I scheduled a routine eye test after a reminder pinged into my inbox. I had a free morning and fancied an excuse for a new pair of prescription sunglasses.
The optometrist’s questions seemed more probing than I remembered from the last visit two years ago.
“Any blurred vision?” he asked. “If I hold this grid up and you focus on the dot at the centre with your right eye, left eye closed, are all those lines quite straight?”
On completion of the scans and tests, he said: “You have early age-related macular degeneration.” When he saw my face fall, he added: “AMD – it’s very common.”
I heard only “macular degeneration”.
My grandmother suffered. At the end of her life she was almost blind, having to feel her way around a room, tipping her head to the sound of a voice to recognise who was there.