Happy Ending to My Story

After a long trip to get to Johannesburg and  a comedy of errors in getting safely ensconced in a guest house I have good news to report.  I saw the eye doctor this morning and he concurred with the Gambian doctor's diagnosis.  However unlike the Gambian eye doctor he did not think a 3 month wait would improve things.  Apparently the eye capsule thickens and gets opaque which causes the blurriness.  This is actually pretty normal with people who have had cataract surgery.  I had my cataract surgery on the blurry eye about 2 years ago which he said was a much longer time than most people take before they need laser treatment.  Anyway he did a laser treatment on both eyes and my left eye is better than it has been for quite awhile.  My right eye is very clear too.  I am sitting in the living room of the guest house in which I am staying, watching television and typing this on their wireless network and drinking a beer that the owner brought me.  I am happy to report that I can read what I am typing with my left eye without glasses even though it is pretty small type.  (good thing it is only 1 beer)  The treatment was very fast and was painless.

I imagine that I will head back to The Gambia as soon as they make travel arrangements.  Once I get back, hopefully  I will find a place to live and move permanently out of the Peace Corps transit house.  A crop of new volunteers is moving in at the end of the month and I hope to be out of there before they come.  Shall we say that not everyone who passes through the transit house has the same standards of cleanliness and some have standards much worse than mine and I do not consider mine very high.

I will miss the South African climate.  The temperatures are moderate and the humidity low.  I even had to sleep under two blankets last night.  It felt wonderful.  I met a few other medical evacuees at the Peace Corps office this morning.  One of them was walking very slowly with a cane.  I asked her what her injury was (assuming it was an injury) and she said that they do not not know.  She just has lost all of her strength and energy.  Their latest theory is an insect bite she had.  They are hoping that will be the right diagnosis because it is easily curable.  Makes me glad my issue was so easy to fix and glad that it is not 20 years ago because it probably would not have been so simple then.