It's a depressing place to be. Just the way we find being in a hospital is depressing. Hospitals, after all, exist to offer care and cure and comfort and hope for those with failing health, those in a population victim to accidents, those whose chronic conditions grow steadily more grave and of course a preponderance of the elderly. 

We weren't in a hospital setting per se. Mind, it's a clinic, and there's only a marginal purpose, sight and condition difference between the two. And both are inordinately busy places. In a large community of people there will always be the wounded and disabled congregating in the hope that skilled medical-professional assistance will answer to their needs. Where else to go?

 

I had an appointment out of a referral, to an eye clinic. The private clinic my choice over a hospital. The clinic was located, in fact, almost next-door to the largest hospital campus in the city. And often patients are referred by the hospital itself to the clinic we attended early this afternoon. It's a new, modern building, quite unlike the hospital, of elderly construction and beginning to groan at the seams. In fact, somewhat resembling the patients it most often sees.

 

I wanted to avoid the crowded conditions of the hospital eye clinic, the long wait for attention, the much longer wait for a scheduled appointment that would offer me the mundane eye surgery I need; cataract removal. Six years earlier I was at the hospital for cataract surgery on one eye, and the surgical ophthalmologist who  treated me was the very same one I would be seeing at the private eye clinic today; retired from the hospital, but still going strong.

 

 

We had arisen earlier than usual from bed, hurried our breakfast, giving me the opportunity to strip our bed, put on fresh linen, start a laundry, spot-clean two bathrooms, clean up the kitchen, wash the dishes and prepare to leave little Jackie and Jillie at home alone to await our return. It's a spare half-hour drive from our house to downtown Ottawa and the locale of the clinic. We left with too much time to spare thinking traffic might be bad. It wasn't, and we were almost a half-hour early for my appointment.

 

A dreary wait ensued, during which time we witnessed a succession of people entering the facility in wheelchairs, hobbling along with walkers or walking sticks, white-haired elderly, grossly overweight younger people, obese elderly. The staff at the clinic was young, bright, knowledgeable and efficient. Those behind the reception area, those attendants who took complex tests and ensuing eye photographs and the doctor and his assistant, a young female intern. 

 

 

It's the waiting that gets to us. I cannot sit, I stand and wander about, stand and just stand in one spot, waiting, waiting. Too put-out to do  anything else, like sit sensibly the way Irving does, and wait patiently. Patience is not one of my virtues, while it is among Irving's many. Eyedrops are beyond maddening, albeit necessary for a proper examination.

 

The doctor and I exchanged pleasantries, spoke of the last time we'd seen one another; a coincidence. I was startled by how aged he looks now, realizing he must be in his mid-70s. He examined my eyes and reviewed previous interventions and the reason I'd come today. His recommendation was yes, it was obvious I required an advanced cataract to be removed from my right eye. Clarity of vision and colour between the two eyes is quite pronounced.

 

He went further than what I was comfortable with, recommending I get a second opinion from an ophthalmologist specializing in more complex eye issues to examine my left eye to see if the hole in its vitreous could be patched together. A dozen years earlier I'd had a vitrectomy and it hadn't worked. I had no desire to repeat the process. From that examination, came a discussion with a clinic manager who explained all the details to me, including cost. A more technologically advanced lens could be arranged, at double the cost of the one I'd had installed in the left eye, along with a more personal, expedited surgical process. The lens would be custom-made to my eye's specifications.

So that's scheduled for April. Only I've chosen to have one of the younger doctors perform the surgery, a woman. We left with me wearing dark sunglasses. And sunglasses were worn when we went out to the ravine for our daily hike with Jackie and Jillie, once we returned home. When I took the glasses off in the house my eyes were bedazzled by the light; everything had a fine, bright scarlet hue that blazed; more than a little discomfiting.

 

Our hike through the ravine was calming and pleasant. A chance to wind down the tension. Jackie and Jillie were floating on air -- reunited! When we crossed the first bridge and ascended to the forest ridge above we were arrested by the unmistakable repeated call of an owl. And then we realized it was not only a single owl but several, having a conversation with one another. Owls are very territorial and would normally tell other owls to buzz off, but it's possible it was a mature owl and an adolescent; the calls came directly from an area in the spring where we watched a pair of owls nesting and owlets deep in the made-to-order cavity in a crook of a pine tree. Until crows drove them away.