Opus 2026-413: Day 2

I got up to the alarm, got the coffee going, powdered my nose, and went out to enjoy the morning on the front porch.  We had an appointment at 8 o’clock, and so I had somewhat of a deadline.  I made breakfast, made sure my wife was awake and we took the journey to the doctor’s office.

They took off the patch, checked me for glaucoma, put some letters up to see if I could read and went over the general routine that I was going to be following.  I was concerned that the letters they put up were not very readable.  I was able to make out the top line, but nothing else.  They only bothered with two lines which should’ve told me something.  When we met the doctor later, he told me that I actually could read better than was expected so that was no big problem.  He said that even at that point, my eyes were good enough that I could legally drive without my glasses.  It didn’t feel that way, but I’ll take his word for it.

They gave me a real fun little kit to take home in a nice little bag.  It was like the gifts at a Mary Kay presentation.  They gave me a pair of sunglasses.  They gave me papers to check off when I use the eye drops and the technician put the first ones in.  They gave me a card to show if I was ever pulled over and not wearing glasses.  We then went over to one of the exam rooms and waited for the doctor show up.

Things are relatively uneventful.  Everything seemed to have gone well.  He got his bright light and scope and looked inside my eye to check out and see if everything was OK and it seemed to please him.  He answered any questions we had.  We were on our way.

Probably the big revelation of the doctors visit was that we were told that instead of taping on the eye cover every night when I slept, I could stop and get an eyepatch for five dollars on the way out and use it for when I slept.  It sounded like a good deal to me and it seemed to work well.

I am now entering that period of adjustment that comes afterwards.  You need to be careful you don’t listen to people’s stories about how it works.  I don’t know how many people told me that they walked out of there and everything was beautiful and clear and wonderful and there were no more issues.  I won’t say I have issues but it’s going to take my eyes a while to adjust.  I have worn glasses every day for 76 years and habits are hard to change.  It is difficult to take off glasses you are not wearing.  I can tell there will be a lot of little things to reprogram.

One of the technicians in preparation told me that they were going to dilate my eyes in a way that I’ve never experienced before.  Instead of going back to normal in a few hours this is going to take days.  I assume most people have had their eyes dilated.  It makes you very sensitive to light and you need sunglasses when you go outside.  What affected me was when trying to read, things were very fuzzy.  There’s something about the dilation and the dealing with light which throws everything out of kilter.  Any light print in a book is almost impossible for me to see.  Screens that have white print on dark backgrounds are easier to read than others.  Sometimes I think I’m making progress; sometimes not so much.

I have lots of old glasses.  I have an assortment of those reading glasses you buy at the drugstore.  I started sifting through everything I had and I only found one that was of any help.  With it, I can read somewhat normally, but again my eyes are still dilated.  I can look in the mirror and see the difference between the eye that was treated and the one that wasn’t.  It’s going to be several days before things settle down.  At that point, I will get serious about going to the drugstore or the dollar store and experimenting with the different reading glasses.

I can read if I really want to, but it’s still not flowing the way I want.  With my Bible applications on my screens I can read the scriptures but the comments and Greek information I need to get something to magnify.

Again no pain.  The eye drops are a nuisance,  but not a problem.  My sleep the second night was pretty much normal for my place in life. On day three.

homo unius libri