I've been perusing the lasik message boards for creatures like me who aren't certain yet if it was worth the hassle. I've found two groups of people; the ones I'd always heard about who had the surgery on Friday and were back at work Monday like nothing ever happened and the people like me who wondered what the hell happened that they weren't like the first group. The more I dug, the more I noticed that the perky people had very low corrections -2s and such. The people like me had much greater correction, -6s up to -9s. People with greater corrections seemed to have more problems with dry eye, with blurriness, with irritation. I guess it makes sense. We had two to three times more cornea burned off. We've had much more trauma to the eye that wasn't there before and doing more damage with the laser has to be more traumatic to the eye.
I wish I would have known this. It would make everything more tolerable if I hadn't been expecting everything to be easy and life back to normal in just a couple of days. They also forgot to tell me the no antihistimines rule until half an hour before the surgery. Right now my vision goes in and out depending on how dry my eyes decide to be that day. One day my right eye will be fine, except for slight blurriness, the next day it'll feel totally irritated. I can't do computer work for more than two hours without totally exhausting my eyes, and if I do intense computer work, I won't be able to read that evening due to eye strain and irritation. I am going through about 150 vials of eyedrops a week, down from 40-50 a day right after surgery - but still pretty intense. And my eyes have been healing perfectly and amazed the eye doctor with how quickly they were healing. Imagine what it would be like if I'd had complications! Oh, and because I can't rub my eyes and clean them well, I am starting to form stys on the eyelids and have to put hot compresses on them which drys my eyes even more.
And it isn't as cool as I thought it would be. The whole seeing the clock clearly in the morning thing wears off quickly when you wake up three times a night to put eyedrops in because your eye lid is sticking to your cornea. I wanted lasik for the convenience - not having the discomfort and bother of contact lenses and seeing better than glasses. I have neither at this point. I fool with my eyedrops more than I ever did with my contacts and my eyes are always tired or irritable. With the blurrines of dry eye and the bluriness of one eye focusing rather than both, I saw better with glasses which force both eyes to focus equally well - something I've found doesn't happen normally without lenses.
The bright part is that on the message boards there are people who were like me who are now a year out of surgery and say that it does get better, that it took them six months of irritation and dry eye but now they are so happy they did it and would never go back. That is something to look forward to. I do have some good days where my eyes feel good and I look in the mirror and like what I see and enjoy the freedom. They are usually just half days here and there - but I really hope they will become the norm and make it worth the extravagant money we paid.
Monday, August 27, 2007
It is 10:30am, the house is quiet. The MIL is still asleep and I can imagine that I am alone, and that the summer is just beginning and that it will be a good one. It is a lovely morning, made more lovely by not having to make conversation with someone who has no conversation. It has been too long a summer. Summers are meant to fly by, to be exciting and satisfying enough to get us through the winter months. I don't feel energized. I feel depleted, heading into my most difficult season. It will be cold here before she leaves. She will have sucked the life and energy out of the nicest part of Ohio's weather and I am angry. I am tired of sleeping on the couch. I am tired of cleaning up cat piss from the bedroom carpeting downstairs and not being able to fix the situation because there is no room to move furniture out. Five weeks to go. One of those weeks will be spent at my parent's house taking care of their animals. Starting Saturday, they will be gone for five days. So, really, three weeks. That's not so bad is it?
Oh god, she's up. Time to retreat to the back porch. We went out to eat last night and it was torture. She has no conversation, and has to repeat everything said back to us a couple of times before she gets it. It is an effective conversation killer. Same way with dinner and a movie the night before. Saw Becoming Jane, but couldn't get into it with her sitting on the other side of my husband like a black crow. I really don't understand - very rarely she says something brilliant and witty and I realize there must be some intelligence under that dull facade. And she becomes very animated when talking baseball stats and hands from her computer bridge game to my husband. But most of the time you'd think she was dumb as a post and I don't know how to bring out the intelligence. It is difficult enough for me to make conversation with someone I have things in common with. I have never met someone I have less in common with than my MIL, in interests, in life views, in temperament and in our philosophy of life. Three very long weeks to go.
Oh god, she's up. Time to retreat to the back porch. We went out to eat last night and it was torture. She has no conversation, and has to repeat everything said back to us a couple of times before she gets it. It is an effective conversation killer. Same way with dinner and a movie the night before. Saw Becoming Jane, but couldn't get into it with her sitting on the other side of my husband like a black crow. I really don't understand - very rarely she says something brilliant and witty and I realize there must be some intelligence under that dull facade. And she becomes very animated when talking baseball stats and hands from her computer bridge game to my husband. But most of the time you'd think she was dumb as a post and I don't know how to bring out the intelligence. It is difficult enough for me to make conversation with someone I have things in common with. I have never met someone I have less in common with than my MIL, in interests, in life views, in temperament and in our philosophy of life. Three very long weeks to go.
Friday, August 24, 2007
scary
I was out beside our house picking up sticks so I could mow. My dog Aslan was about five feet away in the grass and I was walking towards him when he started dancing and whining and snapping. My other dog tucked her tail and ran to the house. I saw the bees swarming around Aslan and yelled for him to "go home." He had about four stings, one above his eye, one on his stomach and one behind each front leg. He's fine, I gave him a benadryl and he is a bit loopy, keeping him from being as stressed as he was when it first happened. He's gotten stung before, so I knew he wasn't allergic, but getting stung several times can trigger a reaction even in a non-allergic animal or person.
His stumbling and stupidity may have saved my life. I'm allergic to bees and I was not carrying my epipen because all I was doing was walking in the yard. If I'd gotten stung four or five times, I might not have been able to reach the house to get my epipen. There was a Highway Patrol officer this week who died after being stung once by a yellow jacket in his office. He used two epipens and was at the hospital in 15 minutes and he still died. It really scared me - I mowed the very front part of the lawn, but couldn't bring myself to mow the rest of the top part, even after walking it to make certain there were no nests. I'm not on any antihistamines that would slow the allergic reaction. I've just gotten my eyes done, the vestibulitis disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared and I'm just starting to feel really in shape and healthy. I really don't want to die at this point in my life. I hate that we don't get a choice, and we don't always get to prepare.
My brain has begun obsessing about death this week. Maybe it is the coming of Autumn that does it, and the beginning of the seasonal depression. Certainly the deaths of my father-in-law and my Grandpa earlier this year haven't helped. I've become afraid that B. won't make it home from work, that I'll die in some perverse way and never really get to accomplish the things I think I want. Because we really don't know. We could be perfect drivers with every safety feature available on our car - but if that semi-driver falls asleep and hits us at 65 mph, nothing will save us. I could live my whole life in risk avoidance mode, never going off my property; but then step on a bees nest in my own back yard and die. Maybe that was the point of this little cosmic rude awakening - obsessing about death is useless because it will never happen when you are prepared, and it won't happen the way you fear. When it happens it will probably be unavoidable and thinking and obsessing will do nothing but cause you to live a small, unhappy life.
His stumbling and stupidity may have saved my life. I'm allergic to bees and I was not carrying my epipen because all I was doing was walking in the yard. If I'd gotten stung four or five times, I might not have been able to reach the house to get my epipen. There was a Highway Patrol officer this week who died after being stung once by a yellow jacket in his office. He used two epipens and was at the hospital in 15 minutes and he still died. It really scared me - I mowed the very front part of the lawn, but couldn't bring myself to mow the rest of the top part, even after walking it to make certain there were no nests. I'm not on any antihistamines that would slow the allergic reaction. I've just gotten my eyes done, the vestibulitis disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared and I'm just starting to feel really in shape and healthy. I really don't want to die at this point in my life. I hate that we don't get a choice, and we don't always get to prepare.
My brain has begun obsessing about death this week. Maybe it is the coming of Autumn that does it, and the beginning of the seasonal depression. Certainly the deaths of my father-in-law and my Grandpa earlier this year haven't helped. I've become afraid that B. won't make it home from work, that I'll die in some perverse way and never really get to accomplish the things I think I want. Because we really don't know. We could be perfect drivers with every safety feature available on our car - but if that semi-driver falls asleep and hits us at 65 mph, nothing will save us. I could live my whole life in risk avoidance mode, never going off my property; but then step on a bees nest in my own back yard and die. Maybe that was the point of this little cosmic rude awakening - obsessing about death is useless because it will never happen when you are prepared, and it won't happen the way you fear. When it happens it will probably be unavoidable and thinking and obsessing will do nothing but cause you to live a small, unhappy life.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Life in Hell
Hardly seems worth posting as everything is still the same. And will be as long as the MIL is here. Month and a half to go. Two months down. Now I've got the misery of Lasik eyes to add to the stress. The dry eye is horrible. My right eye is burning and feels raw, and I worry that it is infection, I worry that something is wrong and I feel like I should just close it and go to bed. But, of course since the Lasik and going off claritin, my bed is the couch. And MIL and her little boy are sitting on my bed. I've read online that this is just a symptom of serious dry eye. I could go for eye duct plugs, but my eye doctor didn't really recommend that, I've just read it online so I'm not sure if that is what I need. And I don't have another appointment for three months. Lasik has been much less cool than I'd hoped for, and much more stressful than I can take right now. But of course I have to take it - it is done and there is nothing I can do but suffer the consequences. And my allergy shots have become incredibly painful since going off claritin and the dose is doubling quickly now. I put off getting them until I have to. Life really is hell and I don't know if I can take another month and a half of this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)