Cusco Cyclops

Ok, a bit more serious than I thought...see the red text at the bottom of the blog...fun, fun!

Yes, Cyclops is my name, except I am not a super-hero with an eye in the middle of my head. No, I have one working eye at present and am managing to scare some of the little children in Cusco with the local population starting at me as I walk (or try to walk without tripping over something) along the pavements here.  My head is covered with a huge, white, eye bandage, that conceals over one quarter of the right side of my face.

Further to my latest blog a couple of days ago about me complaining about the altitude affecting my eye I have managed to probably have one of the most expensive weekends in Cusco (in Cusquenañ terms) along with visiting a few clinics and hospitals in the area.

Since last Tuesday in classes my right eye hasn´t been functioning properly so I´d had enough by Friday evening and went into the pharmacy and asked for some cream for my right eye. The lady, who I think was just some sort of assistant, or maybe someone just off the street, saw the shelf for eye cream and lifted the first box she saw. Obviously everything was in Spanish and I was having trouble reading the instructions, so I placed some drops of cream into my eye.

Went to bed early that night, to rest my eye. Never slept a wink, walked the floors as my eye, by this stage was killing me. I was thinking that maybe some flesh eating bug had got into my eye and was eating away at it or had picked up some disease out here (the things you think of late at night when you can´t sleep).

After a couple of hours sleep, the brighness woke me up. Looked in mirror, eye was bulging and swollen. Put some more cream into eye. I went to the local market (as the cleaners were in the house) to get out of the way. It was way too bright and could hardly see 2 ft in front of me. Horti, one of the women who works in the school, who is like a mum to everyone (so sweet) called round and took me to the doctors. The first clinic wasn´t too far from where I lived. It was an eye clinic that looked really dodgy with an old room out the back and a dangerous looking staircase that led to other rooms. Thankfully the doctor wasn´t there until later.

We scarpered and found another clinic. This one was a bit better and more upmarket and they worked alongside the Swiss doctors. Anything Swiss is good - like those Swiss watches and chocolate you can´t beat them - and there´s Roger Federer too.  Off I went in the little ´Peruvian/Swiss ambulance´ to the nearest 'eye doctor/clinic'. The ambulance was ok - a bit small, even for me. Had to crouch down in the back, the little bed was about the width of a 40cm ruler and was pretty squashed. On the walls of the ambulance were a few bits of hospital equipment like a mask, some tubes, a test tube of water (?) and some plasters/bandages. No monitors or heart equipment, so God help the unfortunate person that manages to have a heart attack over here - they´re screwed because 1. there´s no room to move and 2. there´s no proper equipment.

Got taken by ambulance to the eye-doctor in another area in Cusco and she was lovely. Checked my eye and saw that there still was a tear on the cornea from the time I injured it in school, which has yet to heal, she pulled something out of my eye with tweezers. It started with a ´P´ in Spanish - I´m guessing it may have been an eyelash and then told me I had a corneal ulcer at the bottom of the existing tear in the eye. Oh yay, that´s great news. She told me I wasn´t to go out and was to keep my eye closed for 24 hours(so I missed the salsa with the others) and proceeded to bandage me. No eye patch here. She spent 5 minutes cutting white tape and finding some gauze and stuck my eye closed shut, whilst covering most of my face. She also told me that the eye cream that the person in the pharmacist gave me earlier, was the wrong type of antibiotic and made my eye worse (I knew she looked dodgy that woman). The ambulance dropped me off home - mortified was not the word.

Now I look like some kind of freak walking the streets here. My friends have acted like my white stick and helped me across the roads etc. Everywhere I go, people stop and stare. I´m in the process of trying to translate into Spanish, 'I have been shot in the eye' so I can maybe wear some sort of billboard around my neck. The experience has been fun to say the least and my treatment is ongoing but I have been able to learn lots of Spanish words about the ´hospital´- always a bonus!

Found out today (Monday) when I returned to my lovely eye doctor for a check up that it is actually more serious than originally thought. It´s not technically an ulcer - I´ve got a virus in my eye - the ´zoster keratitis virus´ Basically shingles in my eye, that if not treated quickly can cause blindness. Near shit a brick when she told me. Caused by a lowering of the immune system. Years ago I got shingles (herpes zoster..no not the STD - it´s unrelated!) in my ear as my immune system was rundown, so the virus stays dormant until it decides to reawaken again.

I feel great but maybe all the over-exercise in Thailand had something to do with it and the tuna/peas food that I eat! Glad I went back so am on various anti-virals to treat me and under medical surpervision and have to go back to see her next week, but apart from that I´m still loving it here and still managing to learn my Spanish verbs, which I´m kind of getting the hang of. I also took the stupid cover off my eye...had enough of being the local city freak much to the amusement of my friends/classmates here!