Thursday, March 20, 2014

I know, I know, it's been AGES since the last post

It really has been ages, I know and I'm sorry. So much for my promise to write more frequently here. A lot of things have happened, some to do with my plans, others unconnected and unexpected.

Top of the list of unconnected and unexpected things, Gamer Son developed a pain in his right side, and yep you guessed it, appendicitis. Such a common thing, and such a relatively simple operation these days. Laparoscopic surgery - two small incisions and the offending appendix is removed through the navel. This actually gives me the shudders to think of something being hauled out through the navel but that's my own belly button phobia thingy.

But you know, when it's your own child suffering the pain of appendicitis, having two doses of morphine and the associated nausea from it, suffering the post operative pain plus the pain from all that gas they pump into the stomach cavity trying to find its way out - well it doesn't seem so simple or common. Driving home at 3am after he has finally had the operation and is sleeping off the sedative, it doesn't seem so easy.

We are all a little (or a lot) desensitised to things like this. And I suppose we have to be, nobody can feel total empathy with the entire world, and things like tonsillectomies and appendectomies are minor procedures. But they are not minor to the people going through them, and the people who love them. That's something I think we all forget and maybe we should try to remember. So the next time I hear of someone having had or about to have minor surgery I will be far more sympathetic. Because it's only minor to the people not directly involved.

Apart from that, not much has changed on the surface but there has been a lot of preparation going on inside my head and also inside my computer! And I have not been here, I just run out of hours in the day when I am awake enough to be able to string two words together. The words in my head are always there, but when I am tired they kind of blur, and if I try to let them out my fingers can't seem to connect to the stream and nothing happens - or total rubbish happens that I delete with vigour the next day.

As seems to be the way with life changes, things are pretty chaotic, at least in my head. It's all coming together but a lot of the time it doesn't seem that way. But it is, and I am certain it will all gel at the right time. Even though I am leaping into change without a safety net, I am actually preparing contingency plans and trying to pull a lot of different threads together to make a strong net of a different sort. It's hard to explain, I'm changing my life, totally changing it and I'm trusting in a future I can't see clearly. But at the same time I'm planning and thinking and arranging things more carefully than I ever have before. I'm this strange mix of faith in an uncertain future and careful planning in the equally uncertain present. I am confident that it will all work out, I am sure that the Universe or God or whatever you like to call the higher being is directing my life and that I am going in exactly the direction I should be, and that I will end up in exactly the place I am meant to be.

In other life changing events, today I went to the optometrist. This is a thing I try not to do. I needed to go, I needed new glasses. My excuse for procrastinating was the expense and it was an extremely valid excuse. But the true reason is that I am terrified of the optometrist with the same primal fear that I have of the dentist. But for a different reason obviously.

I have exceptionally poor vision. When I was a child I had no idea that trees had individual leaves, or that blades of grass could be seen and not just a green blur. I didn't know you could see birds flying, mosquitos about to bite you, green ants before they bit you on the toe. I didn't know that the bark on trees has that mottled look or that people's expressions could be seen. I lived in a very blurry world and I didn't know it could be any different.

Imagine this child with her first pair of glasses. It was a completely different world and I was mesmerised by all I could see. I felt like an alien in a brand new world. The optometrist I had in those days was an unusual man. He gave me eye exercises to do, simple exercises to strengthen my eye muscles. I don't know whether this helped or not but it certainly helped with the headaches I got when I got a new pair of glasses or when I needed new glasses. My eyes changed rapidly and I needed new glasses every six months, so I saw my optometrist frequently.

No sign of anything to fear is there? Well he told me very firmly that there was every chance that I would be blind by the time I was 30. He told me more than once, since every time I saw him my eyes were significantly worse. I believed him of course and that is why to this day I cannot sleep in a completely dark room - I wake in a panic if I try. Some nights I would lie awake for hours, staring at a patch of light, terrified I would wake up blind - because he didn't tell this literal child that it would be a gradual thing so I thought it would happen overnight.

Anyway I digress, but that story is why I put off going to the optometrist. But today I went, basically shoved in the door by my mother. And what a life changing event that proved to be. My level of myopia means that my glasses are very strong. That means that even with the awesome thinned lenses, I still have thick lenses. With the correction of the myopia comes a shrinking of the world and the loss of three dimensional sight. To correct the sight in a short sighted person things become shrunk - enlarged for a long sighted person. Because everything is shrunk the brain eventually accepts it and adjusts to it.

However because of the effects of wearing glasses at my level of vision, as soon as my vision stabilised (and I did not go blind, at least not yet) I got contact lenses and that was another epiphany for me (I sat and stared at a vase of flowers, astonished by three dimensional sight). But I have not worn them much over the past few years because of difficulties of the fit. Another effect of my level of vision is the difficulty in getting contacts to fit. I wore hard lenses, it was too difficult to get soft lenses for my vision. It would always take weeks to get a proper fit so that I could see, the lenses didn't hurt, the tears could escape, etc etc etc.

So imagine my shock when today a pair of soft contact lenses were taken off the shelf - a stock pair not a specially made pair - and popped into my eyes and like a magic trick I could see better than I have been able to see in five years. I nearly cried. The world suddenly appeared to me the way it appears to everyone who can see normally. Three dimensional, full size, no blurs, no fuzziness, no halos around lights - just normal vision.

So while I am still getting horrendously expensive glasses - the expense is thanks to the special lenses I need - I am also getting monthly disposable contact lenses and I feel like a small miracle happened today. Well I did until I tried to get them out. Soft contacts have to be pinched out, not blinked out, and I have yet to master that particular knack. But I will.

So that is where I am at. There is a mess in my head, the knowledge that soon a lot of things will be happening. There is the very human desire for nothing to change, and the very Sheryl desire for nothing to change. But it will, it has to and I know that once I am past this final bit, it will be a good change. My life is about to begin again, and I will be able to see it happening!
Todays pics, althought he may not thank me, Gamer Son the day after the operation, and I think the other two are self explanatory :)






2 comments:

  1. I found this an emotional, albeit inspirational and relatable read. Thank you. We all go through these small challenges but it’s these that make us stronger. I too put off going to the opticians for ages due to an irrational fear – maybe I was scared of what they might say – but often by conquering the initial small fears we have we can stop bigger ones from forming later.

    Lucius Calhoun @ Bolton Vision Centre

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  2. Oh yes! That moment when suddenly you can see clearly after years of blurriness... it's quite something, isn't it. I was late going for my yearly appointment to the optometrist last year and I was worried there would be something wrong, but they were very reassuring. I'll make sure to go on time this year.

    Barton Levesque @ Glenmore Vision Center

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