Done?

Early this month I had my fourth and hopefully last eye surgery shortly after I returned from  Europe, removing the cataract in my affected eye and putting in a plastic lens that I will have for life.  It's pretty standard surgery but it's a little more tricky when the eye has suffered prior operations because the resulting trauma can damage the "platform" that house the lens.

I was more than apprehensive.  Not only did I have the after-effects of a cold which caused me to need to cough every few minutes to clear my chest congestion but my three prior eye operations were definitely a mixed bag.

The first operation was dreadful, it hurt and I felt every cut and was ordered by the doctor several times to "Lie still!" which I did to the best of my pain-wracked ability.  The second operation a week later after the first one failed, I was put to sleep, at my insistence, and they filled my eye with oil to keep the pressure up while I went through a week of dreadful face-down convalescence and while my retina slowly healed.  The third operation, to get the oil out, they insisted that I be alert with only a local anesthetic, just like the first operation, so I could cooperate with the surgeon if necessary.  I fell asleep on the table (or went out) so I only remember being wheeled in and waking up as I was wheeled out.

This time I had to cooperate with the surgeon again and I was awake throughout and did stare at certain lights upon command or moved my eye as directed.  I felt pressure but no pain and had no distress; it helped that I knew what they were going to do (smash the existing lens with ultrasound to liquify it, remove it, then drop in the artificial lens through the cut in the cornea where it would unfold like a blooming g flower) thanks to an hour-long class I was required to take.  I felt liquid, cold liquid, being splashed or washed over my eye several times and I was gripping the edge of the gurney in a death grip waiting for pain to intrude (sort of like when I'm in the dentist's chair) but it never came and then I heard the surgeon say, "It's finished," and I was wheeled out.  In a few weeks I'll go to the optometrist to get a new prescription for corrective lens and see how well I'll be able to see again.

2018, 3d Quarter

July dawned hopefully when on its first day I toured the wine country in Virginia with a friend and we settled into a delightful afternoon of sampling wine offerings from at the Stone Tower Vineyard, and the future looked bright.  The month closed out with a medical emergency which I am still recovering from--the sudden loss of sight in my right eye due to a torn retina requiring immediate eye surgery.  Two more eye surgeries later, it finally seems that perhaps I will save much or most of my sight in that eye.

In between that yin and yang, I attended a memorial service at a lovely church in Ambler, PA  in honor of a cousin of mine, Andrea, who led a notable life as a social worker.  Enroute to that somber event I enjoyed a minor-league baseball game in York, PA, once the capital of the USA for a short while, and paid tribute to a friend of mine who lost his life in 2010 defending our freedoms in Afghanistan, whose likeness was emblazoned on a flag alongside the road on a hill overlooking downtown York amidst a sea of other flags honoring other fallen heroes from the York area (Adam was born in York) in this century's wars.  I also watched July Fourth fireworks from my back steps after enjoying a holiday lunch at the local gourmet pizzeria, forlornly hoping that any or all of my estranged children would finally show up, had lunch with my mentor from my former workplace, ran a few miles on the Mall with a colleague from my former agency where we ran by and momentarily joined in with an active rally for a woman's right to choose the medical provisions she desires or needs for her own body, and hiked the Billy Goat Trail in MD with a friend.

August was tied up with healing from my two surgeries of last summer in a mode of recuperation  known as face-down recovery, where you lie face-down in stillness for 14 hours a day for a couple of weeks following retina surgery, an infamous procedure known only to those unlucky persons who have the onset of torn or detached retinas, largely, I am told, due to genes and can suffer from multiple eye surgeries in amelioration of the condition.  It sucks bigly, and in the second surgery the medical team filled my eye with oil to get the retina to adhere to its bed of cones and rods, a procedure which requires a subsequent surgery to get the oil back out again.  Late in the month I did go for a walk around Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River with a friend, ate out a few times with friends and had a friend take me to see a baseball game at a minor league park in MD.

September was similarly spent sedately, wherein I enjoyed a holiday lunch on Labor Day at my local gourmet pizzeria, discovered that some miscreants had stolen my spare tire sometime during the prior months from my vehicle while it was parked in my driveway most likely, and armed my household following this second expensive invasion of my curtilege during this century.  Mostly I hung around waiting for the day when the oil would be scooped out of my afflicted eye and replaced, naturally, with eye fluid, a procedure I yearned for because the eye never felt right, being filled with a foreign substance within a closed system, and it led to the infrequent but maddening onset of white flare outbursts within my vision in that eye when, as the doctor explained to me, the optic nerve was momentarily uncovered by some movement of mine, a condition which I scrupulously sought to avoid by trying not to have any sudden movements of my head.  Late in the month my sister came to town on business, and we spent a wonderful evening and a day wandering around the District visiting museums, eating in Chinatown and drinking in Irish Pubs.

At best, it's going to be a long four months.

I saw the doctor yesterday for the day-after appointment, and he said the retina looked alright, that it was still adhering to its wall of cones and rods so that was good.  The pressure in my good eye is normal at 18 and the pressure in the recovering eye is 5, which he said would come upon by the one-week appointment.

There's blood in the eye and I have maddening tiny bubbles floating all around my field of vision which he said were silicon oil globule since they can't get all the oil out so I guess I better get used to a moving cloud in my eye.  If the recovery proceeds well, I will have to be on severe restrictions for 8 weeks--no sneezing, coughing, bending over, picking anything up over 5 pounds, and taking eyedrops every 4 waking hours, ointment at night, a daily stool softener, with travel restricted and no driving for now.

But, no face-down period of recovery.  I am grateful for small, or perhaps big, things in light of this misfortune.  After that down period, for two more months I have to take it very easy, no running, workouts or strenuous activity.

Then if all goes well, sometime next spring, I can start getting back with my life.  I'm starting to think that my big car trip around the good ol' USA that I thought I would take after I retired will never happen.