Mom and Daughter Road Trip: Vancouver and Back in One Day

Back in November, my Optometrist said that had a misshaped cornea. At first, I thought I had eye cancer. Look it up...it's real...honest (I may or may not have just looked it up right now). Or, at the very least, some sort of eye disease. Anyway...he assured me that it was probably fine, but he wanted to see his cornea specialist. I am trying very hard to NOT keep going down to Vancouver (gas, stressful driving, etc), but you don't really want to fool around when it comes to your sight, so I figured I should make it a semi-important priority.

I won't go through the drama of booking the appointment, but I will say that it took AGES! He thought he could see me in January...they never contacted me until I contacted them...we played phone tag....then they wanted to book surgery...I said, not until I saw the surgeon first....and then the appointment was made for July 10th. Driving with Anker has gotten to be stressful, especially when it comes to the big city. He can, and will do it, but I would much rather go alone, and then him come with me (yes, I know that sounds bad, but it is sometimes true). I even thought about going myself. Then I remembered that I don't like driving in the big city....he would have taken me (he has lots in the past), but I thought I would ask Mom if she wanted to. I would have loved to have been able to afford a night or two down there, but I couldn't, and Mom was busy anyway, so we decided to make it a day trip.

Mom came on Monday night...which kind of stressed me out, but at least it made us clean the house! I had a few errands to do, and I also had an appointment with my GP that day (I thought I was seeing him about my tumour markers, but it turned out that I was "just"anemic), but I didn't know that, and Mom had offered to meet me there. After said appointment, we each had some errands to do, and then I got supper. We had fried chicken, which was really good. We watched a movie called Survivor, and then it was early to bed.

Tuesday, we got up at 6 or so, and then headed out around 7. We ate a quick bite before we left, but neither of us are early eaters, so we had breakfast at the Tim Horton's in Merritt. We got to The Pacific Laser Eye Centre with time to spare. We were kind of hungry, but we wanted to wait until after my appointment. We were wandering around trying to figure out where we should go afterwards, when we happened up Fortune Garden Restaurant. We weren't impressed. We went in to look at the menu, and to have some tea...but they weren't that welcoming (to be fair, it WAS lunch tie, but still....we did tell him that we were thinking about coming back afterwards), and he was actually kind of rude...asking us why we didn't go to McDonald's...which was across the street....if we wanted something in a hurry (we asked if they had something already made up that we could maybe sample). It was all rather hilarious! We definitely decided not to go back there!

So, at around 12:30, we went to my appointment. Again, I won't bore you with all the ins and outs of it (testing, blah, blah), but we found out later that not only was it laser eye surgery (which I did know beforehand), but it wasn't covered under BC Health! It was $2500 per eye! That's a lot of Starbucks, y'all! We wondered if it might be covered, but alas, it wasn't going to be...nor was it really going to be really that helpful. So, we said thanks, but no thanks to that! As we were leaving, we said "Thank you", and I was thinking "for nothing", when Mom said it under her breath! I laughed! As for the real name of what I had....Keratoconus...that is fine for a few years. We will go back maybe in a few years. Even though it was a bit of a waste of time, at least it WAS a waste of time, and we don't have to contend with some eye disease.

We left YVR, and headed for Chilliwack. We wanted to get out of there before rush hour traffic (also, we couldn't find anywhere else to park). Mom told me of a nice Chinese Restaurant that she and Dad had gone to before, and said was really good. I would definitely go to the Mandarin Garden again! The food was DELICIOUS!! It is a very plain, but not dumpy atmosphere, which is an added bonus. On our way back, we stopped at a local blueberry farm. I don't remember the name, or I would link it. I did have some business cards, but I just threw the last one out today! The berries were SO GOOD! I bought two boxes (I think two pounds) for $5 each. It was a smoking deal!

We got back around 8, and we went to my brother's for the night, as they were away. We watched some Call The Midwife, and went to bed. If you would like to see the few pictures (as in 4) that I posted, head on over to my IG account. You can find it here. I still don't know on how to do/link the buttons to IG, FB, etc.