As most of you know, I’m no spring chicken and there just seems to have been one thing after another. I went to the vet this week as my thyroid glands are quite swollen, despite already being on medication. Apparently that can happen with the condition I have. However, our Mistress described my symptoms to our vet and she decided to examine my eyes. Although there are no significant signs of cataracts it seems I have some degree of degeneration of my sight due to age. Our vet thinks it is probably my near vision that is going, whilst I can probably see distant things not too badly. You’ll understand that my eye test isn’t quite as scientific as yours and I don’t read out the letters on the chart. The problem isn’t that I can’t read the letters, it’s just that you can’t always hear clearly what I’m saying. Anyway, I didn’t really react to the vet shining a bright light in either of my eyes, which wasn’t a good sign. It led to our Mistress doing a rather more scientific test by throwing a piece of food for me to catch. I am beside myself, I missed it. I was sort of aware there was something there but then I had to rummage around on the floor to sniff it out. I was mortified. Our Master didn’t believe our Mistress when she came home so he did the same test with a piece of meat and a piece of carrot. I missed them both. My diminishing eyesight was proved beyond all doubt. They are wondering if it has changed suddenly as I started cowering away from hands about a week ago and have been more miserable. Our Mistress is being lovely and we’re trying to understand exactly how bad it is. When she is approaching she now calls to me quietly first, so I know it’s her and don’t need to worry. The hardest part is that I just can’t cope with being in the same room as Aristotle anymore as I am so stressed and worried about what he’s going to do. I’ve asked our Mistress if it carries on getting worse if she’ll be my guide-human. She just cried, but I think that meant yes.
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Getting older’s no joke, Alfie – believe me, I know! Hugs xxx
Hugs and licks to you too. xxx
No, Alfie, aging isn’t easy, but it remains preferable to any alternative I’m aware of. Of all the parts that don’t work so well any more, I miss the eyes the most. Fortunately, we both have caring humans who keep us out of traffic.
That’s true. That definitely helps.