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Welcome. I'm Carrie Leutz. This is Financial Survival Network and it's time
for another Triple Lutz Report. And this is Triple Lutz Report for ninety four.
So as you may have known if you listen to a few there were
more recent shows. I'm in Thailand. I'm living the life of a digital
nomad. It's been a real blast. I've met some incredible people here.
Thai people really are the most gracious, warmest, friendliest people you'll ever come
into contact with. I spent time with somebody who's an FSN community member.
I met his wife, their friends, and wound up hanging out with them
for a number of days. It's been great. So fast forward, have
a medical emergency. It's what you always dread when you travel, and I
have traveled a lot. The worst I ever wound up doing was going to
a doctor's office because I had a cold or a sinus infection something like that.
And that was in the United States. But here I am in Thailand
in a city that is south of the Bangkok Pataya, and you know,
I'm hanging out here with my friends and I noticed, like I'm starting to
get something's happening to my eye. And I've had a lot of issues with
my eyes, never vision threatening, thank goodness, but over the years had
RK that's refractive surgery that caused me to become extremely far sighted, to have
what it's called higher order aberration, meaning halos and things like that like glare
at night. And I've basically addressed it all. I've been fine. Well,
you know, many many years ago, I had a retinal tear,
small retinal tear on the very very peripheral of my retina at it laser surgery
thirty years ago, not thinking anything about it. Now fast forward to a
few years ago. I have this thing called a vitreous gel detachment. And
your eye is filled with a vitreous gel. And when you get to my
advanced age, you know, mid sixties, it's not unusual to have a
detachment. In fact, you could have it as early as fifty years old.
So I had into my left eye a few years ago. I went
right off to the ophthalmologist. You know, I was seeing floaters, flashes,
and what they do is they can't really see the vitreous detachment, but
they diagnosed it by the process of elimination. He told me, then,
look, you're having a vitreous gel detachment and it should go away in two
weeks. And the giveaway is the fact you're having this big floater. And
I've had floaters before, they fall to the bottom of the eye and not
really your brain filters them out. Sure enough, two weeks later it was
gone. Didn't think anything of it. So here I am in Thailand and
I see this thing happen again. I figure, it's just the vitreous gel
detachment. Let's see what happens. And the first day or two nothing happened.
But then a couple of days ago, three days ago, I start
walking down the street and it's like, I think, wow, that's weird.
It looks like black ink is on my eye. And then after a
few minutes it dissolves. I think, well, that's interesting. We have
to keep an eye on that. I don't know, maybe I got something
in my eye on the street here. And then a few hours later happens
again, and I realized that this ink is actually blood, and I'm freaked
out. I'm not sure what to do. I'm freaked out my eyes.
You know, it's one thing. You hurt your knee, you hurt your
ankle, you break a finger, and whatever, you deal with it,
but your eyes or your eyes. And you know, I'm sitting around a
few hours in my room figuring out what to do, and it's happening periodically.
So finally I call up my friend and I said, look, actually
I think I texted him, said having this problem, what do you think
I should do? And one of the guys is English, he said,
well, you know, I told him I talk. I put in a
call to my friend in the States, but it was five o'clock or four
o'clock in the morning there, and he wasn't going to be able to help
me for a couple hours. I didn't really want to call him and wake
him up. And so the next thing I know other thy friend her grandfather
is an at themlogist at one of the most prestigious hospitals in Bangkok, and
she calls him up and he says, go immediately to the branch of the
Bangkok Hospital that's near here, and it's two miles from my hotel. So
I take a taxi over. It took forever to get there, and you
know, I go talk to the eye doctors and I was amazed the level
of care, the quality, the consideration, the way in which I was
treated by the staff was just incredible. And I talked to the eye doctor
said we got to dilate use so we can look and see what's going on
in the eye. And I'm calling in the retinologist. So she was away.
She came back in. Took about an hour for her to get back.
They kept boring different drops in my eye, like six different times to
dilated. Well. I start getting scans. I start going, you know,
one machine after in the next. The equipment was state of the art.
They had this thing called an oct scanner and that actually maps your retina.
And the doctor was extremely thorough And after all the tests were done,
she calls me in the office says, I got good news for you and
I got bad news. What do you want to hear first? I said,
give me the good news. So the good news is you don't have
a retinal detachment, which is really problematical. They can fix it, but
your vision will be impaired. So what you do have is a tear right
in that area where you had the tear the last time. Probably happened when
the fluid was detaching from the retina. And look, there's some blood vessels
there. I recommend laser surgery to you. And I looked at her,
I looked at all the equipment. The fact, you know, I'm very
knowledgeable about from a layperson standpoint about ophthalmological matters, having had experience with them
before, so I said for it. So takes me to a new I
guess it was an eggsmber laser spends about fifteen minutes zapping my retina, effectively
spot welding my retina back together onto the back of the eye. And it
was a little uncomfortable at times, but they had anesthetized the eye. And
you know, then after I get it done and I wait around for like
ten or fifteen minutes, I can't see anything because both of my pupils are
dilated and it's letting into all the light. So I had to wait around
for like fifteen twenty minutes till they closed up a little bit. Then I
took a taxi back to the hotel and then it was fine. I mean,
I've still got lurriness in the eye because the blood that seeped into the
fluid it's going to take a few weeks to two months to drain out,
and then there's some floaters those will eventually sink down to the bottom of the
eye as well as blood. But it was a scary thing. But what
it made me realize is, you know, the care that I received in
the hospital was every bit as good as the care that I've gotten in the
United States. You know, in this case, I wouldn't have had this
procedure done in a hospital. I would have gone to an eye clinic.
I have an ophthalmologist who I trust a lot. He is a former chief
resident at the Baskum Palmer Institute, which during its day still around but I
think at the time was the top I institute in the world. I knew
people that went there who are blind and literally walked out seeing So I would
have gone to him, and I will be going getting a follow up with
him when I get back next week. It's just it freaked me out.
But the fact is that they handled it like I said, would have been
done outpatient at a doctor's office. And that's it for now. We will
come back later. Thanks for listening to carry Letz's Financial Survival Network, your
solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survivalnetwork dot
com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,