One morning as summer was just beginning, I had been working on my laptop for a while. I became aware I was having a harder time seeing the screen. Immediately, I felt a pang of fear and shame. As a very, very young child who needed extensive, sometimes excruciatingly painful, medical care. You can read some of the details here. The results of that experience are: a life-long resistance to going to the doctor, a fear of needles and shots and an aversion to the smell of rubbing alcohol that was used liberally on open wounds when I developed bedsores during the years I spent in a full-length cast.
At any rate, here I was with some deterioration in my eyesight that I’d been ignoring. I am still not sure what prompted me to do this, but first, I put my hand over my glasses on my right eye and looked at the screen. I didn’t see the screen nearly as clearly as I should. Then I covered my left eye and it felt like the ground gave out under me. All I could see out my right eye was light and shadow; it was as if I was swimming in milk with my eyes open. I needed to find out what was going on.
I finally made it into the doctor in late June. It’s a cataract. One so thick the doctor could not see through it to the back of my eye when I got my eye exam. My other eye also has a cataract, but not nearly as bad. However, based on what he saw in my left eye, the doctor is pretty confident that once the cataract is removed, I’ll be able to see just fine.
There is such a backlog of folks needing eye care that I won’t be evaluated for the cataract surgery until early in September. I have no sense of how long it will be after that before I get that cataract removed. It’s no fun having such limited vision right now. I’m not driving at night. I am super cautious even during the day when I drive and I’m doing some other things to make it easier on myself while I wait for the surgery.
As I keep poking around all the different places that have information about the Portuguese Camino, the pictures suggest there is some stunning beauty to behold on that pilgrimage. These nights, as I sweat through my workouts on the elliptical, increasing the amount of time I spend on that wretched machine, jacking up the incline level to prepare for hillside walking, I sometimes sing along to one of the pieces of my ‘oldies but goodies’ go-to music, Day by Day Godspell. With this impaired vision of mine, that song has a whole new meaning.
New Road Rising 
I just had cataract surgery on my left eye and all is well. I go back for my final post-op visit in a week and a half. The surgery sounds much scarier than it is – anything to do with the eye makes most of us nervous. BUT FEAR NOT… it is painless, not at all scary and a frequently done as well as a successful and safe surgery.
OMG. I didn’t know this. Mike said to be thankful that you have to have this done in 2021. He remembers his great grandfather having cataract surgery in 1961. He had to lay flat on his back for a solid week with sandbags on either side of his head. I hope you will get this done sooner than later. Be brave my friend and keep us in the loop. On a funnier note. I was in our college production of Godspell. We did a two week run and then took it on the road. It was a blast. I was the cynical sexy (haha) Sonia and sang, “Turn Back, O Man” with my badass alto voice. xoxox