It was fall of 1986, I was working as a limo driver and had a photography business on the side. I had several weddings scheduled for the season so I thought I was in pretty good shape. Then disaster struck.
I was blowing up balloons with a canister of nitrogen. One of them blew up in my face. I didn’t think about it too much at the time. However I saw stars in my left eye.
I think it was a birthday party and I took them to San Francisco to go bar hopping. Those tours can be a lot of work. 15 ladies ready to party. It was a long night getting back to town. Making sure all 15 of them were accounted for. We probably stopped at five or six drinking establishments.
By the time I got back to the “barn” in Petaluma, I had a pounding headache. The next morning, when I awoke, I noticed a brown spot in my eye. Cathy insisted I go to the eye doctor. By the time I got to the doctor the brown spot was pretty much covering my eye. He said I had a severely detached retina. A quick phone consultation with the specialist and the doctor says this is your lucky day. One of the best specialists is available right now. They called an ambulance and about three hours later I was in the recovery room. The specialist said he was able to save my sight in that eye but that it was hard to say how good my sight would be. That would just take time. I would have to be very very careful for the next six weeks while I healed.
To fix a detached retina the doctor injects a tiny gas bubble into the vitreous, a clear, gel-like substance between the lens and retina. It rises and presses against the upper part of the retina, closing the tear. That meant sitting quietly in low light. Needless to say it was boring just sitting there looking at the floor for hours on end. About three days into this I decided that I could read a book while healing. A friend had given me a biography of Jimmy Buffett. It was about two inches thick and I couldn’t put it down. It told of his many adventures in his seaplane finding surfing spots all over the world.
On my next visit, the doctor said, “I can tell you’ve been reading! That’s not helping heal your detached retina. You can’t read because eyes go back and forth. If you must do something, watch TV from a distance. Just so long as the bubble is covering the detached retina you’ll be okay.” It was quite uncomfortable watching TV like that so I just looked at the floor most of the time.
I should probably back up a minute and explain why I did the limo driving. In order to keep my photography studio, I needed a job with health insurance and to keep the job until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I then would go on COBRA, max that out, then get another job that had good insurance and do it all over again. Why you might ask…. Cathy suffered from an auto immune disease, which meant that she needed to be on group health insurance in order to be covered.
But if I wanted to be a photographer and keep my family together this is what I had to do. At its maximum we were paying as much as $1800 a month for medical when I was in that new job probation period. I had recently made that 90 days criteria, so I cancelled my expensive temporary private insurance. Then my employer informed me and apologized that they sent the money late, as if it was no big deal. But it was! Since the insurance company didn’t get me signed up and started on time, I didn’t have insurance, right when I needed specialists and emergency surgery!
I was fortunate to be involved with PPA (Professional Photographers Of America Redwood Empire Chapter) and I had many friends who were photographers. I managed to give all of my wedding commitments to people with good reputations. I think it took about eight weeks for my retina to heal with more weeks left of my medical leave. This unexpected gift of time gave me the opportunity for a very meaningful adventure, in Peru, of which I guess is the next chapter that I will be getting to soon.
Tom Patterson – Photographer – Writer – and Seeker 