Glaucoma, eye health and a bit of everything

Yummy healthy cranberries!

Yesterday I went grocery shopping and found truckloads of fresh gorgeous cranberries from Nova Scotia in our store, so of course, my dehydrator popped in my head and said “Grab lots! Let’s dehydrate them!” – I couldn’t resist of course. I love cranberries and I want to make some tasty breakfast muffins with mixed fruits in them and Cranberries and Orange or Cranberries and white Chocolate just sounds too yummy to pass up :)

So they’re doing their thing now in my dehydrator.

It’s very quick to prepare them:

You just need to wash them and remove any stems that might have been left behind when they were cultivated (I found 3 stems out of two bag full, so it’s not bad). I washed them in a warm bath of water with a big splash of vinegar. They were not dirty, but it’s good to give them a wash like that before processing them.

Then, you just plop them in boiling water on the stove so that their skin will break (you hear a popping sound, it’s kind of musical and neat –it only takes a couple of minutes), and once they’ve all popped, you scoop them out with a spoon with holes in it to drain the water out and they are ready to go on the dehydrator shelves.

It takes a few minutes and a bit of patience to separate them so that each cranberry dries on its own and it’s not touching another one or not lumped up together (they won’t dry well if they are lumped together), and 2 packs of cranberries nearly gave me 4 shelves full on my dehydrator, so that’s pretty good. I made some apple leather on the 5th shelf that I placed on top with unsweetened apple sauce. I’ll let you know how I like it. I’ve never tried that one before.

Eyes & Glaucoma:

I’ve been quite busy this past week with various appointments for my father, my mom (they live with my husband and I), and for myself. Dad needed to see the chiro and get some xrays done, so we took care of that, and mom needed an eye exam as we figured she was developing cataracts (it runs in her family – her sisters all have them, and so did her mom/my grandma), and mom could see her vision changing lately and wanted to get that checked. So I figured that since I hadn’t had an eye exam for over 3 years, I should get one done too while we were at it.

It’s a VERY good thing that I did – The optometrist that we went to (they have 4 doctors there and lots of specialized machines to do really thorough eye exams) discovered that I may have Glaucoma (permanent/irreversible optic nerve damage that can lead to blindness).

I say *may* because we are going to do further tests on Wednesday. But right now, the pressure in my eyes is higher than the highest normal range and the drop in my vision since my last eye exam certainly shows that losing so much of my eyesight in that time-period is not normal. So, as far as we show so far, it looks like I have Glaucoma. If that’s the case, I’m glad we’ve caught it now, so that it can be controlled/stopped at this level and not do any further damage to my optic nerves.

Having lost my tunnel vision about 18-19 years ago for several weeks (I was legally blind) from a chemical reaction to an antihistamine built-up in my system (according to the eye specialists I saw back then), I can tell you that this is no laughing matter. The current specialist here thinks that this may have done some mild permanent damage back then, and that over the years, it’s finally catching up with me.

I certainly have no intention of letting this damage go any further than it already has. Read the link on Glaucoma to educate yourself on this – it can go undetected for many years (because one eye can compensate for the other, so by the time you realise your vision is changing enough for you to notice, it may be too late).

Most of you that visit my blog are artists and rely on your eyes obviously a lot to do complex delicate work, etc… after the age of 40, if you are not at risk and age 35 if you are at risk (see the link to see some of the risks factors listed), you need to get an eye exam EVERY SINGLE YEAR.

So please, take care of your eyes. Get them checked once a year. We only get one pair of these precious eyes, and we need to treat them with great care.

I’ll let you all know what we find out during Wednesday’s tests. I will also be picking up my pretty new pairs of glasses as well.