Unexplored Territory

Thursday, April 26, 2007

No coffee + lost contact = slow start to the day

I have been out of coffee for the past few days. I kept waiting for the Coffee Fairy *AKA Ace* to magically appear with a cup in his hand, having (1) found a secret stash of the good stuff SOMEwhere in the house or (2) made a run to placate the caffeine monster for just one more morning. That didn't happen this morning.

So in lieu of offering my insights and entertaining anecdotes this morning, I decided to buy myself some coffee. Because really ... who wants to hang around with me when I haven't had my coffee and since there are two little people here who don't have the choice of hanging around me, I needed to make the run for Sterling.

I returned, made my coffee, and was just getting ready to get my cup out of the cupboard when the Man approaches and utters those words I hate to hear come out of his mouth:

Mommy ... I lost my contact.

Great. Just great. Doesn't your eyeball KNOW it is time for Mommy's coffee? How DARE your contact just jump out of your eye, unaided I am sure, thereby putting off my trip to Caffeine Nirvana.

So I do what we normally do ... start yelling at every child in the vicinity of where the contact could possibly be to get out of the room and do it quickly. Bless the Man's heart: he wants to help, so he gets down on his hands and knees and tries to look for it. This is a child who has one good eye and one eye that he can't see Jack out of, and blending those two things together just doesn't work well.

We spent the next 20 minutes on the floor, and I finally found it out in the kitchen. Right at the edge of the kitchen floor and the living room. It travelled with him. So we practiced the STOP! EXCLAIM! DROP and FIND! exercise. It is one I need him to learn, and learn well. Especially at $ 200 a pop.

So here I am, with my second cup of coffee almost entirely gone, feeling a little better about the world, thanking my lucky stars as I hear the rain coming down that I chose NOT to take the Monkey out for her little field trip to a park (although the story IS indoors, the trek back there isn't and it is on a slicker than snot wooden walkway that would surely claim me as a victim as least 10 times because I choose to wear my slicker than snot Birks when I go back there).

It seems that eyeballs have been the subject of interest around this household. To answer the questions ...

Yes, the Man was born with cataracts, just like me. And they were in the exact same place on both of our lenses. That is freaky right there. To know that I was carrying an egg around in my body with the propensity for that birth defect, and Ace's sperm decided THAT was the egg it had to impregnate. Ok ... that sounds bad. I LOVE the Man. LOVE LOVE LOVE him. I just didn't want to wish this on a child at all. I think you get my drift. (here is an article about the Man's issues, if you want to read up on it. I have been trying to find an awareness group for this disease, but have been unsuccessful so far).

I had a vitreous detachment, not a retinal detachment. This is what I had suspected. However, I am in a six-week window of risk for a retinal detachment because things have been shaken up in the eyeball.

The floaters when they come out just sit in the eye, Robin. They go nowhere. They remain there. I am sure they dissolve at some point, or I just learn to ignore them. However, these being the new ones and always right there, I see them all the time now. When the doc started shining his extremely bright light in my eye, he exclaimed "WOW! You DO have a lot of floaters in there! WOW!"

Now I am off to finish up some work for the day. I also have a Criminal Law final to write, and get myself prepared to teach Contract Law next month. Oh the joys of teaching ...

Labels: cataracts, eyes

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The eyes of a 90 year old

When I was born, I had cataracts. These went undetected for 13 years until an eye dr. finally found them to be the cause of my poor vision (and continual deteroriation).

I kept living with them, and finally maxed out the power of contact lens that I was able to wear (-17.5). I wasn't going to wear contacts and glasses. I just couldn't.

So when my eye dr. said that there could be a possibility that I could have almost perfect vision after cataract surgery, I said go for it. And it did get it. It has been a major miracle that I have been able to see as well as I have been.

But that doesn't mean that my eyes are "cured." They are still nearsighted as hell, and I have thin retinas, which makes me more prone to retinal detachment. So anytime I have a new "floater" in my eye, I pay attention. A lot.

Sunday on our way home, I commented that I was looking at a new floater in the repetoire of floaters in my eyes. My left eye, right after cataract surgery, went through what was called a vitreous detachment. That is when the vitreous in your eye decides to shrink up (due to degeneration of the eye) and pull off the back of the retina. Sound pleasant? It is. it starts off with little flashes of light. Then the floaters. And then new floaters. And then floaters on top of floaters. And then little pin pricks of black dots ALL over the vision field. Really a nice experience.

So when I started to see this new floater on Sunday, my senses were heightened. And sure enough ... the flashes started and last night was the night most of the floaters came out. It really is a scary experience because as soon as you think you are finished with one set, the next, more scary set comes and you wonder when it will ever stop. Right now, I am looking through three floaters that are just sitting right there in my vision field, and will more than likely be there for the rest of my life.

In all technical terms, I was born with the eyes of a 60 year old. So technically, these eyeballs should have been dead and buried a while ago.

Labels: cataracts, eyes

I'm a mom of three peeps ... Queen Bee, The Door Man, and the Chandelier Monkey, and wife to Ace, the Helpful Hardware Man. I created this space to get away from the people known as my inlaws, and because life with three kids and a hubby is all Unexplored Territory.

The nine-year-old who seems to be growing older every minute, has an opinion and a comment for everything, and has a true servant's heart.

The seven-year-old who loves the organization of things, will someday be someone's therapist because of his kind soul, and will more than likely be living with us until he is 40 years old.

The five-year-old with the 13-year-old attitude, who has a dictator's personality, asks you to watch her all the time and say "hold on" to keep your attention, and will someday come home on the back of some dude's motorcycle with 10 tatts and a body piercing or two.

The man of the house, the fixer of things, the winner of prizes, and the only person in his family to escape the South.