Change of Plans

CALF CREEK FALLS

As you know we were supposed to be going on a photo trip to Monument Valley and the Slot Canyons in Arizona, but unfortunately we never got to complete our trip.

We were staying in Escalante, Utah for a few days before our official trip was to begin when my husband Don noticed a large number of ‘floaters’ in his right eye. He described them as an “army” of floaters. The next day (Thursday) he began to see a gray curtain start to obscure part of his vision. This curtain grew until he could see almost nothing from his eye – very scary. We cancelled the rest of our trip and started making frantic phone calls to find an ophthalmologist to see him. We finally got an appointment in St. George the next day (Friday the 13^th). I drove Don to St. George and we saw the doctor about 1pm. He confirmed that Don was having a retinal detachment. By extreme good fortune the Retinal Specialist from Salt Lake City was in the eye center that day. He is only there 3 days a month. (I think someone was watching over us) So Don was able to get in to see him and have a more thorough examination. We were told there was a 72 hour ‘window’ for Don to get surgery in order to have the best result. The specialist was able to set us up to see the on call Retinal surgeon in Santa Barbara the next day. So Saturday we got up early and I drove 9 hours straight from St. George Utah to Santa Barbara. This was also our Anniversary day – definitely NOT the way we were hoping to celebrate! We arrived in Santa Barbara at 2:30pm and Don had surgery at 4pm. The surgery – a Vitrectomy - went very well, but the recovery time is LONG. So that is where we are now.

We did have a couple of days to photograph before this happened and I'm sharing one of the  photos I took on the morning of May 12th. Calf Creek Falls is in Utah near Escalante.