As we near our second anniversary of our move to Wales I am reminded that June is an anniversary for many important events in our lives. It was around this time 18 years ago that my husband and I first flirted (online in a PC game called Everquest). We had met in person but briefly in a pub with about 30 other gamers. Our first kiss was to follow a few weeks later at the Max Power 2001 show at the NEC. What geeks we are, petrol heads and online gamers. 2 years later we are living together in a converted barn in Hunsdon and I take him for a surprise 30th birthday trip to Euro Disney and I let the cat out of the bag at the eleventh hour (but that’s another story). 2 years later our lives changed literally overnight.
I am incredibly proud of Dave. In our time together he had endured a huge amount of health issues and personal challenges. It is 14 years to the day that both of his retinas detached. The night before we had been out to celebrate his 32nd birthday with a meze and a few ouzos at the local Greek Taverna. He woke up in the morning with blurred vision. We worked together at a software development house in Edgware and I was keen to get to work and assumed that his blurred vision was a hangover that would improve once he had woken up properly. We bundled into his MR2 (I was driving) and enjoyed the sounds of the engine as we thundered through the Hatfield tunnel (A1M). By the time we got to Edgware, his vision had not improved. We called his eye specialist and he immediately invited us to his home in Huntingdon for an emergency appointment. Dave was diagnosed with detached retinas. It was unusual for both to detach at the same time. Dave has not touched ouzo since.
Dave was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 17. In the first few years of our relationship Dave’s sugar control was pretty good but years of injecting insulin and not as good control had likely developed into the first complication known as gastroparesis (damage to nerves within the stomach manifesting as slow digestion leading to vomiting in the mornings). Being ill every morning had put a huge strain on his already delicate diabetic eyes, and proliferative retinopathy was the next complication (diabetics being prone to weak blood vessels in the eye which rupture easily). In my humble opinion, the constant vomiting in the mornings which had gone undiagnosed for 18 months had led to the bleed in one of his eyes. His eye specialist began laser “photocoagulation” to stabilise the condition of his eyes which involved thousands of laser burns to the outer part of the retina responsible for peripheral and night vision. After months of this treatment, the diabetic retinopathy was now stable but weeks later a known complication of this treatment had developed. The much laser-ed retinas had shrunk with scar tissue. Imagine that the retina is a thin piece of cling film with thousands of tiny burns on it, eventually it crumples up and detaches from the cell wall.
The treatment for detached retina is a surgical procedure called a vitrectomy, this involves removing the vitreous (the solution in the middle of the eye) which is replaced with a clear fluid. The surgeon also removes scar tissue from the surface and carries out more laser photocoagulation treatment to seal any holes and the edges of any tears, as well as seal off the blood vessels. Removing the scar tissue from the retina allows it to gradually settle back into its normal position. What the pamphlets don’t tell you is that the peripheral and night vision are compromised and the patient spends weeks sitting forward with his face in a pillow to ease pressure on the eyes. I remember the RNIB lending us a tape cassette player and a series of audio book tape cassettes. Dave would fumble about eyes bandaged (not unlike Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report after his eye surgery) flipping tapes over and then sitting still for hours on end. I don’t think either of us were prepared for the depression and isolation that losing his sight overnight would bring. There were dark times, little outside or emotional support.
Once all his surgery was complicated, 9 months later, Dave got a job working in the next village programming (his first love). He would get the bus everyday and I would meet him with our dog Rosie when he got off the bus in the evenings. It was challenging. The office was in an old listed building with low beams at the perfect height to catch even those with good peripheral and low light vision out. His confidence grew over the years but when the firm moved into London he did not have the confidence for the crowded train commute so he got a job at the Council where I worked. He met Olly who ignited a passion for cycling in him and at our cycling peak we would cycle into London along the River Lea (a 70 mile round trip). Dave even took part in a 24 hour cycling competition with Olly. Unfortunately, despite improving their systems the Council deleted his role after 4 years and instead of being defeatist Dave saw it as a catalyst for living our dream.
So here we are in 2019, having just returned from his annual eye checkup in Cambridge and his eye specialist is very pleased with the health of his eyes which are considered stable. Dave also had a diabetic checkup at our local doctors surgery this week and the nurse is equally pleased with his cholesterol count, blood glucose levels and blood pressure (which has never been so low). No one will ever appreciate how much time and effort Dave puts into his sugar control, what he eats, drinks and exercise. Since we moved to Wales in pursuit of a better life, a healthy work/life balance he has never worked harder. During the winter months he was contracting 4 days a week and working for a London firm 3 days a week and his exercise regime went out the window and his weight went up. Sitting behind a desk 7 days a week will do that. His mate Russ recommended getting a running or cycling desk and in January Dave did just that. And he has lost weight. Not as much as he would have liked but weight loss none the less and coupled with lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure and good sugars, I couldn’t be prouder of him.
We may not be exactly where we want to be in terms of work/life balance but in these past two years Dave has turned his hand to scything, fencing, log splitting with an axe, quad bike riding, willow basketry, wooden spoon carving, leather-working, stockman (including catching a wayward highland cow with a halter and a bucket of food, despatching chickens and raising bottle lambs), drain clearance, ditch reinstatement and landscaping with a digger, growing our own vegetables from seed and curing our own meat. One day he hopes to have a charcuterie dry room and his next project is bees.
