These are troubled times...

Today I attended church to pray for my cousin who recently had the same eye surgery that I did last month and which I will have again next month, and for myself because I am afraid of my impending operation because it was the most painful surgery I have ever had.  After church, I went to lunch with a friend and she asked if during the service there was any mention of the Brett Kavanaugh situation.

I reported that interestingly, during the prayers for the people wherein there are calls for blessings for classes of people, such as our leaders or oppressed people, followed by a pause for contemplation as each parishioner adds his or her own silent, or spoken, prayer for a particular person or persons, a woman called out a request for for the lord's succor for all women who have suffered from sexual abuse.  It was the first time I can remember that I have heard such an out calling (I only attend once a month on average).

At lunch, we sat and chatted about the current nominee for the highest court and how we both think he is highly and inappropriately partisan, believes in Clinton conspiracy theories, talks down to female senators, improperly and defiantly answers questions with questions of his own to the questioner, and he displayed great, seething anger and acted very unjudge-like.  He also, it is obvious to me, lies easily and often, big and small.

At the table behind us a heated discussion arose between a young man and an older woman while a second young woman sat silently, about the same hearing wherein the young man was speaking loudly about the Democrats being hypocrites and Bill Clinton being a rapist and what about that and Kavanaugh denied it so where's the proof, and the arguing woman finally marched  off to the rest room and I didn't see her ever come back.  Me, I don't think we should put  an opportunistic, biased and unbalanced liar, as I discerned he was from watching Kavanaugh's tempestuous performance,, on the supreme court.

Perambulations

Besides taking a 4-mile walk on the day I went around with my sister when she came to town, where we saw six museums and had dinner in Chinatown, we ate in Chinatown two other times and toured the National Portrait Gallery one evening.  I hadn't seen the new Obama portraits yet, so that was a first for me as well as her.

Although the Barack portrait is more lifelike and symbolic as well, filled with flowers to remind us of his Hawaiian (not Kenyan) birth, we decided that the more stark and simple Michelle portrait, which bears less of a faithful likeness of her, is the one that will better stand the test of time.  It has an elegance and a strength that portrays her rock solid inner self, it seems to me.

Chinatown was filled with tourists, and hustlers, as always but it is being taken over by franchises that are supplanting the local Chinese restaurants one by one, especially in light of the continued success of the Capital One Arena there where the hockey and basketball teams play, plus the success of the residential building around there in Penn Quarter so there are only a few places left where you can get authentic Chinese fare.  We ate at one such restaurant, the Chinatown Express Restaurant, a noodle place on Sixth Street NW which featured hanging bird carcasses in the window so it is off-putting to many of the squeamish sort but it is good and authentic food and I enjoyed a moo shu pork dish while my sister enjoyed fried noodles and pork.

The next night we had a draft at an Irish Pub on Fifth Street NW before having dinner at Clyde's at Gallery Place, a restaurant that's affordable with good service that I always enjoy.  Even in the dark as I walked my sister back to her hotel we passed many distinct buildings which I knew something about so I would fill her in on its history, like the National Building Museum, the world's largest brick building supported by brick columns, or the old Pension Building, making perambulations around the District almost always interesting and informative.

The National Gallery of Art

My sister came to DC to attend a charitable event and we had a couple of enjoyable dinners in Chinatown.  We also spent time at the National Gallery of Art after her conference was over.

She studied art in college so she was able to inform me as to what I was looking at.  The museum has a prodigious collection of world-renowned art, like this Rembrandt self-portrait.

My favorite piece, however, is on the roof.  My sister also liked this refugee from The Food of the Gods.

We did a lot of walking, also visiting the Portrait Gallery, the Hotel Monaco, the Archives, the Navy Memorial,the Statue Garden, the National Botanical Gardens and the Library of Congress.  There is so much to see in the District that you could spend a month here without visiting a site twice.

A fugitive

I'm in hiding, or at least my car is.  It failed the annual safety inspection program in my state, because unbeknownst to me, sometime in the last ten months thieves entered my car and stole my spare wheel along with the special unlocking key tool for the particular antitheft lug nut on each wheel.

My car is a 2015 with 15,000 miles on it, what could be unsafe about it?  The safety inspection law is a ripoff, in place solely to advance the interests of the auto parts industry and car repair service stations, and to collect more revenue for the state in the form of its annual fee.  The last state I lived in, Colorado, got rid of its safety inspection law decades ago, realizing the true remedy for driving a defective vehicle is the issuance of an unsafe vehicle ticket by the police with its two-point penalty.

My car failed because the inspection station couldn't get my wheels off since I no longer had the special key, which was news to me, and so the inspector slapped a rejection decal on my windshield, good for 16 days while I fixed the unsafe aspect of my vehicle.  Mind you, the unsafe aspect of my vehicle wasn't the absence of a spare wheel since it was stolen, which I could understand as a safety issue, but because the station couldn't get my wheels off without the special antitheft unlocking key for one lug nut on each wheel, which special key is unavailable for sale to the consumer because it is so special.

So I fixed that problem by paying $72 to the Nissan dealer to remove the four remaining special antitheft lug nuts from my wheels (it's ironic, isn't it, that my wheel was stolen despite the presence on my car of this special, and useless, antitheft feature; furthermore I have no doubt that all wheel thieves have the same universal special antitheft lug nut key that dealers do) and replace those special lug nuts with regular lug nuts that my lug nut wrench can remove.  My car was okay to drive until the seventeenth with its scarlet letter pasted onto its windshield but now its illegal; subject to a $50 ticket from roving meter maids so may car now resides deep in my driveway while I wait for the first to arrive (so I can get an extra month going forward on the annual program).

I love my cousin... .

Yesterday I got a call from my cousin.  I knew she was undergoing retinal reattachment surgery that day, which, since I had undergone that very same surgery last month, I was keenly interested in and very aware of.  She told me her operation was over and she was at home resting.

She said her surgery had gone well and it hadn't hurt a bit.  I was so glad to hear this, not only for her sake but also because I am facing another bout of this same surgery myself.  My cousin knew of my bad experience with this same surgery in July, the first of my two emergency eye surgeries in a one week span.

When I reached out to her two days ago to wish her luck in her upcoming surgery, she alluded to her hope that her surgery would go better than mine.  I felt bad then that I had posted so readily about my "discomfort" from my initial surgery, which is apparently undergone often by old folks like me, mostly without notable pain or lack of success.

Mine wasn't so bad, I told her then on the eve of her surgery, and there were conditions present in my first operation that clearly were not present in hers that would undoubtedly make her experience much different from mine.  For instance, hers had been scheduled for a week already, whereas I was immediately slapped into the surgical ward within minutes of the initial consult with no time in which to reconcile the procedure internally, which left me anxious, and I didn't have any family present.  Additionally, I still don't trust the skill level of the anesthesiologist who was present that day.

Her son Jimmy had been there already to give her love and support, in stark contrast to my sons who apparently don't give a damn about anyone but themselves, and of course her husband Bill had been taking good care of her.  Certain friends of mine had wonderfully provided this support and love for me on a moment's notice, and others have called me to express their hope for my speedy recovery.

This sweetheart of a relative had reached out to me in the immediate aftermath of her surgery to assure me that her operation had been painless, as she knows that I am facing the same surgery, again, later this fall to get the oil out of my eye.  She knows intuitively that I have been facing this prospect with trepidation.  I love my cousin, so concerned about others even in the hour of her need.  Get better soon, Liz.

I haven't driven at night yet... .

At my one month check up last week following eye surgery last month, my doctor gave me an out for a third eye surgery in the fall to remove the oil filling my healing eye by telling me at the outset that he had clients who have left the oil in their eyes for years and even decades, although he didn't recommend that because the vision isn't so good out of that eye and it leads to cataracts.  He might as well have winked at me.

But more eye surgery is coming up in October or November.  Maybe I should schedule it around Thanksgiving to thank providence for restoring sight in that eye to any degree or to be thankful for the character-building process of another two months of sedate, careful recovery.  You know, the Romans 5 passage about tribulation/patience/experience and hope.

The surgeon suggested that I might want to travel now because after that surgery I'd be in recovery mode for many weeks.  But then, if all went well, the repair would be permanent.  Thank the Lord.

Where would I go, since I'm not in shape to work on any campaign, which had been my intention earlier in the summer once September came, and I haven't tried any turnpike driving nor driving at night yet.  Although I'm healed or mostly healed, I still have trouble with my eye (momentary white flares, steroid eye drops twice a day) and it feels funny so I'm mostly stick-at-home right now and I can't wait to get this oil out of my eye.

  

Good News and Bad News

About three weeks after the last surgery, my eye started feeling better and driving wasn't a totally exciting adventure.  Oh yeah, I could drive, I just had to be careful because my vision off to the right was distorted and lacked depth perception because of the blurry picture I received in my brain from my healing, oil-filled eye.  I have a powerful truck so if I wasn't poking along stubbornly in the right lane, I would have to memorize what the closest car to me was in the lane off to the right, identify that car in my passenger mirror before I moved over to the right and goose the car to stay ahead of it as I moved right into the free space.

But then my anxiety went into overdrive.  My first surgery had failed after a week, but my second surgery was okay at the one-week checkup but then the next check-up was scheduled for two months away.  I decided to move that consultation up to see if this delicate surgery was holding, in light of my daily effort not to strain myself or pick up more than five pounds, which was an impossible standard to meet unless I stayed in bed all day.  For instance, my vacuum cleaner was in the basement; it probably weighs twenty pounds but I waited three weeks before I brought it up to the main floor for some much-needed vacuuming.

When I called for an earlier appointment, they gave me the first available opening, one month out instead of two months out.  As my eye continued to heal, I saw or imagined all sorts of ominous warning signs--floaters, tiny clear bubbles in my field of vision, occasional sudden, momentary flashes of white light.  The day of my late afternoon appointment late last week was totally anxiety-ridden, as all day I imagined what the doctor would see when he looked into my dilated eye.

However, the examination left me feeling giddy because he said my eye was healing nicely.  Then he asked when I wanted to schedule the third surgery, to get the oil out of my eye.  It would be like the first surgery, he said, where I was sentient during surgery and in great "discomfort" unlike the second surgery when I was out, but he said he would give me more or different drugs to put me in la-la land.  The old good news, bad news routine, although this was obviously great news because the eye was healing and my sight was returning to close or closer to normal vision.

Half full

My first eye surgery was on July 31st, and the second was on August 9th.  The first time I was awake and aware in the OR, by the doctor's design, and although sedated apparently, I suffered a lot of "discomfort" during the procedure as he later termed it.  The next time I was under and it went much better for me because I didn't feel or remember the surgery.  The night following the surgery, the most difficult point in the recovery period, was much better the second time.

Standard procedure for worsening retinal detachment or tears is to replace the vitreous humor with a gas bubble and wait for the lasered retina to heal and the gas bubble to dissipate and sight improves as it heals.  It takes 4 to 6 months to fully heal and don't fly too soon or your eye might burst.  They give you a green wrist tag to wear with this vivid warning.

If this surgery fails, an oil bubble is inserted into the eye which keeps it inflated for 2 to 4 months as the retina heals.  This oil has to be removed with additional surgery which necessitates another two-month recovery period for the eye to heal from that.  Then, yay! it's a permanent fix.

But if the oil ball treatment doesn't work, then as my doctor put it, there's only "one more bullet in the cartridge belt," surgery to band the eye.  I don't know what that procedure is and I shudder at the sound of it.  But I don't believe I'm headed in that direction, despite horror stories I've heard about this surgery being repeated several times that I hope are outliers.

Uh, okay so far...

I went in for the one-week-after check-up after my second eye surgery in a week for a detached retina but the prognosis following that surgery, after the first surgery failed, was okay.  I now had a gas bubble in my eye, which would have to be surgically removed later, instead of a gas bubble which would have just dissipated eventually if that surgery had been successful.

The surgeon said the repair of the three tears in the superior region of the retina, the subject of the first surgery, were pretty set now, and the subsequently deteriorating bottom of the retina in the inferior region, the subject of the second surgery, was still adhering although it was still "wet" (not yet adhering although still in place).  He set the next check-up for two months away.

I couldn't lift anything over 5 pounds for weeks if not months, or do anything that would induce strain including sneezing much less scrubbing a sink basin or a floor or pulling up weeds in the yard.  Try living alone and see how that goes as the weeks turn into a month or more.

The weeks of recovery started to drone on.  My eye hurt sometimes, and gave me occasional sudden pangs of pain, and it itched maddeningly, and I started feeding my paranoia by reading reports of persons who had this surgery multiple times, a half dozen or more, in the hope of it taking.

I had two eye surgeries in a week--don't try that at home!

Shockingly, eight days after emergency eye surgery on my "bad eye,"which was definitely rapidly going blind by the hour (three tears in the retina in the superior region), I was undergoing emergency eye surgery for a second time to save either my typical-or-less normal eyesight or to save my dominant eyeball. I was apparently, according to the ophthalmologist, a bad actor who didn't adhere to the severe recovery routine, but remember that he was the surgeon whose operation had failed, and I was discharged from this second surgery within the hour for my most important sense, sight.

My friend Steve drove me to my friend's apartment (all on one floor) (she was away for a family wedding) and I underwent a week of intensive eyeball-saving recovery routine.  Oh yeah, I did.

What had transpired was that I had had the first hopeful surgery to retain my sight, the insertion of a gas bubble into my eye (to keep it inflated) (90 to 95% success rate) (surgeons lie) fail, so now an oil bubble occupied my eye.  It would have to be removed, if the secondary procedure was successful, with a third eye surgery (the gas bubble dissipates, ending the surgical merry-go-round) to remove the oil.

An excruciating week followed wherein my head was flat on a table for 14 hours a day, forehead down.  It sucked hugely, and I went to my one-week-after doctor's appointment with great trepidation, because it seemed that every time I went to Kaiser they slapped me into the OR.

I can fit you in for surgery at noon. It's 11:15 now. Who can come pick you up afterward?

After eight days of lying around miserably following my emergency eye surgery to stave off blindness in my right eye, keeping my head parallel to the floor for as much and as well as I could, I presented myself to the doctor for my one week check-up.  It did not go well.

"Your three tears in the superior region of the retina are still adhering due to the lasering I performed last week but your retina is detaching in the inferior region of your right eye, perhaps due to the inflexible nature of the scarring as the surgery heals which can produce a tension that pulls on the rest of the retina, which is a very delicate covering of the interior of the eye that has the width of only one third of a single layer of an onion skin.  You're going to need immediate additional surgery."

I was shocked and dazed at the doctor's words.  The surgery a week ago had hurt a lot, and the recovery so far had sucked, and it had all apparently been for naught.

"I can fit you in at noon today."  I looked at my watch, it was 11:15 in the morning, my second emergency surgery in eight days was in 45 minutes and I was there alone, as the friend at whose house I had been staying had gone to Florida for a family wedding the night before.

Labor Day 2018

It being the Labor Day holiday, at noon I went for lunch to the Lost Dog Cafe in Westover where I discovered that the gourmet pizzeria had revamped its menu.  I selected the Pedigree Pie, an entry I'd never seen before, and it was delicious, being made with a flaky crust, marinara sauce, tomato wedges, garlic, pine seeds, artichoke hearts, spinach and arugula, having been drizzled with olive oil.

There was plenty for all, in case any welcome guests showed up.  I also enjoyed a Maine Lunch draft, which sadly is the closest I'll come this troubled year to visiting New England as I'd hoped to, before a form of blindness manifested itself in my right eye which hopefully two emergency eye surgeries last month will prevent or at least inhibit greatly when my healing process is done after another as-yet unscheduled eye operation.

The tasty lunch being over, I eschewed eating the last two slices in a time-tested and as yet unsuccessful appeal to the better-luck-next-time attitude I've maintained for, oh, well over a decade now.  Who knows, perhaps good fortune will finally reveal itself at noon on the next holiday, Columbus Day.

It was a beautiful day.  It was perfect for renewing acquaintances and reaffirming family, and starting to put the bitterness, divisiveness and hatreds of these troubled times into the past.

Almost Labor Day

The two surgeries I had in the last month have made me more reflective.  Before I went under last month for the second eye operation in a week, I silently said an Our Father prayer as a way of asking God's plan for me to be fulfilled, although I don't remember finishing it before I went out.  This last month I have been thinking more than usual about my three sons.

Last week I went to church because I felt a heavy freight was building up.  I had already been to church a dozen times this year, the minimum attendance figure I always reach each year, but some things were on my mind so I went again before the new year would start the cycle again.  When I go, I deposit into the collection plate, along with my regular donation, a dollar coin or coins for the person or persons I am thinking about most that I wish especial ethereal help for.

The list was long since I had last been to church in the spring.  I wished to think about during holy communion my cousin who passed along this summer, and also a best friend from childhood who underwent enervating spine fusion lower back surgery last month whose situation, in addition to his unique debilitating operation, is much like mine in that he lives alone, having been divorced badly like I was, and whose one child, like my three children, blames him for the divorce and all the bitterness that came from a nuclear separation and who hasn't spoken to him in many years.  This friend actually recently received national news about his child of a very positive note, so he was proud and happy about that.

The other persons I deposited token coins in the collection basket for last week at church were the husband of another cousin who suddenly suffered emergency gall bladder removal surgery last month, and John McCain, the great American hero who passed last month, and myself for the full recovery of my eye (I don't usually, if ever, pray for myself but my eye condition bothers me greatly daily), and finally my three sons.  They are strange people for sure, to still be unjustifiably although painting my entire family, and me, with the same spurious broad black brush their overbearing narcissistic mother and her paid coterie of "professionals" presented to the three minor boys during the long, rancorous divorce almost two decades ago, and although I have forgiven them for this continuing curious cruelty, I am extremely sad to see their evident personalties of divisiveness and hatred towards other people, most especially towards kinfolk.  But tomorrow being a holiday, who knows, maybe I'll see one or more of them at noon then for lunch at the Lost Dog Pizzeria in Westover, so they can begin their own process of healing and reconciliation before it is forever too late.

A long week

After my eye operation, I was shut up for a week in a friend's apartment (no stairs) where she made me meals while I lay around trying to keep my head parallel to the floor for fourteen hours a day.  It was exhausting work.  Anyone who has ever had intrusive eye surgery or cared for someone who did knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Apparently I didn't do it well.  Or maybe the operation didn't go well.  It's hard to tell, and it's water under the bridge, it ain't comin' back again.

I listened to The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne on tape.  I have no idea what went on in that book as characters came and went confusingly over the generations but there was at least one very bad man in it, or perhaps several, and justified revenge was exacted.  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, which I had read previously a long time ago in ninth grade, went down easier because the action was more straightforward and there was one very good man, or perhaps several, in it although no justice was achieved.

Towards the end of my week in a coma I did take two walks outside for about 20 minutes each, delighting in handling cool packages of cold cuts in a store I stumbled around in for a few minutes.  I tried to use Apple Pay, newly installed in the "wallet" on my new I-phone, to pay for some pasta but I was incapable of successfully negotiating that transaction and paid with cash as the people on line behind me started staring hard at me as the bumbling minute turned into three or four minutes lost forever to all of us.  At the end of the week I went back home for the night, halfway back to the Kaiser Permanente facility in Northern Virginia where the surgery a week before had been performed, so I could present myself the next morning for my one week eye exam.