When retinas detach

Arequipa, Peru

One of Josh’s retinas detached last week (a move I wish I could make more easily sometimes). While sometimes detachment is good - detaching from outcomes, from achievements, from whatever is outside of you - detachment in life doesn’t require surgery. Retinas do.

On Monday night we stayed at a hostel in the little town of Chivay on an overnight trip to the Colca Canyon. He came from putting the boys to bed (we got two adjacent hotel rooms) and said his vision went black, as if a black curtain was covering half of his left eye. Sounds bad, but what does it mean? No pain, so that’s good, yet for an hour or so we questioned how critical it was he get it looked at. Not only are we in a country foreign to us, we are hours outside the city. What do we do?

At 9pm Josh texted Raul, our tour guide, who helped arrange a taxi to take Josh first thing in the morning on the 3 1/2 drive back Arequipa and straight to an eye specialist. We know nothing about retinas, how or why they detach, what it takes to fix it, or even if you can. Even more unnerving, we don’t know what we don’t know.

They say he needs surgery. Do we look for a second opinion? Do we fly to Lima? Or fly back to the U.S.? How much will it cost? What is the prognosis? Time is critical, and flying anywhere to initiate another consultation and diagnosis we thought would take too long. We/he opted to stay in Arequipa and have the surgery.