Nearest Book Meme

Maybe this will get me back in the habit of posting!

Butter-and-sugar. Kandy Korn. Ambrosia. Silver Queen. Sweet Symphony.

“Corny”, in Radiance, Poems by Barbara Crooker.

Rules: 

* Get the book nearest to you. Right now.

 
* Go to page 56. 

* Find the 5th sentence. 

* Write this sentence - either here or on your blog.

* Copy these instructions as commentary of your sentence. 

* Don't look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.

Here I am in a big library and the closest book is a small collection of poems given me last year! I took the fifth sentence, not the fifth line of this poem for my choice.

Update

Wow, did this last surgery knock me down! First nausea, then more pain, then more pain, lots of sleeping...too many kinds of eyedrops. I am becoming an eyedrop expert. Homatropine is the very strangest one. If you check it in the PDR, the term coming up is "can cause mental confusion." My ophthalmologist said maybe a better term is psychosis. Definitely it gave me nightmares of grotesque creatures.

Now that I am better it is a relief to be only comparing the healing properties of artificial tears. It is important to use preservative free tears, which come in individual vials. That goes against my nature, to have all that extra packaging, but that is the only way to get no preservatives. I have been using thera tears regular and liquid gel, tears naturalle, and now a stronger one, refresh celluvisc. The active ingredient is the same as the thera tears liquid gel but it feels better in my eyes.

My ophthalmologist has a new web page.

Here we go again, number 4...but who's counting?

This afternoon is surgery number 4. This is what I think is going to be done, but we'll see when it is over:

• repair the detached retina
• try to repair the hole one more time
• remove the lens
• use silicon oil to tamp down
• place (is that the term?) a scleral buckle
  

I am not at all sure what the recovery time will be for this set of wonders. And yes, I AM nervous about it.

Long time no write

When last I posted, the second face-down, third vitrectomy was about to happen. And gentle reader, happen it did, but to no positive end. However, since my whole goal with this blog was to document what it was like, now I will try to reconnect with some of the events of the past six weeks and lead up to where I am now rather than going through all the current gloom immediately.

First, the surgery really wasn't scheduled for 3 pm. That was wishful thinking on someone's part. At any rate it didn't happen until after 5 pm. I think the surgery itself went smoothly from all I can tell. This time the admitting nurse was a real nervous nellie who for some reason kept forgetting I was there--after SAYING to me that she often forgot to do the eye drops in a timely fashion, she proceeded to disappear for over an hour. During that hour I was sure the IV was pushing fluids directly into bone, leading me to push the call button to get help--not from nn as it happened, but from someone else. Fortunately I was moved down to the OR pre-op soon after the IV incident where the nurse finally did the eye drops. Also, the anesthesiologist was good and gave me all the good stuff so no nausea or anxiety. Yay!

Now to face down. The pillow construction system was in place and certainly worked better than the rental stuff from before. The small buckwheat pillow and the two curved pillows for between the legs were the major helpers. I could use the curved pillows all sorts of ways to support my face yet keep pressure off the sinuses.

Thanks also to Michael for my iPod playing system which enabled me to listed to some hella long books!

Surgery Today

This time it appears the hospital has been giving me wrong info all week. The surgery is at 3 pm. Good thing I didn't eat breakfast as I had planned to do! Time to go set up all the pillows and maybe even the chair. Photos of pillow arrangements to follow...

In Brielle

I make a pretty good statue, huh!

POSTPONED!!!

As the Robert Burns poem goes---"The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft aglay"

Well all my plans went south when I got a call about an hour before heading out to the hospital that the good doctor had the flu and didn't think he should do the surgery on the 8th. I was nonplussed to say the least. Lots of effort went into making all the arrangements. But I certainly want the surgeon to be in top form for try number 3 so it's back to work and all the normal bits of life until April 30.

The good news is that camping for Laura's birthday is going to be much easier!!!

Psyching Up

My toes and fingers are pretty. My tummy is full of yummy pizza. I tied up many of the loose ends at work, even managed to get approval for $10k for student assistants. So now I should be able to relax and enjoy the evening, maybe sleep in and get errands done in the morning (with Laura's assistance). Wish me luck!

Sunday Gloomy Sunday

There are still a large number of loose ends that need to be done before Tuesday but I have lost heart. Can't see very well, can't fake a better mood, finding myself fearful of not ever getting better sight out of this eye. I need a good-deeds fairy to come through and clear out the cobwebs from my brain!

Photos from Holland are online

I have eight albums of photos from the trip to The Netherlands on my Picasa Web Album.

Getting Ready

I thought I was efficiently getting prepared for face-down last time when I ordered the full suite of vitrectomy supplies from VitrectomySolutions.com. They were very helpful, shipped all of it in a timely fashion, we got it all set up. We even moved a twin bed into the family room so I could sleep any time without disturbing others. I had my iPod, my mirror for the TV, a radio with remote controls, a speaker phone. Nothing was going to faze me. But little did I know that none of the equipment would provide comfort in any extended way once my face had been pointed downward long enough for all the sinus cavities to fill up! So this time I was armed with questions when I went for the pre-op physical, such as what decongestants are safe (sudafed is fine the doctor said, even with my borderline hypertension), would an antihistamine help (yes, says the kind doctor again, as long as the ophthalmologist oks it), and is there a muscle relaxer that might knock me out enough to really sleep.(Maybe) Now the pharmaceutics are better prepared at least.

Next I went on a field trip to a medical supply place locally that handles vitrectomy face-down equipment (and massage creams, as the face-down stuff is really just massage table stuff). There I met the medical supply dominatrix queen--no, none of it is comfortable--yes, I do sell foam pads covered with nasty hard naugahyde--you, you scummy person with a macular hole, prepare to be miserable. So a pox on her house. May she someday have to use her own equipment for months! We're off to Bed Bath and Beyond on a pillow scavenger hunt. Came out of there with
2 Contour® Memory Foam Leg Pillows.

2 Therapedic™ Memory Touch Neck Pillows

1 Symphony Pillow by Tempur-Pedic®

I pondered whether to get a body pillow but was holding out for a large u-shaped pillow I had seen in the skymall catalog on the way back from Holland. Found it the next day online and it is headed for Sunnyvale now.

All this should make it possible to build a nest in the bed, but in order to sit comfortably, I still needed to deal with the massage chair. Luckily, the folks at Vitrectomy Solutions had all my insurance and shipping info on file so a quick call to them was enough to start the shipping process for the seated solution. They will also ship me the magic mirror. Last time it was the most important part of the system, because I could force myself to keep my nose pointed into it even while sitting in the arm chair.

What is the Whole Face-Down Time Gonna Be Like?

I should have I should have I should have written about this before, like maybe the FIRST time I found out there was such a thing as a vitrectomy and that recovery would involve keeping one's nose pointed to the ground. But no, not so smart. So VxOne slid past any documentation when it happened last October. Then VxTwo didn't seen to be such a big deal because there was going to be no face-down component. Wrong again. Thus there is no documentation of what it felt like to have silicon oil in the eye, completely blurry vision, brain aches. Now VxThree is coming right up, face-down again, so I feel compelled, even obligated to chronicle the fun and games.