Blue-Footed Musings

I had an appointment with my eye doctor on Wednesday. The good news is that my right eye hasn’t changed much since my last visit, so it is “stable,” as doctors like to say. The bad news is that the split in my left eye is now encroaching on the macula. Having retinoschisis bothered me a lot less when I thought it was only threatening my vision in one eye. Now both eyes are at risk. The eye drops that I’ve been using are the only existing treatment (outside of surgery, which is not an option unless the condition gets really, really bad), but the medication is only effective in about 65% of cases. The doctor upped my dosage to three drops per day. Aside from that, there’s nothing I can do but wait and hope.

I still don’t know for certain that I have the degenerative form of the condition rather than the inherited form. Though the inherited form is rare in women, it’s not unheard of. Normally I would have seen my doctor at her office nearby, but I traveled to her more distant office on Wednesday specifically so that I could get the genetic testing done, only to find out that the testing person wasn’t there that day. Grr. I’m going to have to pay for the test out of pocket (thanks, crappy health insurance!), and I considered not even bothering with it, because the results will have no bearing on the treatment. But, if the condition is hereditary, it could affect my children, so I really should find out. I scheduled a new testing appointment for August.

I remember learning in school that taste buds can sense sweet, salty, sour, and bitter flavors, and that the sense of smell is responsible for almost everything else we taste. That was always hard to believe, until I experienced it myself. When Covid took my sense of smell, suddenly all the aromatics in food and drink disappeared. Tea tasted like water. Coffee tasted like bitter water. Most food was almost tasteless unless there was a lot of salt and/or sugar in it. And I was surprised to find that sweet and salty–so tasty in combination with other flavors–weren’t so great by themselves.

The loss of the sense of smell is called anosmia. Most people who get anosmia from Covid recover their sense of smell within a few weeks or months. Mine seems to be coming back, but inconsistently. I hope it will return in full soon. Food and drink are joyless without it.

It’s Covid. 🙁

Livia came down sick over the weekend. Today the rest of us woke up feeling sick. Later we got an e-mail from the school to inform us that one of Livia’s classmates had tested positive for Covid. So, odds are that what we all have is Covid. Testing tomorrow.