got back from dentist. Now have a numb mouth. I am minus a tooth. I have to wait for it to heal, and then in a couple of weeks go back to get a mould made so to have an extra tooth added to my falsies. So that to look forward to. But the painful pressure of that sheared off tooth has now gone.

Thank you for all your good wishes.

I also had an optician’s yearly appointment, which was just before I went to the Dentist, they are next door to each other. It was a different optometrist, a man I have never seen before, but he was very thorough and very informative.

It is still sinking in what he found and told me. The way he did the eye testing and completely different to how I have had it before. I found it it bewildering. It was completely different testing apparatus and screens.

He also did different eye examinations (or they were the same done in a different way?).

He explained the the surface of my left eye was damaged which was why it felt and was drier. So it was imperative I use all the eyedrops I need, even oftener than every hour if needed. But both eyes need frequent eye drops.

He also explained that I should be keeping the eye drops and ointments in the fridge, because the eye itself is like a hot plate (was his analogy) and especially with this hot weather the eyedrops have sizzled away almost immediately they touch the eye. If they are cold from the fridge, they last longer in the eye and are more soothing because they last longer.

Then he asked me if I knew I had damage at the back of my left eye. I said no. So he brought up photographs from 2016 to the present. Before 2016 my left eye was fine. But from 2016 onwards the damage was there and has got worse with each photograph. There was one black spot that got bigger, and now it has been joined by a second black spot. This is all in the left eye. When were you diagnosed with diabetes he asked? 2015 I told him. This is diabetes related, the optometrist told me.

I did have a bit of a problem reading his eye tests. Then he did something different. And shone an LED light on them. Instantly I can read them. You need LED desk lamps, and one by your bedside he tells me. And tells me how to position the lights for reading, writing, and painting. He tells me I can get them from Argos, (and my car car happens to be parked outside Argos, but they were out of stock).

He tells me I do have diabetic retinopathy in both eyes. But that could come and go. However, and this was the bombshell, you have the cataracts developing in your left eye, he told me. The eye hospital told me I didn’t have cataracts at all 3 months ago, I told him. You have now in your left eye, he said. We will keep a close eye on this.

But first I have to get something he said. He went out of the room and tore a sheet of paper off a pad. It has a grid of squares with a black dot in the middle. And is called an Amsler chart. If when I look at this, the grid lines are not straight, and are distorted, wavy, or broken, then I have to get straight back to the optometrist. Because this is serious he said.

Do you have wraparound UV sunglasses, he asked. I said yes. So he told me I should always wear them, every time I went outside. I said I did when it was sunny, but he said, no you need to wear them all the time when you are outside.

I was reeling when I came out of the optometrist’s. I am lying on the bed in my potting shed feeing sad, and now nursing a bit of headache with the dentist’s injections. And trying to drink from a bottle of water squirting it to the back of my mouth. The dentist said no food today, and no liquids must touch or swill round the the tooth hole...

Not quite what I expected from today.