It hit the fan today. We were touring the Kennicott Mines National Historic Landmark when Ginny said that her right eye was behaving strangely. After a short while she could barely see. This was not a good omen. We went back to the Lodge and started making phone calls which was difficult because we have AT&T which has no service in the area. After many calls trying to figure out what to do, we decided that it was certainly necessary to cut the vacation short and get to an emergency room ASAP. That meant going to Anchorage which is a ten hour drive. We ended up chartering a Cessna 172 and we were off on a 2 1/2 hour flight to Anchorage. It was a beautiful flight through the mountain valleys.

Once in Anchorage we went to the biggest hospital in town, Providence. We walked in and talked to the admitting nurse who sent us immediately to an ER and they got down to business. After all sorts of tests they decided that it was necessary to see an Ophthalmologist. We went to the office of the Ophthalmologist on call at 7:30 and he showed up to let us in. After a bunch of diagnostics he concluded that Ginny suffered a vitreous detachment and hemorrhage. Because of the blood in her eye, he couldn't examine the retina but he did do an ultrasound that indicated the retina hadn't become detached. He told us to get back to Houston ASAP and find help there because doing any kind of procedure in Alaska would require an extended stay since flying would be out of the question.

We raced to the airport to see if we could catch the non-stop red eye to Houston, and we did. This was not our idea of a good ending to the Alaska trip, especially because we had two more weeks to go. It was a no-brainer decision, however, because this type of medical emergency should not be trifled with.

Today's picture is of Ginny sitting in the airplane doing what she likes to do, taking pictures.