Palm Beach trip

The pictures saved in the wrong order! the first picture of the storm should be the last one...So from BOTTOM to top is...Steve and Sam at a rest stop on the Toll road, south of Yeehaw Junction. The next is beautiful Bascom Palmer taken from outside the car in the middle of the road by Steve..., the next one is me holding Sam at BP. then Steve and his chips at Chilli's then the STORM!!

What a crazy trip. It is exactly 180.5 miles from my front door to the Palm Beach office of Bascom Palmer Eye Hospital. We love going there rather than Miami any time. Our joke is all the rich old people in the Palm Beach area raised money to bring Bascom Palmer Hospital to them so they didn't have to go to the 'hood to get help for their eyes. The building is like a beautiful hotel and it sets on the outer edge of the PGA. A far cry from the main hospital that sets on the edge of "Liberty City and Little Havana" in Miami!!

Anyhow a friend in the church kept Shad for me so I just had Steve and Sam to deal with. That was helpful. So we started off at 8:30 am yesterday and about 8 miles from home I see this big piece of rubber on the side of the road. Steve starts yelling "it's an alligator" so I do the "smart" thing and pull off. I really wanted to get a picture of him. I have this secret love for gators- it's really weird. (When Steve Erwin died, we all cried. We love his show and we love gators but I think I like them more than anyone else in my family.) I didn't get a picture of this guy. The 5 ft gator took off running for a nearby pond. He had to run about 150 feet. I have never seen anything like that. He ran with his tail and head up and he was booking it. Forget what the experts say about gators can only run about 20 feet, that's a LIE. I wish I'd videoed him! It was unbelievable!

So we get down with no problems. Sam's doctor saw him between operations, just a quick check in. It seems Sam's eye pressure feels like it is up. since he has implants, there are only two ways of checking his pressure, feeling the eye and putting him under anesthesia and taking pictures of his optic nerve. I had been feeling his eye and I thought it felt a little too firm. Unfortunately I was right. With kids that have Peter's Anomaly, glaucoma is sometimes a problem. Especially for a kid like Sam who has had so many eye surgeries and now the implants. On top of the normal danger, he also takes steroid drops to prevent his eyes from inflammation/trying to "reject" his implants and the drops raise the risk of glaucoma. It's such a tightrope we walk!!! So the plan is to schedule him for an exam under anesthesia in July with his glaucoma specialist Dr H, retina specialist Dr Berra-call, his corneal specialist Dr Perez and his pediatric opthmalogist Dr Mcquin. Since his eyes are clear, we're looking at the possibility of being able to get an exact reading on his eyes for glasses that he might wear!!! It'll be challenging to get everyone scheduled together.

We left and went to Chilli's for Steve and started home. When we got into Bartow and stopped for a minute, we saw some terrible storm clouds over Lakeland. They were rolling and green. I started calling everyone to see if there was some kinda of warning out but no one ws answering their phones. I decided I wanted to get home so off we went..into the WORST storm I have ever driven through in my life!!!! At several points there was NO visibility. I was petrified but I just kept going. Thank God for the truck in front of me, I followed it's lights all the wasy down Hwy 98. I was afraid to pull off because the ground was overfilled with water and I was in Jon's car and afraid I'd get stuck or hit by someone else so I just kept creeping along.

I thought about the storm and how it could be used as an example in our lives. Storms come and they can be fierce but we should just hold firm, keep following the right road home and we'll come through it!!