can you see me now?

There is a reason for the latest bloglessness. It started a few weeks ago.

I noticed that there was a shadow at the bottom of my field of vision. Now, I am the sort of person who thinks "Ach it will go away, give it a few days". This, of course, is why I am now getting chemotherapy, but I digress.

The shadow became blobs. Picture a lava lamp. Now picture that action happening in your eye. OK, I'm calling someone.

It took a few days for each Doctor I called to referreferrefer until I landed in the spiffy wine colored leather examining chair of Dr Henry Lee who tsked and said I had a detached retina. Lovely.

He tried a procedure in the office that involves injecting a bubble of gas behind the retina to slap it back against whatever part of the eye it got detached from. But, a few days later we could tell it wasn't going to work and I would need surgery. Lovely.

Of course, by this time the reality of losing sight in that eye was helping me agree to anything they thought might help. Put my eye in a pickle jar for a week? Sure!

So, off we went to the hospital, my nerves all a jangle, my resolve intact. The wait was torture, but they had to put drops in my eye every 45 minutes for a while, so we watched TV and chatted and pretended that I was not going to have my eye sliced up in an hour.

Now, I have to say that I have never been one to drink much or do drugs. High on life, as they say. The few times I have been overserved I have made a fool of myself. Not hard to do since I teeter on the brink of foolishness just in the regular course of my day. So when the Anesthesiologist, who looked like one of the Doobie Brothers, promised to make me "mellow", I was reassured but hoping that I wouldn't start singing the "A" side of The White Album.

There was no singing, but there was also no pain and I was certainly mellow. Mellow enough to remark that they might want to remove "Blinded by the Light" from the operating room playlist. This resulted in general laughter amongst the disembodied voices and a discussion of what the line "dressed up like a ...." really was. I said "deuce" before I drifted off to nap for a bit. Not sure if they agreed or not.

I was home before dark, a cone over my eye. The next day we saw the Doc again and he said that although I wasn't totally out of the woods yet, the retina was now fully attached. Yay.

So now we wait. And hope that my sight will slowly return. The procedure they used, a sclera buckle, is aggressive surgery and it will take 6 weeks or more for us to know just how much better I will be. I think I can still do my craft, even with just one eye, but don't ever let anyone tell you depth perception is no big deal.

So, that's where I have been. I went 30 years without needing a doctor for anything related to illness. I got smug. OK, I am humbled now. I get it, OK? Cut it out!

Now here's the cute part. At first, after the easy procedure, I was told I had to sleep sitting up. Luckily, I have a big cushy chair with a big cushy footstool, so I bundled myself into it, with pillows strategically placed and hoped for the best. Russell came down with his pillow and a blanket and I asked what he was doing. Well, what he was doing was sleeping on the couch to be with me. I assured him it was OK for him to sleep in bed, I would be fine. He could not imagine leaving me alone downstairs. And so for a few days there we were. Me in the chair, Russell and the dogs on the couch.

I may be blind in one eye, but some things I can see crystal clear, right from the heart.