Let’s fight ‘the silent thief’! (1)
Last week, I read with great interest a news item that I stumbled across on the Yahoo Internet site about a little girl whose sight was saved purely by chance because of an Internet action by her mother.
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As reported by ‘Yahoo Shine’ on April 3, Tara Taylor, a mother in Tennessee, USA, probably saved the vision of her 3-year old daughter, Rylee, simply by posting her photo on Facebook. When two observant friends saw the picture and noticed a strange glow in little Rylee’s left eye, they suggested to Ms Taylor that she should get her daughter’s eyes checked by a doctor as they had seen Rylee’s left eye “glowing”.
Ms Taylor took her daughter to a doctor and it was discovered that her friends’ instincts had been right. The eye examination revealed that Rylee had ‘Coats disease’, described as a rare retinal disorder.
The report explained: “Coats disease, named for the Scottish ophthalmologist George Coats, who first identified it ...can cause vision loss, typically in one eye, if not caught early enough ....In those lucky cases of early detection, such as Rylee’s, treatments including laser therapy can save or restore a person’s eyesight.”
Little Rylee’s story demonstrates how sometimes a mundane occurrence at the right time, and maybe at the right place, can turn out to have a major impact on a person’s life.
The story struck a chord with me because I, too, was the beneficiary of a lucky happenstance many years ago.
My experience had nothing to do with the Internet; actually it was before the Information and Communications Technology advances we now take so much for granted. It was just a visiting journalist’s response to an unusual announcement in a shop window in a strange country, but that notice led to a critical discovery for me.
I remember that my life-changing experience happened on a cold Monday morning in April, 1980 in Copenhagen, Denmark. I had arrived there a couple of days earlier on an assignment to do a story for a magazine published in Paris where I was living for a year with a group of other journalists.
That morning, not wanting to risk being late for my first interview appointment, I had set off from my hotel in good time. However, I realised on arrival at the interview address that I had about an hour to kill because it was closer to the hotel than I had thought.
It was while I was walking about, window-shopping in the nearby pedestrian street to while away the time and also to keep warm, that I saw in a shop window featuring a display of spectacles a sign in English that said: “Come in for a free eye test!”
Normally I am not an impulsive person, but on that occasion something pushed me to respond to the invitation – and after all, the eye test was being offered free of charge! Besides, I suppose that the journalist in me wanted to find out whether it was a trick or a genuinely free offer.
For, the few months I had spent in my temporary home made me doubt there were any ‘freebies’ in Europe! During our time in Paris, the one thing my colleagues and I had come to appreciate was the thrifty ways of the French. Further, even in those days they were well ahead in the global energy conservation campaign.
After all, they’re the people credited with inventing what is called “la minuterie”, a ‘time switch timer’ or device that ensures that people save electricity compulsorily.
For example, the small electric cookers in the communal kitchen at the university residence where some of us lived, had timers and would switch off, frustratingly, every now and then in the middle of cooking. They would then have to be switched on again a number of times before the food was cooked. Needless to say, this made cooking even the simplest of dishes extremely tedious – and annoying.
Similarly, in the bathroom, the hot water would switch off automatically after a few minutes when one was having a shower – usually just when one had soap in the eyes. This meant that with one’s eyes closed one would have to fumble for the switch to turn the water back on.
And at night if you were going up, or coming down, the stairs, there was always a great risk of missing a step and tumbling down to break one’s neck. The staircase lights would go off every few seconds and one would have to feel the walls for the next switch to turn the lights back on.
All of that was part of the admirable French dedication to energy saving which, in our irritation, we joked was also evidence of their miserliness.
So, against that backdrop, seeing in another European country a notice offering a free specialist service to anybody and every passer-by, I was doubly intrigued. Could it be true? I opened the door of the reception and went in to find out, also wondering if I would get another feature story out of the experience.
Fortunately for me there was no one else there to take up the offer, and I soon found myself seated in front of a very efficient-looking and friendly woman, evidently an optician. She not only spoke good English, but also assured me that the test was truly gratis.
She took my particulars and then did the test. At a point I noticed that she seemed concerned and was frowning; and she repeated some of the procedures. Afterwards, she had a discussion with me during which she found out that I would be returning to Paris to stay a few months more before returning to my country.
Then she told me the findings of the test: there was “a problem” with my left eye and so I should have my eyes checked as soon as possible on my return to Paris. I thanked her profusely and left for my interview appointment which fortunately I made just in time.
Worried about what she had told me, no sooner had I arrived in Paris than I got my doctor to book me an appointment with an eye clinic. Tests there confirmed what the Copenhagen optician had told me; there was indeed a disturbing development concerning my eye: glaucoma, “the silent thief of sight.”
To be continued.