a view through my own eyes

So at last the eye is pretty much not hurting all the time – huzzah and so tomorrow is back to work. In the meantime it has been just over a month away from work, personally I am a bit annoyed it has been quite this long, but then in it is hardly my fault (see previous post).

The only thing that needed some pondering was what on earth to do with myself, codeine helps as it means I am either asleep or too stoned to do much anyway, but even so I have been awake a fair amount of the time. The first week was not a problem as I really was out of things due to the anaesthetic and then onto the codeine, after that it was just onto the codeine and the last week nothing at all for pain relief.

I hate day time TV, I really cannot stand it so TV was not really an option, though I will admit watching the Olympics in the early hours of the morning (yay for Amy Williams) some days in bursts, usually when I woke up where the codeine had worn off and it was too soon to throw more down my neck.

I have read something like eight books (no I am not going list them due to brain failure) so that has brought the to be read heap down just a little bit (yes it is that big). I have watched a couple of films but have not been in the mood to watch any and I have a fair amount recorded. A few audiobooks have been dozed rather than listened to, I still find the best way to listen to audiobooks is either when I am driving or ironing (ironing has not been an option though).

I don’t really like computer games very much and tend to get easily bored by them, besides I spend enough time in front of a screen at work that generally it is one of the last things that I want to do to entertain myself at home.

So other than reading and sleeping what have I been doing? Playing boardgames on the whole. Some rummaging round the internet in the previous few months has found plenty of games designed for either solitaire or cooperative (and so you double up) play certainly more than I was aware of, in fact I was very suprised at the quantity of different games out there as they are not the sort of games that you find in your local toy store. So I have been rolling dice, shuffling cards, taking over the world as Alexander in a wargame, winning and losing as Rommel, fighting monsters from other worlds in Arkham Horror and generally taking over the dining table. SirusKittenzilla has been on hand to irritate the hell out of mehelp by knocking bits over over and generally obliterating positions carefully set up. I am still to fully play the Battle of Britain game bought by a friend as a get well present, but that is down to the board being made of thick coated paper where the fold creases make it difficult to lay flat, this isn’t a fault in the game it is just the way that wargames are to keep costs down, so until I acquire a large 34×22″ clip frame it will have to wait. But this does give me something to look forward to and it isn’t as if I haven’t had other games to entertain me.

I think that for the first time that I can recall, that I am not a little bit frustrated, a tad browned off or even mildly narked about my eye; instead I am utterly fucking pissed off.

There I have said it and no I am not going to apologise for the language – this is after all a snapshot of how things are at this moment.

Three weeks post op and it still hurts, paracetamol and ibuprofen can be like taking smarties but have no affect, codeine does but that is special stuff. When I had the squint surgery or the cornea transplant it didn’t hurt as much as this or for so long and I really do not understand it.

Today I had a followup appointment at the hospital.

I explained this at the hospital, even they admitted that two weeks post op I should have felt pretty much fine. The blood has now cleared and they could have a look round and see how things really are. The surgery area is inflamed, very inflamed. It appears that I have reacted badly to the stitches used (the special stitches for people who are allergic to the other stitches and get growths like granulomas). These stitches are designed to dissolve in six weeks – today they were pulled out. I won’t go into details as it was not fun and it was not pretty and did involve me coming close to passing out (yeah I am a big woosie) but looking away was hardly an option.

So now I have four different types of eye drops (antibiotics, steroids and two types of lubricants) and am not allowed to do much at all for the next few days, during which time things should settle down.

Oh and because the stitches came out early things are held together but just a little bit of the grace of God.

Eye hurts, can’t sleep, keep taking the pain killers (solphadol with 30 mg of codeine) and had a telling off from my GP about going back to work before I was ready, particularly since she now knows what work was done – which she didn’t when I saw her last week – to be fair I didn’t know myself at the time. In any case going back to work for a bit yesterday was a good idea for me, as I did manage to demonstrate to myself that it definitely was not the best place for me to be.

So at the moment I can’t work with codeine in my system as it makes me wappy (lets say driving a car or a root prompt is not a good idea) and I can’t manage too well without it.

Sigh.

Back to the hospital today for the post operative checkup.

Fortunately things are looking pretty good considering what can be seen with the amount of blood in the way. The growth appears to have been removed but we won’t be totally sure for a couple of weeks. Before the op I was told that it would be a bit of an exploration as you can’t really see how bad the growth is until they start delving. In the end they had to detach one of the muscles from my eye, remove the growth and restitch the muscle back into place. This then explains why its so sodding painful to move my eyes at the moment. Codeine is my friend btw.

The cataract lens replacement is settling down nicely but will take a few weeks to be fully expanded and in place. The slightly differing colours from one eye to the other is down to the new lens being perfectly clear where the human lens in the other eye has a slight hue which is apparently normal and varies from one person to the next. In any case my vision is marvellous compared to before but won’t be able to get my glasses sorted out for a few weeks. Most importantly George is fine. Phew.

When I had the operation they did two procedures, the first was a cataract lens replacement due to the amount of steroid drops I have to take for the cornea and the second was to excise a granuloma that was a result of the squint surgery from a couple of years ago.

The new lens has done wonders, instead of foggy vision, I now have clear vision in my left eye and the power has been set a bit stronger than the right eye so a slight improvement. However the prescription in my glasses for that eye is now wrong and will need to be updated in a few weeks time. The bit that I have found really interesting is that I am currently perceiving that the colour balance in each eye is now slightly different. So my left eye sees things with a colder bluish tint where my right eye sees with a warmer golden tint. I suspect that a lot of this is down to my brain adjusting to having good vision in my left eye again but even so it is a bit odd.

As for the growth, well the eye is nicely bloodshot (will try and take a picture later) and as long as I don’t move my eyes at all it barely hurts. The last few words there are the key bit. In any case Wednesday morning I see my GP to hand over a load of paperwork from the hospital and Thursday afternoon I return to the hospital for the post operative checkup with the consultant, to see how things really are.

So 48 hours post op now. Yesterday afternoon felt pretty good until my eye started to ache.

Painkillers last night sort of helped until I woke up in the night with some rather weird dreams which left me in a rather confused state. Thankfully Sirius was his friendly self which seemed better than waking up mrspao and disturbing her as she really needed her sleep.

The GA has worn off, I know this as I can feel my eye (it hurts), I have nausea and I can feel down my throat where an airline was placed so I could breathe during the op (not mentioned the last bit before as there is only so much freakery that mrspao can take at any one time).

So now just gently dozing in the main, peering at email periodically as it keeps me in contact with my friends and listening to the radio.

Is what the other first 8am booked patient said as Mrspao and I settled down in the waiting area.

Mrspao was not impressed and went for a walk.

I think you get the tone of the nervousness felt by the other lad who was also being done that day as that was the tone that he generally carried on with, full of horror stories (we all have some about eye stuff I guess) and peculiar attitudes. When the nurse booked him in and asked whether he had transport arranged to go homewards he demanded that the hospital supply patient transport or a bed as walking back home was just not going to happen. I could tell that the staff were going to love him. The nervous energy seemed to radiate from him, now I am not saying by any means that I was at quite my most casual and laid back – but I don’t think I was too far from it.

After an hour of final-pre-op stuff they hauled him in to be knocked out. At which point they informed me that they were going to do me first but it was in everyone’s interest to just get him out of the way where he couldn’t wind us up and the other patients coming in and out to sort out initial pre-op stuff, so I would have to wait for a couple of hours. That was fine by me, I settled down with my book. Amusingly when they did my blood pressure and pulse, my BPM was back down to 59 from the 74 registered a couple of days previously at the pre-op appointment – so I must have been more relaxed. I certainly felt it.

I won’t go into the details of all and sundry, but at one point to give mrspao something to do instead of peering at the seed catalogue and knitting they asked her to put the pressure stockings (only knee high) on me. This led to much merriment from the other patients (mostly elderly cataract patients) as I announced that was I only used to Mrspao taking my clothes off of me.

So op done, still somewhat rather spaced out from legitimate use of heroinopiate based drugs, but who is complaining? The eye is sore which is hardly unexpected and I have a shield and pad over it at the moment which I have to take off today when I start putting the eye drops in. So a picture may appear later if it is suitably impressive looking.

At the moment, no lifting, carrying, bending, looking down or washing up for the next few days. Then back for a post op session on Thursday.

Back at the beginning of December I was booked in for more surgery on the eye (steroid induced cataract op and removal of a granuloma on one of the muscles from the squint op) and was told that it should be done in 18 weeks in accordance with Government targets. Accordingly this mean that the operation had to be completed by mid April at the latest.

Two weeks ago I had a regular appointment about my eye and that very day I woke up with again a very red eye. So in terms of timing it could not be better. Consultant takes a look and say that although the op is booked to be done in due course he is getting it bumped up the list as the granuloma is looks like it could burst soon and that will not be pretty.

Since then I have called the waiting list people for the eye unit a few times only to get no answer, called the consultant’s secretary to be told that she cannot get hold of the appropriate person either but will keep trying every few days. Sigh.

Wednesday out of curiosity I call the waiting list people and actually manage to get hold of the right person who manages they eye operation lists told that they know nothing about this being urgent and it will be done in due course so by mid April and they will let me know when a date has been booked. Grrrr.

Two minutes later I am on the phone back to the secretary and explain that the waiting list people are around, so she takes my mobile number and promises to call back once she has ‘had a word’. Five minutes later she calls back and tells me that I will be done in two weeks time on the 4th of Feb and a letter confirming that will be in the post that day.

There are times when I am really glad that I have a particular phone number.

A couple of weeks ago, mrspao’s laptop died much to the annoyance of mrspao as it was full of her photos and stuff. Most of which were backed up elsewhere – but some were not. Investigation revealed that there was a disk error, whether just filesystem corruption or something worse was unknown at the time as the laptop failed to boot.

After trying to boot in ‘target mode’ making the laptop an expensive firewire disk and mounting it on one of my Macs – revealed that something was seriously wrong as the filesystem failed to mount. A rummage round for the AppleCare CD for my laptop revealed a bootable CD that boots into TechTool – this at least recognised the disk and reckoned it could restore around 25% of the disk but not which bits of the disk. It also confirmed physical failure on the disk. So we abandoned that plan and kept it as a last resort.

At this point it was time for some serious Googling – this revealed that the tool for Mac disk maintenance is called Disk Warrior. So given the cost and balancing it against the worth of the data (priceless kitten pictures) we ordered a copy.

A day or so later it arrived, turns out that you get a bootable CD that boots a very limited version of OSX with customised disk drivers that bypasses the usual filesystem drivers and can read your disk directly, so we set the thing going. An hour or so later a report is generated confirming that there are physical errors on the disk, but also usefully providing a file browser so you can rummage round and see exactly what is available. In this case mrspao’s data was all accessible, so connecting an external USB drive which automounted and then copying the files off through the file browser (no not the Finder as this is not even running) mrspao’s data is all saved.

Phew, and I become a hero husband.

In addition to this Disk Warrior when installed on the native machine – defragments an HFS+ Journalled volume, fixes up permissions and broken plist files which on my own laptop has improved disk performance no end.

At the end of the day Disk Warrior is not a cheap bit of software but it did do exactly what it claimed to and has proven worth every penny. Overall I am fairly certain that it was more cost effective to purchase and do the work myself (of which there was not a lot) than sending the laptop off to a service centre. I cannot recommend Disk Warrior highly enough.

It has been an odd few months, yup nearly three months since I last blogged and to be honest I just haven’t felt like bothering. No not like that, I am not depressed or anything like that I just really have had no interest in blogging. The same to be honest can be said for taking photographs as well.

There have been a couple of occasions when I nearly deleted the blog altogether but decided not to as I am aware that it gets read from time to time with people looking for cornea transplant related things, so probably best to keep it if it helps get someone through the uncertainty etc.

So time to catch up a bit.

Sam and I went to Paris for a weekend, I was ill – the first clue was I didn’t order beer with my lunch, the second was I didn’t eat my lunch. Come the evening I had a temperature, fever, and ached everywhere. Later that same evening I was hallucinating (I am not saying what!) and spent half the night in the bathroom. Returning home the following day was survivable (obviously), and further investigation when Sam got ill on the Monday revealed that we both had swine flu and that is despite my best efforts at eating bacon sarnies.

A close friend who is deaf moved in for a month and had a cochlear implant, she can now hear for the first time in over twenty years – neither Sam, myself or most of her work colleagues have ever been able to have a conversation with her before. Utterly astonishing.

In the last three months we did get a kitten, the black one called Sirius, Minerva his sister turned out to be a brother with lung problems so Regulus is no more. Sirius however is an utter bundle of fun and makes the other cats look so old. I think tomorrow will be Christmas tree day, so no fragile ornaments on the tree this year.

Work has been crazy busy, it has been a year since I changed job and I have no regrets about leaving one university for another. The entire DNS infrastructure over our four sites was swapped on my first anniversary to complete phase one of a project, the DHCP service over the sites gets completed in early January – so nothing important that could break almost everything should it go wrong. Kinda hoping for teflon coated trousers for Christmas.

George has been mostly good on the whole, this had an infection/virus that turned the eye red overnight but that is being treated now and surgery is being booked to sort out a couple of other issues with the same eye. The week has been stressful with George and now it is time just to flomp.

The electronic part of the Enigma-E has been completed (thank you mrspao) and worked first time (yes I do have pictures), with luck I will soon have time to start building the case for it. The Enigma-Uhr is not working though and the battery is flat in my multimeter so this will have to wait until I have been to Maplins (dangerous) which has just this week opened locally (yay) next to a KFC (very very bad).

My aim to read a book a week this year was scrapped due to apathy, but now is gaining a head of steam, I will make up a list at some point to see quite how bad it it was this year.