Monthly Archives: October 2011

My mom has a lovely classic hat that my great aunt knit but it started out red and has been orange for about as long as I can remember and has begun to get pilly. Worse yet it has gotten somewhat stretched out so that it falls down in her face.

What a BEAUTIFUL Fall day!  Fall Shearing at Juniper Moon Farm is always more low key then Spring Shearing.  For one thing only the goats (and this year the colored sheep) are sheared, as they are clipped twice a year.  Also, this year, Susie has been travelling all over the USA promoting her new yarn line with the Juniper Moon Label.  (It is FANTASTIC stuff!  Ask for it at your local yarn shop.)   Attendance by JMF "aunties" (as the Farm Groupies are called....you can meet us on Ravalry) is lower and it just feels like a family get together. Family that you sometimes have never had the opportunity to meet In Real Life!!   Instead of tents Susie set up her Farm store in the garage, with a space for my table of JMF pottery. (Available also on her website here.) She had honey from her own bees this year too!

There was FRESH pressed cider from the Farm's new cider press and popcorn.  Lunch was potluck as usual. An amazingly relaxed and uneventful day!   Here are a few pictures....

Charlie.  Or maybe it's Churchill???

Before shearing.....

The amazing Emily.....(she's actually been judged as one of the best shearers in the country.)

After the haircut.  It's amazing how dark the colored sheep fleeces are.  The tips bleach out in the sun, so it's easy to forget how chocolatey brown they really are!

Greg with my JMF pottery....wouldn't be a show without him.

Jerry the llama makes a friend.

LOT'S of chickens.  They were all just little peepees at Spring Shearing!

It’s been said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. In that case, my windows are like old-fashioned leaded glass. Sure, I can see through them, but everything’s kinda blurry, depending on how I tilt my head.

Actually, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I can see. And with glasses, I mostly see 20/20. It’s actually past time to get my prescription renewed, since I find myself tilting my head back to read a book through the bottom-most portion of the of my bifocal lenses, but that’s not the whole problem. Let’s be honest, that’s not even half the problem lately.

I am a diabetic. I was diagnosed a little over 3 years ago, and I test my blood sugar 2-3 times a day and watch my carbs, protein and fat intake. I’m overweight. By a lot, actually, but it’s a vicious circle. When your blood sugar’s up, it’s hard to lose weight, but you can’t lower your blood sugar significantly without losing weight. But that’s a story for another time.

This story is about my eyes. Being a handworker – knitter, crocheter, spinner – and an avid reader, as well as required to use a computer for my day job, you could say my eyes are how I make my living as well as extremely vital to pursuing the hobbies I love. If I can’t see well, I can’t perform well either at work or at play. And according to my retina specialist, I don’t see so well.

I have a condition called diabetic retinopathy. Speaking in terms that I understand, it’s a leakage of fluid behind the retina of the eye due to weakened blood vessels. There are varying degrees of the condition and I have to be honest and tell you that I don’t know how severe mine is, just that it needs to be treated so I don’t lose my vision.

Yep. That’s what I said. “Lose my vision.” To prevent what would, for me, be an extreme tragedy, I have been getting injections into my eyes at approximately 6 – 8 week intervals to arrest the leakage. I know, you’re sitting there covering one eye, saying “OUCH!” or “Oh, my GOD!!” Yeah. It was that way for me at first, too. Now it’s (frighteningly) routine. I’m going in for the third injection in my left eye tomorrow. I’ve already had 3 in my right. The good news is that usually, the injections work. The bad news is that it doesn’t seem to be a permanent fix. And the scary thing is, the doctor keeps throwing around phrases like “while your vision is still good.”

Really? While it’s “still” good?? What constitutes NOT good? Am I going to go blind? Sooner or later? Is there a more aggressive treatment? Is there a “cure” at all?? These are things I can’t bring myself to ask, and we all know how reliable Dr. Google is.

What I do know is that while the injections stop the leakage, they don’t repair any damage already done. My vision a week ago was 20/20 with correction, but it’s deteriorating in my left eye. I know this – every time I go to the retina specialist, I have to read the eye chart, and it’s getting harder on the left side. That and I can “see” a blurry spot in my field of vision on that side. This is a result of the small bubble of fluid that’s built up on my retina that we hope to reduce with the next injection. It’s worked before, and I have confidence that it will work again. I just wish there was a way to stop the leakage altogether.

There are laser treatments that can be done to cauterize the blood vessels. But the doctor says that since the leakage is so close to my central vision, he doesn’t want to zap anything for fear of creating scar tissue that will impair the vision (I do have). I tend to agree. 20/20 with correction’s damned good, and I’d like to keep it that way as long as possible!

There are preventive measures I can take, but none of them guarantee that the leakage will stop. Lose weight. Keep my blood sugar and blood pressure down. I’m working on the weight, and my blood sugar and pressure have been “ideal” the past couple times they’ve been tested.

So I do what the retina specialist tells me so I can keep my eyesight for as long as possible. And if that means injections into the eye every 6-8 weeks, then that’s what it means.