Brief eye update

After nearly two weeks without the hard contact lens, I finally got a replacement last night. The new one is bigger than the last and more definitely green so I hope it won't float off my eyeball and get lost. I can see better with it, but still not very well.

Ten Favorite Items of Clothing

1. The black Not Your Daughters Jeans that fit better than anything I own
2. The dark blue NYDJs that have rhinestones on the hip posckets, even though I am accused of trolling for cowboys when I waer them.
3. The adidas exercise pants
4. The Karen Neuberger green robe
5. Purple fancy dress that has now gone to 3 weddings and other special events
6. New red jacket
7. Black t-shirts of several types
8. Red pair of Naots and bronze pair of Naots---a tie
9. Purple sweater set
10. Beige coat with fake fur that went to Holland last year

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...