Flagstaff KOA, Flagstaff
Tuesday, 7 through Friday, 10 December 2021
I'd planned to stay here 5 nights and use this place as a base for visiting several sights I wanted to see in the vicinity - think Grand Canyon in the north, the Sedona area in the south. But I'd booked appointments at the vet for the critters and at an eye clinic for me, and those - combined with the weather - made traveling a bad idea. And then the results at these clinics changed all my plans.
But first, my impressions of Flagstaff.
Flagstaff
We ended up driving around town more than I'd expected, thanks to having so much more time available. One place I found was a very nice park, called Bushmaster Park.
I'd figured the name Bushmaster had something to do with snakes and was really surprised and touched to see this explanation.
The park covered at least 2 city blocks and had lots of well-tended green grass, courts for tennis and basketball and volleyball, a skateboard park, several picnic shelters in addition to other picnic tables - lots of stuff. I took the dogs there several times and rarely found more than a few people there and almost never another dog.
In addition to their trash cans, they had receptacles for all recycle materials except glass. I hadn't been able to find any recycle drop-off place in town for that stuff, so I put several bags of things there - milk bottles and plastics and boxes and papers.
A half-mile down the street is the local campus for Coconino Community College, and that's where the city drop-off point is for glass recyclables. The website says it's for residents only, but I found it in the middle of the school's parking lot and nobody ever came over to ask what I thought I was doing (what with my Texas license plate and all). So I felt a lot of relief in getting rid of all those things I'd been carting around because I couldn't stand to just throw them away.
I found 2 grocery stores in Flagstaff. The Safeway was adequate but not at all impressive. The locally-owned Fry's Food and Drug, on the other hand, was much more than adequate and very impressive - especially for a locally-owned place. Usually it's the national chains that can afford the extras. I was glad to find it, even though it was on the other side of town from the campground.
The KOA here was on a slope in a heavily wooded area. Very nice, and it would certainly have been really attractive in July, but in December it was pretty chilly since it was so shady. Plus, with all the hills they only had a few campsites that were level and those were booked for the time I was there. Still, it worked out okay for us and the folks were pleasant and sympathetic.
As I mentioned, one of my problems with sightseeing trips was the weather. The daytime temp kept getting lower all week - 46° on Tuesday down to 34° on Friday. But the real problem was the nighttime temps - in the 20s until Friday, when it got down to 8°. And snow beginning Thursday afternoon.
Flagstaff is in the mountainous region of Arizona, and the Grand Canyon and Sonora are part of the same region. With the lows at night, I didn't want to set out early each day to drive somewhere and risk running into ice on the roads. Our appointment at the vet was at 10:00 in the morning, and it took the best part of an hour so we could have left afterwards for some sightseeing, but I figured that late in the day, by the time we got anywhere, so would lots of other people. And my eye appointment was at 1:00 - too early in the day to go anywhere in the morning and too late in the day to go anywhere afterwards. That left only Thursday and Friday, and by then the snow was forecast. All very understandable but not at all what I'd planned.
The vet
Lily got her claws clipped, all the critters got all their annual shots and got declared healthy, and I asked the vet about Gracie falling down so much. He guessed kidney failure, which is reasonably common in old cats but not so common in dogs. He took a blood sample to see if he could figure out what was going on with her and told me to call the next day for results.
Which I did and learned that because her readings were borderline, he didn't want to say for certain, but he did figure it was a kidney problem. He sold me some pills to give her to help with her balance and also sold me some kidney food - which it turned out Gracie actually likes - Purina ProPlan for kidney problems. And he told me to get another vet's opinion wherever I was in a month. So it wasn't conclusive, but at least it was something. Much better than the free-floating anxiety I've been dealing with on her behalf for some weeks now.
The eye doctor
I've always relied on optometrists to help me with my vision problems, but all this black floaty stuff had me scared enough that I decided I needed an ophthalmologist. Hard to find any doctor willing to take on a new patient within a reasonable time, but I got an appointment with the Eye and Laser Center in Flagstaff. My appt. was with an optometrist, but they scheduled me for a time when an ophthalmologist would be available in case the optometrist thought he needed assistance.
Which is what happened. The optometrist looked into my eye and said he thought it was a detached retina and, if that's what it was, I was in serious danger of losing my eyesight in that eye unless I had corrective surgery ASAP. But he decided to ask for a 2nd opinion, and the ophthalmologist (weird word to pronounce and to spell) took a look and said not a detached retina but a retinal hemorrhage (another weird word), and the black stuff floating around was blood.
He said the solution for that was a vitrectomy - substituting another fluid for the vitreous fluid that's in my eye now (what the blood is floating around in). They both knew I was only temporarily in Flagstaff and recommended a retina clinic in the Phoenix area, where I'd planned to go next. He too urged quick action on the repair work.
I made an appointment at a clinic in Mesa, near Phoenix, but then, as we all do these days, I looked it all up on my computer. I noted that after a vitrectomy, a patient can't drive for at least several days, if not several weeks. In fact, in some cases, the patient needs to lie face down for several days while everything in the eye settles down. Well, I couldn't figure how either of those things would be possible with the kind of life I'm leading - how on earth would I be able to take the dogs out for walks if I had to lie on my face? I could maybe find a place to board them, but there'd still be Lily who is certainly much lower maintenance, but she's not maintenance-free - the litter box has to be cleaned out several times a day besides feeding her. It just couldn't be done.
So I decided to dump us all on David and Anna so at least there'd be somebody to be substitute parents if I had to be out of commission. I hated to ask - especially because I wasn't so much asking as explaining that I didn't have any options (i.e. leaning all over them). And of course they said yes and generously said that option would be less worrying for them.
I decided to leave on Saturday because the weather was supposed to be improving then. And I planned a route where I could do some serious driving and make it to Dallas on Monday. And I found a retina clinic not far from their house that agreed to take me on Tuesday morning.
It all seemed sudden, but it's amazing how much urgency can get packed into a diagnosis of permanent sight loss without immediate action.
No comments:
Post a Comment