Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Bad Eye Appt... Just Another Day For Me

Brief update on my back story for those that don't know. I used to be legally blind. I had 2 eye surgeries when I was 10 (one for each eye) and had a second surgery on my right eye when I was 21 which put what is kind of like a permanent contact lens into my eye. Things were great at first, but then my eye started to reject the lens. My iris elongated so light came in around the lens unfocused and then I started to have swelling on my retina, causing large blind spots in the center of my vision.

Over the last 4 years, I've had a series of steroid injections for my eye and some eye drops that have helped with the retinal swelling. My vision never got back to what it was right after the second surgery (20/25ish) but it wasn't getting worse. . . until 2 weeks ago.

I started to get a bad haziness in my right eye on and off. Yesterday I found out that while the swelling on my retina is under control, my cornea is also unhappy with the lens implant and has begun to swell. (Here's a website. Click on corneal edema- symptoms described are spot on in my case - http://www.richmondeye.com/eyehealth_blur.asp)

I've been referred to a corneal specialist with the possibility of a third surgery on my right eye being brought up. Two weeks until the next available appointment has given me two weeks to think about life.

I've had eye problems my whole life which has led me to the same 2 reactions whenever I notice a change in my vision:

1) First, a slightly apathetic disgust. "What is it now?" I'm used to it. I'm not afraid of losing my vision or going under the knife again. I just want to be done with it, adjust my life however necessary depending on the circumstances and move on to the rest of my life.

2) An appreciation for the sight that God has given me thus far. To the point where if he took my vision away, the images of the past 28.75 years of my life would warm my heart for the rest of my life. A few favorites I have on hand (below)- Yumi on our wedding day and more so for the last 11 years, sunsets, and enjoying photography. Btw, all the complications are in on eye, "lefty" is doing fine and dandy. Side note, I'd look cool with an eye patch.

Thank you God for what I have and what I don't. Glory to you for both.


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Monday, January 4, 2010

2 things I realized I hate

The past few weeks have been great. Yumi took some time off of work and we were able to spend a lot of time together. One of the big goals for her break was changing the wall color on our guest room. It was the 2nd thing she wanted done when we moved into our house in 2007. We finished it before 2010. Not bad.

The room had a lavender accent wall with a diverse fairy wallpaper strip up by the ceiling. FRIENDS, PROMISE ME ONE THING, when you decide to decorate a room, either just paint or use easy to remove wallpaper. It took some 3 hours to get that paper down. It was just about a foot in height, I can't imagine trying to do the whole wall. We had to score the paper, soak it in wall adhesive remover, scrape the wall, peel stubborn paper, resoak the wall, scrape again... Ugh. Once we finished, it was time to do 3 coats of primer on the lavender accent, soon to be white non-accented wall. Just please promise me you'll think about those moving in after you before you use wallpaper in your home.

The other thing I realized I hate? Automatic flush toilets. Sure. They are convenient when you don't want to flush a dirty toilet with your bare hands, but I have no problem using a square of toilet paper for a manual flush. Our local Sears' toilet was way too sensitive. It flushed every time I leaned forward, when I went to grab toilet paper, even when I went to wipe. It went off somewhere between 6-8 times before I actually wanted it to flush. I hate being on the toilet when it flushes because you feel the water splashing off of the bowl... in a public toilet. (Shivers... Uuuggghhhh)

Someone should make a travel keychain that covers the auto flush censor to prevent unwanted flushes. I would buy one.
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