Category: The Non-Writing Life

I haven’t blogged in a while. That’s because, on Jan. 11th, I had touch-up laser eye surgery on my right eye—the distance eye. The eye that didn’t “take” when I originally had laser surgery on both eyes over a year ago. Today I had my third post-op follow-up appointment, however, so it’s time for a report. And then, unless I have something newsworthy to announce, I will take a break from blogging until my right eye can withstand the bright, 21-inch desktop screen. Right now I’m wearing my Panama hat to help shield the brightness. As I’m editing BORROWING ALEX for re-issue, I’m finding it much easier on my eye to work on my netbook and check email, etc. on my iPad.

Back to the surgery…

I went in January 11th expecting to have the SBK procedure, which is what I had last year. However, the optometrist had warned me that if my “flap” (created by LASIK and SBK) was resistant to lifting, I might have to have PRK (I’d link to articles explaining the differences in the surgeries, but I don’t want to spend more time here than necessary, and if you Google PRK versus SBK, or PRK versus LASIK, you’ll find them). (P.S. when my son had PRK, the cost for the LASIK and PRK were the same; when I had SBK, it was quite a bit more expensive. The idea is the benefits of achieving best vision quickly make up for the cost. However, when you experience a regression, like I did, in retrospect the extra money would have been better spent elsewhere).

The flap was resistant to lifting. This is something they don’t discover until you’re flat on the table with your head squished in a pliable pillow thingy, your eyeball frozen, a bit of drugs flowing through your veins, and the surgeon attempts to lift the flap with an “instrument.” I didn’t get a look at this “instrument,” and I didn’t want to. If it had looked anything like a scalpel, or even a crochet hook, I would have been all that much more nervous.

Despite the Atavan, and despite that I had experienced surgery in both eyes before, I was nervous. I like to think the surgeons have everything under control, but of course I never believe that until it’s over.

So my surgeon is digging around in my eye with the “instrument,” trying to lift my flap. I felt him try four places. I thought maybe the flap was lifting and he just needed to pry all four places loose. So I just held my breath and tried to remain calm. Then I heard him utter, “Damn it.” That was during the fourth flap-lifting attempt. He inhaled, sat back and said, “I’m sorry, Cindy. This isn’t going to work.”

I thought, Crap, they’re going to send me home. Because that’s what a technician had mentioned—that if the flap couldn’t be lifted, they would send me home and “try PRK another time.” PRK is when, instead of lifting your flap, they “melt” (my word for it) the top layer of your eyeball off. Well, they don’t really melt it off. They use a little brush type of thing to sweep it off. My son had PRK two years ago, and I watched his surgery on the TV screen in the waiting room. I thought the sweeping off of the epithelium (after it had been doused with a VERY cold solution) would feel horrid. But, actually, now that I’ve experienced SBK and PRK, I far prefer the PRK. The surgeon stepped away from my head after telling me that my eye had already been traumatized and so they wouldn’t send me home. They would proceed to the PRK. They then needed to switch things around a bit, so I just laid there.

Once we got going again, they added more freezing agent to my eye, then, as far as I can remember, swamped it with the ice-cold solution, then brushed off the epithelium, which was nowhere near as horrendous as I expected. If I had to do it again (and I don’t think I can ever do it again—if this time doesn’t work, I’m out of luck), if I had to do it for the first time, I’d choose PRK. Now, you might think I’m saying this because the SBK didn’t work. And that’s partly it. Why not give the PRK a try? But I somehow also thought the PRK would be a worse experience; however, I discovered I prefer the sweeping away of my epithelium to a suction cup clamping my eye while a laser makes an incision in the epithelium.

Once the SBK or PRK preparation has occurred, the procedure is the same from there. You focus on these little red lights that make zapping sounds (and you smell your hair burning, but it’s not really your hair, it’s the lasering of your eye). Because this was a touch-up, I didn’t see as many red lights or smell as much burning or hear as many zapping sounds as I had last year. The nice thing about laser eye surgery is it’s over very fast.

Then a technician helped me up, and I spotted a teddy bear by one machine. “What’s the teddy bear for?” I asked.

“If someone’s very scared, we’ll give them the bear to hold.”

“I was very scared!!”

I guess I wasn’t as scared as I’d thought.

Recovering from SBK, for me, was horrific the first day as the eyes unthawed. And my eyes were super dry for months afterward. This year, with PRK, I knew from my son’s and others’ experiences that the third or fourth day is generally the worst, and this stood true for me. I didn’t have that much discomfort on days 1 and 2 (however, I had only had a touch-up, not a full-on eye-frying), but day 3 was a nasty little witch. This year, I was prepared. I had purchased eye drops up the whazoo of the brands and types that I had experimented with over the last twelve months when it became apparent that the regular old eye drops they supply you with weren’t going to work.

The day after surgery, I returned for my first post-op. With SBK, I was seeing at 20/20 minus one on day one (which means I missed one letter on the 20/20 chart). However, my astigmatism did not go away from the treatment and by the time I reached 3 months post-surgery my eye was reading 20/30 (what a normal person could see at 30 feet, I could see at 20 feet). Last summer and this fall, my vision had regressed even more, to 20/50 (what a normal person can see at 50 feet, I could see at 20 feet…you can understand how that might have annoyed me).

Well, today, ten days post-surgery, I am back to 20/30, which is good for PRK recovery at this time. Unlike SBK or LASIK, with PRK you can’t expect to be back at work or driving after 72 hours. Luckily, my left eye, my reading eye, didn’t require a revision treatment, so I found that I could read and use the iPad within two or three days…as long as I kept my right eye plenty saturated with eye drops.

As well as my eye not being as dry from the revision, my eye isn’t as light-sensitive as it was last year. It’s sensitive, just not as much. I go back again a month post-surgery (about three weeks), and I look forward to reporting even more progress. The optometrist was very happy with my progress today. With PRK it takes about 6-8 weeks before you know where you really stand, and you see the clinic again at 3 months and 6 months. It can take up to six months to achieve your best vision.

Cross your fingers that the touch-up works! So far, I’m happy.

By the way, I do have some good news to report, but I must save it for another day. Time to get off the desktop and douse my eye in drops!

“Seeing” (get it?) as some of you have been following my progress (or lack thereof) following SBK laser eye surgery in December 2011, I thought I’d offer yet another follow-up. I went to see the clinic again last week.

The good news is, they think a touch-up can help me. The bad news is I’m not confident how much it can help me. My left eye remains bionic—it’s wonderful at reading close (which is what it was designed to do) and it’s not too shabby in the near-to-mid-distance department. I am in love with my left eye.

My right eye is the one that requires a touch-up. I had measurements taken last week and compared to the measurements taken 6 or 8 weeks previous. The measurements haven’t changed all that much, and that’s good. There’s always going to be some fluctuations. The eye guy can’t see anything on the surface of my right eye that might be hampering my vision. That’s good, too. However…and this is where my disappointment comes in…At this nine-month point, I simply could not stand going without glasses for driving any longer. I know from this whole experience that you’re allowed to have pretty crappy vision and be considered legal to drive. Honestly, I’m amazed how bad your vision can be and you’re “legal.” It’s ridiculous.

I no longer care if I’m “legal” or not, I like clear vision when I’m driving. And, I’m attending the Novelists Inc. conference in a couple of weeks. Which means I’m going to be in a few airports and in a hotel (and catching some Broadway—it’s only a minor addiction), and I need to be able to see to enjoy a successful conference. Just in case a plane is late, I can’t be squinting up at monitors. I need to glance and go.

So…I decided that even though I should be getting my laser surgery touch-up before the end of the year, I wanted driving glasses now and glasses to take to the conference.

Luckily, I never gave away my old frames, so this meant getting one lens replaced that I would eventually need for night driving anyway (the left eye—the reading eye) and getting the right lens temporarily replaced until after I have my touch-up. I decided I could live with that extra expense. So I had the laser clinic write me up a prescription.

It never occurred to me that I would not be able to see distance clearly with a glasses prescription! Yet that is what’s happened.

My left eye, the bionic eye, can see fantastic distance with the glasses while driving. But my right eye, even with glasses, I STILL can’t see distance clearly. And I could see distance clearly with glasses before laser eye surgery, thank you very much.

I am hoping this is a temporary condition. One of the reasons the clinic didn’t schedule me for touch-up surgery now is that my right eye wasn’t seeing clearly in the office, with the aid of the doctor’s fancy machines. At the last check-up, I could see clearly when he passed this little monocle thing in front of my eye. Last week, I couldn’t. Somehow I thought I would be able to see clearly with the glasses, but nope.

So something is going on with my right eye. The eye doc has prescribed a steroid eye drop to take in my right eye three times a day. It’s supposed to help with irritation and/or inflammation. My next appointment is mid-November, after I return from White Plains, NY. Cross your eyelashes that I can see clearly at that point (I mean with the aid of lenses) because then we can schedule the touch-up.

In the end, I might have to accept that I will never again see distance clearly out of my right eye, even with a touch-up and even, after that, wearing glasses. I might have to be content with better mid-distance vision and then letting my left do all the work when I’m driving.

Anyway, you know when you read the fine print about how you might never be able to achieve your “best personal vision”? I think that’s what’s happening. The eye guy is hoping the steroid drops (not as strong as the drops I used when recovering last winter) will do the trick. And so am “eye.” 🙂

I skipped out on my six-month follow-up report for the laser eye surgery I had last December. If you want to read the whine-fest for my recovery at the three-month point, click here.

The reason I didn’t post at the six-month point is because SNAFU and FUBAR were having their wicked way with me. Not only had my eyes not improved any at the six-month point, but my prescription had gotten a little worse. I’m only talking about the right eye, which was set for distance. My left eye, which was set for reading, is amazing. No problems at all.

So, at six months I learned that my vision was still on the down slide and that my astigmatism, which the surgery was supposed to address, had not gone away. My eye guy dutifully faxed his findings to the laser eye surgery clinic in another town, and I knew from talking to the clinic at the three-month point that I was to wait a few days, maybe a week if the surgeon was on holidays, to hear back.

So I waited. And I waited. And then I waited some more.

After three weeks, I thought surely he must have returned from holiday by now–that is, if he’d left in the first place. So I called. Nope, they hadn’t received a fax from my optometrist on June 16th. Phone call to Eye Guy. Yes, they’d sent it off and had the time stamp to prove it. Of course, it was close to the end of a work day.

Phone call back to the laser eye clinic. Oops. Guess they did send it to us. Wonder what happened to it? Can they please send it again?

I guess a mouse ate the faxed report. Whatever. On around July 7th it was sent again, and by the time I heard from the laser eye clinic that they wanted to see me do some scans, I was just about to leave for the RWA National Conference in Anaheim. So we scheduled my exam for August 15th, this week. Eight months practically exactly since I had the surgery.

The result? Good news! Well, the bad news first is that my eye is even worse than it was at six months. But the culprit isn’t just the distance. It’s my astigmatism. The distance and the astigmatism combined have been FUBARing all over the place. However, I don’t have severe dry eye. I just feel like I need drops all the time because my poor right eye is trying to focus on SOMETHING and is having a devil of a time.

The upshot of all this is that there IS, thank God, enough prescription, as they call it, that I qualify for an “enhancement.” Another word for this is a “touch-up.” WHEN to have the touch-up is the question. I don’t want to have the touch-up until we’re reasonably assured that my right eye vision is stable in its crapability. So I’m going back in six weeks, and we’ll see how crappy my vision is then.

In the meantime, I am “legal” for driving. But I only feel safe driving in bright sunlight. No twilight or night time or rainy driving for me. Snow would totally freak me out.

I will most likely, after the enhancement, still feel the need for driving glasses for certain situations (like long drives at night), but as long as I don’t feel the need for glasses every time I leave the house (or even watching TV lately), I’ll be happy. After all, life consists of more than staring at a computer screen, although both eyes can perform that feat remarkably well.

Cross your fingers that I get a green light in 6 weeks and that the resulting enhancement is a success. I’m not pleased to have to re-experience the recovery period but if I get a decent right eye out of the deal, I will be SUPER HAPPY. You can bet on it.

Ever wonder about those people who tweet while they’re watching Toddlers & Tiaras or cutting the grass? Well, I have. I’ve wondered how they can enjoy what they’re watching or doing while under the stress of tweeting every two seconds. So yesterday I decided to put Power Tweeting to the test (here’s a link to my Twitter feed, if you’re interested. I’m not over there all that much. Honest.)

I probably lost a few followers during the cake-making process, but it was actually fun. I tweeted about baking my first “from scratch” cake in over twenty years. You see, today’s my father’s 80th birthday (Happy Birthday, Dad!), and I wanted to do something special for him. When my kids were little, I iced the most amazing cakes for their birthdays. One sweltering summer night, when we had no air-conditioning, I spent 4 hours decorating a Bert-and-Ernie-shaped cake. All those shirt stripes! All those colors! My son loved it, but little did he know…I used cake mix. I have always used cake mix, no matter how fancy the decorating (I’m an awesome decorator). I’m too lazy to bake cake from scratch. Mainly because I don’t usually like cake, so it’s not worth the effort. I’m more a chocolate mousse girl. However, Youngest Son’s girlfriend (G-2 for the purposes of this blog) is an excellent baker, and she makes the most Divine Chocolate Raspberry Torte ever! It is DELISH. I wanted to make my own Divine Chocolate Raspberry Torte for my dad.

Note, G-2 is of those bakers who doesn’t have the recipe written down. She had to type up the instructions special for me. My mother is like this. These “natural” bakers and gourmet cooks will trip you up if you’re not careful.

The resulting Twitter feed:

•  Googling “How to Separate an Egg.” I had an egg separator but it broke after 20 years of non-use (it fell off its perch!)
•  What, this is a Canadian recipe! “4 oz bakers’ chocolate.” How big is a freaking ounce? How many SQUARES of chocolate?
•  Eat 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Guaranteed you will not want to taste brown sugar again for at least six months.
•  “Find two pots roughly same size so one fits snugly atop the other.” Uh, shouldn’t that be Use a double boiler? (note my superior tone here).
•  tip – cut up the chocolate. It will melt faster.
•  Tip – “stir until mixture makes a smooth custard” = let it thicken. (I had to think about that one!)
•  Frantically phone son’s gf to find out what to do with the custard! Not mentioned in recipe! Hint – it goes into the batter.
•  Lick the beaters clean of cake batter, because you’re going to need them to beat egg whites.
•  Eat more brown sugar. Only one Tbsp. this time.
•  Schedule trip to corner store to replace large Hershey’s bar needed for chocolate shavings, because you ate it two nights ago.
•  The cake is in the oven! I can not be foiled! Wash dishes to prepare for Round 2.
•  Play Scrabble on Facebook while cake layers bake.
•  Increase baking time from 25 min to 30 min because these toothpicks are damn sticky!!
•  Adjust baking time to 32 minutes, curse stupid oven, and kill spider on stove top.
•  32 minutes is perfect! Time for Round 2. The filling.
•  Tip. Do not shove measuring cup just used to measure cocoa powder into icing sugar bag.
•  Don’t believe husband on your way out the door for replacement chocolate bar when he says you don’t have cake batter on your face.
•  Son’s gf is right. At least one of the two cake layers will fall apart when cutting it in half. Put on bottom of cake plate.
•  Next time don’t be so quick to show her up by cutting layer in half too quickly. (See how I resisted the urge to edit out the redundant quickly?)
•  Don’t buy fresh raspberries for chocolate whip cream/raspberry filling b/c you’ll only eat them the day before.
•  Congratulate self on buying rotating cake plate in 1985.
•  Resist urge to eat chocolate whip cream filling while assembling four layers of cake BECAUSE YOU WILL RUN OUT.
•  Shove frozen raspberries into gaps on sides of cake. Artfully, so as to appear on purpose.
•  Another pack of fresh raspberries in fridge! I didn’t eat them all. Arrange around cake base. Chocolate shavings on top!
•  “Chocolate shavings” really means “curlicues.” Finally, a use for the side of grater with three horizontal holes.
•  Shove broken pieces of leftover chocolate bar between cake layers (thought of this all on my own! Helps balance the layers).
•  Put in fridge overnight for tomorrow’s party. I have conquered G-2’s Divine Chocolate Raspberry Torte!

The Proof:

Go on, admit it. You’re impressed.

I just returned from my three-month post-op follow-up after having SBK laser eye surgery on December 16th. I’m doing the follow-ups with a local optometrist, because I didn’t want to drive in the winter to the clinic in another town where the surgery was performed.

My dryness issues have improved a lot since the one-month point. I began experimenting with eye drops rather than just sticking with those recommended to me, and what I’ve discovered is that I need drops with either mineral oil or castor oil in them. Those work the best for me.

I also dug out an old humidifier and put it in my office. I run it when I’m working in here. This is especially important if you live in a dry area, and we had a very dry winter. If I had it to do over again, I would not recommend having laser eye surgery in the middle of December if you live in a dry climate. However, I had no way of knowing how dry December and January would be. The typical March weather we’re having now, I’d have the laser surgery in a minute.

If you’ve been following my posts, it’s obvious I haven’t been happy with my distance vision (I had mono vision, and the left eye, my reading eye, is a marvel). At the three-month point, I have 20/30 vision. I was told at the one month point that I would probably need glasses for driving long distances at night. “Forget long distances,” I told the optometrist today. “I don’t feel safe driving to the corner store at night.”

I haven’t tried a lot of night driving since having the surgery, because one episode of twilight driving freaked me out. But last week I had to go sit with a relative for a few hours, and the only way to get there was to drive. I realized I need glasses to drive short distances at night. At night, I should always wear driving glasses.

That would be okay, but I feel the need for glasses even driving during the day. Road signs swoop down on me, and that’s not good when you’re looking for directions. Around my own town, if I’m just doing the grocery shopping, etc., then it’s okay. But toss in some rain or anything other than bright sun, and I’m nervous.

Then, several days ago, I went to the mall. And realized I needed glasses in the freaking mall. Either that or squint so I could see the stores coming up. And I already have “natural” squint lines (ie. from age). I don’t need them getting any deeper!

The most aggravating part, though, is feeling the need for glasses when I’m walking the dog. Again, this comes down to an acuity issue. I can see landscape, but letters on roadsigns are where I have an issue, depending on their size.

Thankfully, my local optometrist agreed with me and has asked the laser eye clinic to give me a call. We’ll discuss my options. I’m hoping for a “touch-up,” but you have to wait at least six months, to give your eyes enough time to properly heal.

So while my optometrist was thinking (at the one month point) that he would give me a prescription for “occasional” night time driving glasses, he now understands why I’m not happy with my distance vision. Hey, SBK is expensive. If the clinic can help me achieve better results with a touch-up, I’m all over that action. And this time I’ll know what to expect in terms of pain as your eyes thaw and in terms of dryness. I know which products work for me and which are better left to someone else’s eyes.

So…I’m happy. I mean, in a perfect world, I would not WANT a repeat of laser eye surgery. That wasn’t my goal going in. My goal was to be clapping and jumping up and down because I was so pleased with my vision.

That’s still my goal. I just haven’t met it…yet.