Blue Ridge Muse

3 weeks ago | blueridgemuse.com | Doug Thompson

For the first time in my 31 years as a recovering alcoholic, I missed a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous to celebrate another year of sobriety and receive my coin to mark the event. The last year has been a horrific one, marked by a severe leg wound and infection that threatened my life.

1 month ago | blueridgemuse.com | Doug Thompson

Spent more than 22 hours in bed Friday night and Saturday morning after an eye surgeon finished restoring the vision of my right orb to 20/20 vision, completing the last of several operations over multiple days on both eyes. Dr. Eric Peterson at Vistar’s main office in Salem rebuilt both eyes, cleaned out cataracts, replaced lenses and took care of other problems that restored the full functions of both eyes.

Mar 14, 2025 | blueridgemuse.com | Doug Thompson

Most friends and readers know that I have been dealing with a long list of health problems over the last couple of years with new ones sprouting up just as I seem to get clear of the previous ones. It is happening again as my eyesight has gone from 20/20 in both eyes to a mess of double vision, blurry views, halos on on lights, things that appear to move when they are not, and other vision problems.

Mar 10, 2025 | blueridgemuse.com | Doug Thompson

When Amy and I lefft the National Capital Region (Washington, DC) after 23 years, I wondered if I would stop taking photos and video images for news, my primary career as a photojournalist and newspaper reporter. We moved to Floyd , in part, to taoe care of my mother’s declining health in her llate 80s.

Mar 5, 2025 | blueridgemuse.com | Doug Thompson

For much of the quarter-final match of state basketball play Tuesday night at Floyd County High School, the tough Virginia Hight Bearcats controlled the game with oftten questionable calls that resulted in technical fouls.