Yes. Now… My eye inflamation has returned. Damn. Luckily we were in Buenos Aires when it happened, and not in the middle of nowhere far from medical facilities. And luckily it´s just a minor inflamation and they are able to tread it right here and now. Luckily the eye doctors in B.A. are as good as in Holland. Luckily we can still keep travelling, and visit Iguazu (although we know for sure tomorrow afternoon after the next visit to the eye doctor *fingers crossed*) Well… considering all, I guess I still have to call myself lucky! :-)

Either way, lucky or not, haven´t been able to write much here or emails to people. Sorry for that. Hopefully when my eye is better again I will find some more time…

Travel wise all is going well. After Pucon we have travelled through Valdivia & Puerto Varas in Chile, then onto Bariloche in Argentina with a rainy and cloudy lake crossing. Then up to San Rafael, San Luis, Cordoba and finally east to Rosario and Buenos Aires. From there we took the boat to Colonia in Uruguay and the boat to Montevideo where we are now before going back to B.A. tomorrow.

As said, as the eye doctor gives the green light, we will be travelling onwards to Iguazu, and then through Paraguay up to the north tip of Argentina (Salta/Jujuy) and then into Bolivia to meet up with Sal´s sisters in La Paz on the 24th! We will have a busy schedule!

Again, hope everybody is still well! Keep smiling and still missing you all! X

Ps. Will write some more about the travels when my eye is better again!

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With small steps I am learning more and more about my health situation. Last week the first blood tests came back and as the doctors already expected, I have tested positive on HLA-B27. That by itself ain’t a problem, but together with my eye problem (acute anterior uveitis) the presence of HLA-B27 is often associated with an autoimmune disorder. In my case this means it very likely I have a rheumatoid arthritis related problem.

The eye doctor has referred me now to a rheumatologist for further investigation. So it will probably take some extra time before they can draw a conclusion. For now they expect my problem to be related to Bechterew’s disease or with a more funky name: Ankylosing spondylitis; more or less a rheumatic spinal cord problem. But again, it will most likely go with small steps before we get to that conclusion. First I have to wait and see what comes out of the visit to the rheumatologist.

Some good news as well! As my eye inflammation is finally starting to improve! For 2 weeks I had to put one drop of the anti-inflammation medication in my eye each hour, even though the enclosed medication guidelines stated a maximum of 4 drops a day!!! :-) But even being a factor 4 over the maximum amount wasn’t a problem according to my eye doctors. Since this Monday I am allowed to reduce the medication to 8 drops a day! OK, still quite a lot, but I haven’t had to much to cheer about the last weeks, so even the smallest improvement is welcomed with lots of cheers in this camp these days!! :-)

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Even after the nightmare scenario from last week the poison cup didn’t turn out to be empty just yet… At work on Friday my eye situation got worse… So much worse I decided to go back to the hospital Friday afternoon and have it checked out again. Smart move. It got much worse.

The inflammation, number of bad white cells in my eye, had increase dramatically. Making my vision very blurry and in general a huge setback… Got a new special cure with 12 different eye drops to try and reduce the inflammation. Finished off with some drops of cocaine to make my pupil bigger. Yes, cocaine! Quite crazy if you ask me, but as with “normal” cocaine users, the drug makes your pupils bigger, something they were looking for.

After that I had to go back to the hospital on Saturday morning for yet another 12 drops cure, no cocaine this time, but followed with another anti-inflammation injection in my eye… Sadness… although the doctors don’t wanne give any time-estimations in regards to this setback, it’s quite clear to me it will take at least the amount of time it took last time… as that uveitis was much less serious then this one and already took 5 weeks to fully cure… Postponing the trip even more is inevitable again… :-( Sadness…

Still no clue what the cause is for my eye inflammations… no results just yet from the blood tests and lung x-rays… But even so, the doctors are guessing now in the direction of HLA-B27. A medical term for a certain blood condition, and pointing towards problems regarding rheumatoid arthritis…

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Last week there was “The great relief“, to day it turned into a nightmare after all… Yesterday my eye turned all red again, same symptoms as last week, just worse… Kept me awake again last night until Sal brought some words of wisdom and took most of my worries away. To remove even the last little worries, I decided to swing by the hospital eye doctor again, just to make sure I was worrying about nothing again…

But no… this time I was not as lucky. The serious eye inflammation was back… Sadness… Postponing the trip has become inevitable… The inflammation ain’t the biggest problem right now, but apparently there is something more serious wrong with me, causing the eye inflammation. And that is what they will try and find now. They took 6 small tubes of blood for testing, and took x-ray pictures of my lungs for checking.

Scary thing now is that I could have a whole range of serious or less serious conditions… Don’t wanne think about that to much at the moment… the lung x-ray results will be there in 3 days, the blood tests could take “weeks”. Patience seems essential. But my worst feelings are not in any regards to my health. I know I have something, I know they are looking for it, I know they will fix it again. All good. But what does worry me a lot and makes me very sad is the fact we have to postpone the trip.

Even though there ain’t much I can do about it, I do feel quite guilty towards Sal. I know how much we both looked forward to this trip, we planned so much already and Sal took her leave without pay and probably can’t delay that… Many reasons to feel sad…

Oh, if anyone is curious about what an injection into your eye does to your eye… this is how my eye ended up after an injection of anti-inflammation medicine… Yes, not very sexy… :-)

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Pffff… what great relief. Yesterday afternoon my eye started getting more and more red, and with it, I got more and more worried. To the point where I couldn’t handle it anymore, and called the hospital directly. Well… that’s not allowed. So had to go back to my general practitioner (GP) first and get a referral… OK, called the doctors office but the assistant wouldn’t give the “go ahead”… So had to go see the GP in person. Strangely enough, my eye got less and less red the more time I was away from work… so when I finally got to the GP’s office, it was actually feeling quite good. Tiny little bit red, little bit painful, but in general much better then it had been…

But still, I was very worried. Hardly slept the night from Monday to Tuesday, the worrying was keeping me awake, and just didn’t wanne go through that again. All I wanted was for the hospital doctor to have a look, as he would be the only one would could really tell me what the problem was and take my worries away. Well, went to see the GP, got send to the hospital immediately, and half an hour in the emergency room later my worries were gone. Just a minor cornea irritation… Unfortunately for me, with almost the exact same discomforts as with my earlier eye problem. But it’s behind me now. What a relief… Slept like a baby last night! :-)

Plus I can put the focus back to the trip again! Got my new camera yesterday, a lovely IXUS 850 IS. Now just going to invest in an extra battery, so I can’t run out of power on the Inca Trail! As I don’t believe I can send my porter back to charge the battery for me! ;-)

Did get the hotel (Hotel Gomero) booked for Easter Island, or Rapa Nui as the locals seem to call it. Only thing left is a hotel for the first week in Santiago. Well… only thing… that, and a ton of administrative stuff, additional travel gear, sorting travel insurance, etc., etc. … But fortunately nothing that can’t be sorted in time before I leave! :-)

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Oi, long time no write… very long time no write! No, no writers block again, it was just a quite serious eye inflammation followed by a very sweet girlfriend that kept me away from the computer for some time!

First there was the eye inflammation that started early October… I woke up early on a Monday morning, turned on the light and felt a strong pain in my right eye… Strange… The bright light was painful… I ignored it as much as possible, got up, walked into the shower, looked in the mirror and oh my… my eye is very bloodshot! Still I wasn’t to concerned, had a bloodshot eye in Barcelona earlier in the year (without the pain though) so went to work and struggled all day with the painful eye… every time I looked into a light, or outside (early October we still had some quite clear days) there was this stabbing pain in my right eye.

I coped with it for 2 more days… but on Wednesday morning I had enough… I couldn’t handle the pain and annoyens any longer. Because besides the pain I started getting headaches and general pain on the right side of my head… especially on the end of the day it was quite bad. So called my General Practitioner and after explaining my problems I was able to get an appointment just a couple hours later.

Went to the G.P. and his conclusion was very secure… internal eye infection… OK… one hour later I was at the hospital to get the confirmation. My G.P. didn’t have a pupil widening medicine that was required to do a thorough investigation of my eye. The doctor in the hospital reached the conclusion quite quickly: anterior uveitis or iritis. In other words, an inflammation of the iris of the eye.

Definitely not a good thing to have, but having it just once shouldn’t be a problem. But if it returns, it could be much more serious. Normally this eye inflammation occurs with people who have rheumatoid arthritis… or a whole other line of funky diseases… So no reason yet to worry about that, I am just crossing my fingers this was a one time thing. Indeed, was. Yesterday I was officially told I was “cured”! :-)

But before hearing those magical words, there was almost 8 weeks of 2 different eye drops and one night time ointment. Doesn’t sound to bad like this, but unfortunately for me, one of the eye drops was a pupil widening medicine, to make sure the pain would not come back. No pain was nice, but because I had a constantly wide pupil, I couldn’t focus with my right eye… so seen from my right eye the world looked very blurry for 6 long weeks (last 2 weeks I could skip that eye drop). Not painful, but very annoying. Left work every day with a busting headache… the main reason for not putting on the computer after work. I was tired and just wanted to relax and let my headache drift away again…

Then, 2 weeks ago, I finally thought about writing on the blog again, on my birthday even!, but I wasn’t aware of the greatest birthday surprise I would get!

More about that tomorrow! ;-)

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