Explaining My Absence

I have been away from the blog so long because (1) of my recovery from the PRK touch-up in my right eye, which, again, has resulted in my desktop computer drying out my eye; (2) I accompanied my husband on a business trip to Quebec for a week; and (3) well, how can you tell that I’m under the weather, because I can’t remember three!

Addressing (2) – I’ll post a few piccies of the Quebec trip in a few days. I’ve ordered a pair of Gunnars computer glasses and hope that when I receive them I’ll able to spend more time at the desktop, which is where I update the blog. For now, I’m editing a manuscript on Daisy, my netbook.

If you’ve never heard of Gunnars, I sort of found about them by accident. A friend aware of my difficulty with dry eyes following surgery told me she had seen “computer glasses” with yellow lenses that cut down on blue glare in a major department store. So I went looking. And I found some Foster Grants, but they’re reading glasses. And I don’t need reading glasses. I just need something to cut down the glare. Some Internet searching took me to the Gunnars website, and now I am awaiting my pair. I’ll let you know what I think.

It’s been six weeks since I had the right eye (my distance eye) corrected for the second time. This time I had PRK surgery, which has a much longer recovery period than the SBK surgery I had fourteen months ago. About ten days post-surgery, I could see 20/30 in the eye doctor’s office, whereas before the surgery I had fallen from near 20/20 vision down to 20/50 over a period of six months. I’ve been told that 20/30 for 10 days post-PRK is good.

At the four week post-PRK surgery, I was seeing at around 20/25 and 20/30, so not much improvement. That was two weeks ago. My vision was much clearer than at the 10 day appointment, but I had developed a sort of double vision which especially affects me when reading something in the distance and making me very glad I still have driving glasses to allow the left eye to take over for driving.

The double vision is a bit disconcerting, although it’s getting better as the weeks progress. I am now at 6 weeks post-surgery and I won’t see the eye doctor again until the 3 month point, where the goal is that I’ll be seeing 20/20. In about the last ten days, I have begun noticing an improvement in the double vision, which is a weird sort of experience in that I CAN see, for example, the name of an elementary school nearby as I’m walking the dog, but I also see a ghost image of the name right above the real name. However, now I’m noticing that if I lower my head and look out the top of my eye, the ghost image goes away. At first it was if I lifted my head and looked out the bottom of my eye, the ghost image would go away. Now it’s the top. My fervent hope is that over the next several weeks I will be able to look through the MIDDLE of my eye and not see the ghost images. Cross your fingers!

Before the PRK touch-up, the eye doctor could not get me to see 20/20 out of my right eye even with corrective lenses. I do have great hope, considering the clarity of what I can see out of the top of my eye 🙂 that even if I will eventually still require driving glasses, that I will be able to see distance clearly enough for everyday activities that don’t involve getting behind the wheel.

The last time I posted, WHERE SHE BELONGS was on the Paid Bestseller lists for Amazon Kindle following a very successful free run in which I gave away over 96,000 copies of the book worldwide! I have some other commentary and stats I’d like to share with you, hopefully later this week. Now that WHERE SHE BELONGS is back on paid status, however, the book continues to sell very well. I should surpass having sold 1000 copies either today or tomorrow. Sales are also up for HEAD OVER HEELS, Deceiving Derek, and Catching Claire. More about all of that soon!