31/03/2023
For those who don’t know (we didn’t) the symbol bellow is the symbol for visual impairment.
We don’t often share too much about ourselves on here but we’ve been thinking maybe we should share a little more….
You might already know, in March 2020 Robyn and I were about to open a coffee shop in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. Luckily when life tipped on its head and the world went into lockdown we hadn’t yet signed our lease agreement on our shop, so like most people, we went into lockdown.
Yoga, meditation 🧘♂️ cold showers 🚿 sour dough bread, wooden spoon whittling (no joke) and government mandated exercise ensued in earnest.
… after a move up north from London to Liverpool, out of lockdown came Jostle - the baking half of our future coffee shop.
As Jostle ticked along through second and third lockdowns and into summer 2021, I started to notice that my vision was not as sharp as normal and thought I needed to get my eyes checked.
I went for an eye test in September and in December 2021 I went back to the optician, I thought my eyesight was worse. My optician checked my eyes and said that I had cataracts. - He referred me to a private clinic to have surgery on the NHS.
When I visited the cataract clinic they said that I did have signs of cataracts but not significant enough to operate on, and told me to get my glasses prescription updated. I was due to collect new glasses from my optician the following day, they didn’t help.
My dad recommended that I have a private consultation with an eye surgeon who had operated on a family friend. At this appointment the surgeon told me I did have cataracts and recommended having surgery with the NHS.
Since January 2022 I have been under the care of a local hospital. In March I saw a doctor followed by a consultant in May. Both didn’t believe that cataracts were causing my vision problems.
I was referred for a scan on my cornea and to trial hard contact lenses, neither of these helped my vision.
In April 2022 our son Ernie was born! 🥳
In August 2022 I had to stop driving - I could not read a number plate at 20 meters.
Also in August we had to make the very difficult decision to walk away form another coffee shop lease negotiation, my vision had become too poor for it to be sensible to set up a shop until I knew what was happening with my eyes.
In November 2022 the NHS consultant said again that he did not believe cataracts was the problem. He gave cataract surgery a 30% chance of success (very bad odds!) He referred me for 3 more tests, on my retina (one where they injected me with fluorescent yellow dye 😬)
In December I was registered as visually impaired.
Also the results from the tests came back within normal limits. The consultant now said that he could offer cataract surgery. I said to the consultant that the last time I had spoken to him, he had given surgery a 30% chance of success. - He now said that he didn’t think he could put percentages on the chances of success. I asked him if he was confident that surgery would work but he couldn’t answer the question. He said that surgery was “all they had to offer” me.
At this point Robyn suggested asking to be referred to another hospital for another opinion.
Over the past few months my vision has deteriorated further. We’ve kept Jostle going but I am technically “not fit for work.” Social services have visited us to see what help they can offer me. We have stayed positive and always known that we would try to make the best of whatever happens.
But the world has been slipping into a blur. I can’t see Robyn’s and Ernie’s faces at the breakfast table. I can’t see the faces of friends and family. Ernie has just started crawling and crawls off into a blur. I haven’t been able to see people’s faces at Jostle markets. Finding food in the supermarket has become very hard. Opening our coffee shop seems very difficult. Travelling the world or going on holiday seems very challenging.
We have been facing up to living life as a family with me being partially sighted, with my vision deteriorating, not knowing if I am going blind. I have been trying to adapt to not being able to see Ernie grow up or not knowing for how long I will be able to see Robyn…
Yesterday I had my appointment with a consultant surgeon at a specialist eye hospital. In the waiting area, Robyn and I looked around at patients with canes and reading their phones with magnifying glasses.
After some scans and checks I met with the consultant. I waited for him to tell me that he didn’t know what the problem was and that they will do another series of tests. He didn’t. He is confident that I have cataracts and that they are the cause of my vision problems. He is going to operate on me in the next few months and says the chances of success are 97%.
Afterwards I should have basically normal vision.
We feel like we have been given our lives back.
