‘We encourage the humans in the belief that every other job in the world, especially that of running the world, is so simple that only a malicious idiot could possibly foul it up; whereas one’s own job is skilful and complex and requires a genius that no outsider can understand. This encourages the useful habits of pride and ignorance, and moreover, brings each human’s pride into direct collision with all the others.’
Archives for 2023
20/20
18 February 2023 by 9 Comments
A week after the second eye surgery, my distance vision is 20/20 in both eyes, intraocular pressure back to normal, and the incisions are healing as they should. I have also been fiddling about with reading glasses, and have found that a much weaker pair is better for work at a computer screen. The silly optician I consulted said I should move the screen closer to my eyes, but you can’t do that on a laptop without also shortening your arms: a surgery I cannot afford and most definitely do not want.
This should be the last post about my eyes before I start tackling my backlog.
Antici . . . pation
7 February 2023 by 2 Comments
Just to let you all know:
My second eye surgery, which was scheduled for the first of this month, was postponed because the anaesthesiologist was unavailable and they could not find a substitute on short notice. I am getting my right eye done tomorrow, Deo volente et flumine non oriente.
I have been using my right eye exclusively for close work, with my old reading glasses; these will be useless after the operation. I have bought a cheap pair of non-prescription readers, which seem all right for reading print or using my phone, but may be a little too strong for computer work. Tomorrow or the next day, I hope to find out for sure.
(The $1.25 reading glasses I bought at the dollar store broke when I tried to make them sit properly on my nose. At least they lasted long enough to verify that they were of a suitable strength. One lives to learn.)
In the meantime, silence and suspense.
UPDATE, 8 February: The operation proceeded as planned, with the same substitute anaesthesiologist I had for the first eye, a Dr. Håkansson (if I have the spelling correct). The eye appears to be functioning, as I can peek out past the corner of the gauze, but I won’t know details until the bandage comes off tomorrow. —T. S.
I spy, with my altered eye
12 January 2023 by 8 Comments
Yesterday I had the cataract removed from my left eye. The whole experience reminded me of the complaint by Paul’s grandfather in A Hard Day’s Night: ‘So far all I’ve seen is a train and a room and a car and a room and a room and a room.’ Leave out the train and the car, and that was the central part of my day. There is a waiting room where you wait, and a waiting room where you stow your belongings and put on a hairnet and disposable bootees, and a waiting room where they put 105 different drops in your eye to numb it and dilate it and freeze it and make it dance the cha-cha, and then there is the O.R., where you are in and out in the time it takes to play four songs off Mika’s debut album.
That, mind you, includes the extra time Dr. Crichton required to get my artificial lens (which is custom-made, and corrects for my astigmatism) installed at the correct angle. Even with the various drops and anaesthetics, I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was crushing my eyeball while he worked the lens round with his instruments. ‘Now I know,’ I said drily, ‘how an olive feels when you stuff in the pimiento.’ It appears that I have an abnormally large eye, and that, counterintuitively, makes it harder to get the lens in the right position and angle.
But the whole thing was done, and I took a ruinously expensive taxi home and slept it off.
Today I had the 24-hour followup. They removed the plastic shield from my eye, and the gauze underneath it, and lo! I could see better with that eye than at any time since I was fourteen. My vision is 20/20, messieurs et dames – at a distance – for close vision I shall need reading glasses for ever more, but I’ll take that over cataracts any day. Dr. Crichton then briefly examined me, checked that I was following the multitude of post-op orders, and I took another ruinous taxi home.
I have now bought a pair of non-prescription sunglasses for a buck and a quarter, which work very well, and a pair of non-prescription reading glasses for the same price, which hardly work at all because they won’t sit still on my nose, but keep going slaunchwise. As I type this, I am wearing my old (prescription) reading glasses, and my right eye is doing all the work. With my left eye, the screen is a hopeless white blur; which tells you how strong my prescription was.
And that is about as much close work as I can do without fatiguing my half-corrected eyes, so my nefarious scheme to resume the writing business at the old stand will have to wait a little longer. Somewhere, no doubt, Snidely Whiplash is twirling his moustache and cursing.
2023
2 January 2023 by 4 Comments
I made my last post with the best (or worst) intentions of returning to reasonably regular blogging. Then, as P. G. Wodehouse used to say, Judgement Day set in with unusual severity.
To begin with, I caught a fairly impressive case of the Official Plague, which is to say, the then fashionable strain of COVID. This kept both my Beloved Bride and me housebound and decrepit for the best part of a month, followed by a long, slow recovery in which neither of us was able to do anything much. My short-term memory was particularly hard hit. Many a time I found myself upstairs in the bedroom, having fetched up exactly one of the three things I was supposed to bring, and then trudging back down to get the other two. And sometimes it took a mighty effort to recall them both when I got there.
Sometimes, in this condition, I tried stringing four words together. The result would have been amusing, I think, if I had posted it here, but the joke would soon have grown stale.
This took me through October and November. Meanwhile, the cataracts have been growing.
Last spring, my optometrist gave me my regular eye test and fitted me out with new glasses. After a few weeks, I noticed blurry vision in my left eye, and supposed he had got the prescription wrong – or that my eye injury had been a little more severe than first thought. (I took the jagged end of a broken tree branch in the left eye. By luck or providence I blinked at just the right moment, and ended up with nothing worse than a bruised sclera.)
It turned out that I was developing a cataract in that eye, and it was now advanced enough to prevent my lens from ever quite focusing light correctly. No amount of fiddling with my prescription could correct this. If I looked at single points of light with that eye, they resolved themselves into bright, blurry rings. (Our Christmas tree this year is decorated with glowing O’s – but only to me.) He recommended that I follow up with the specialist who looks after my glaucoma from time to time.
The said specialist peered into my left eye and said, ‘Yup, you’ve got a cataract.’ He then checked my right eye. ‘And one starting in this one,’ he added. As luck would have it, his practice specializes in both glaucoma and cataracts, and he got straight down to business and booked me for surgeries. My eye specialist is not one for chit-chat; he runs a volume business and sees each patient, if possible, for just a minute or two. That day, when I saw him, there were upwards of forty thousand people in his waiting room – at least, I saw that many. Likely my eyes were exaggerating. I only saw one of him, but that doesn’t prove anything; he was sitting right in my face, looming, as he peered into my eyes through his fiendish apparatus, and there was not room enough in my visual field to see two of him.
So I have been nursing my cataracts along, cutting down on driving (though I am still legal for now) and close work (which gives me eyestrain after a few minutes). My left eye is due to have its dicky lens replaced on the 11th, and the other on the first of February. Then we shall see; that is, we shall see if we shall see.
Happy New Year to my 3.6 Loyal Readers, and I hope to be able to post more after the operations. For the first time in years, I am beginning to feel as if I have something interesting to say.
And then, of course, people come up with helpful things like this to vex me with:
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