Two months ago, I wrote a column relating how my “dry” macular degeneration had, well, degenerated. Specifically, how it had become “wet” in the left eye, meaning that the gradual age-related deterioration of the macula—the part of the retina responsible for sharp, central vision—had destabilized, threatening to cause permanent scarring.
The only antidote: monthly injections into the eyeball that, the doctor assured me, would halt—or at least slow—my encroaching partial blindness.
Which was a lot to take in for somebody with a lifelong aversion to any foreign object, sharp or otherwise, near the surface of his eye. “Here’s the question,” I wondered in that column. “Which scares me more, that sharp hovering needle or being blind in one eye? Hey, I hear there are some really cool-looking eyepatches on the market. Then all I’ll need is a sword.”
But the injection proved less intrusive than I’d feared. Showing up at an eye-care center in Palm Desert, California, near where I was spending the summer, the procedure was a quick in-and-out. After examining my eyes and dowsing them with anesthesia, the doctor sat me down in a chair, said, “look up and to the right,” and, wham, it was over in a second with just a tiny pinch of pressure. And after a day or two of mild irritation, artistically illustrated by floating bubbles, my eye was back to being—if I can’t say as good as new, let’s just say as good as used.
The second injection was about the same.
Ahh, but then I returned to my home in the Philippines, where the third injection was a new experience altogether. Which brings us to my point: the dramatic difference in treatment between here and there.
The initial challenge, of course, was figuring out where to get the treatment at all. After asking around, especially among friends in the medical field, we were elated to find a specialist right here in our provincial hometown. And so we made an appointment. Which presented the next challenge: there are no appointments in the Philippines. Thus, showing up at 8 a.m., we waited for three hours before finally seeing the doctor.
He’s a good man. Who, I’m certain, is more than competent in every respect. But he also practices in the Philippines where, to put it politely, the culture is different. Which is why it was only mildly shocking to learn that my injection would be achieved not in a chair at the doctor’s office, but in a fully equipped hospital operating room on a bed, wearing a gown, cap, and mask.
“We need the operating room for the microscope,” the doctor explained, referring to a gigantic monstrosity of an instrument hovering above the eyeball in question.
From the patient’s point of so-called view, the only thing visible is a white blinding light where everything else used to be. “Ok, now, look down,” my tormenter instructed after swabbing my eyes with the required anesthesia, plus various cleaning agents, pupil dilaters, and antibiotics.
Oh yes, not to mention clamping them open with an ocular speculum that, for eyeball paranoiacs like me, offers a unique form of torture.
When the final pinch came, there was a small stinging prick at the top of my eyeball as a young Filipino nurse firmly gripped my trembling hand. The final cost: 12,000 pesos for the doctor plus 7,300 for the hospital. Or, including medicine, about 20,000 pesos ($325US); quite a bit more than in America, where Medicare covers everything.
Twenty-four hours later, the tiny puncture wound felt like an annoying hair follicle scratching my eye. Which, thankfully, disappeared in a couple of days.
I’m still leaning towards eyeball injections rather than fashionable eye patches, though considerably less fervently than I was before. But here’s the good news: in four weeks, my new doctor assures me, should no further degeneration be apparent, he will delay future injections until it is.
I’m praying for divine intervention.
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David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist and author with homes in Southern California and Northern Mindanao. His latest book, Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise, was a finalist in this year’s Next Generation Indie Book Awards. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
