Swimming and surgery

Here are the girls having fun on Wednesday while mom is going under the knife. I didn't get to be with them for any of the fun - no room for me in the car. Sitting at home alone I felt like the kid who didn't get picked for the team but I'm very thankful that they got to go have some fun after a long dry spell. They absolutely love their new friend Madison, after dreading her coming, thinking she was going to take Anna's attention away from them. I knew Anna better than that and all four got along great, at least from my two's point of view! Madison let Jing play with her Nintendo DS and Jing has a new passionate desire to own one!

Surgery itself was a breeze - I have no memory of anything coming at my eye, which is what I was dreading. But post surgery has been a let-down. I have strained to do my work so long I was gasping with desperation to be able to DRIVE and to read better and see to do my work without intense squinting of my entire face with resultant constant eye strain and headaches. Well now I can't read hardly at all. They gave me reading glasses which enables me to read large type and computer type, as it is lit up brightly, but I can't read my watch, can't read prices in the store, can't pick up a book and read if the type is smallish. What I do type and read is double letters sliding into each other and just exhausts my eye and me. I know (hope!) eventually glasses will correct this but on top of another bit of bad news I have been pretty blue. Not even sure I can drive yet - too rainy today to attempt driving for the first time in five months.

The surgeon had asked me many times if I had a trauma in my left eye, which at this point is so thick with cataract I can only see vague shapes - no meaningful vision. I told him I knew of nothing. He cannot get a good look behind the cataract with any machine they have or with a slit lamp as it is so thick. He had told me he would try the traditional surgery but it had at most a 50% chance of succeeding. If not, he would go in and scrape my eye and something else I don't remember, some kind of compensation for muscles too weak to hold up the new lens. Well yesterday I said, "Please get this other thing out so I can see! When can you do it?!" He said, "I'm not going to do it. I'm not touching that eye."

He said I needed a specialist and that Lion's Club would probably not pay for that and even if they did I would probably not get accepted as a patient with no insurance. He is one of the top surgeons in the country so I am somewhat concerned about this. One of the ladies there told me he was very cautious. And they told me no glasses until both eyes are done, but they are going to have to change that as I can't live unable to read! My eyestrain between the new sharp distance vision and the double/blurry vision up close mixed in with an eye that is "way past 20/200" is almost worse in ways than when the cataract was in. I know part of it will be adjusting but I am somewhat blue about it at the moment, particularly since it's not the only serious issue on the board at the moment!

But for today, I have two happy chatty girls all excited about their adventure and for preservation of my spirit and need of more income I have decided to take the plunge after years of longing to try my hand at making sterling silver jewelry with Precious Metal Clay. I so need something new and exciting creatively to give me a spark right now. Can't afford it, but I'm getting the cheapest set-up, no kiln alas, and I hope it pays for itself before too long. I may even start a PMC newbie blog when my stuff comes!

Toss out a prayer for me if you can spare one. I could use all I can get right now.