What to wear! What to wear!
It's weird how all the spectacles we accumulate around the house over the years suddenly have no value, other than to maybe serve as keepsakes.
Yesterday while waiting for my second cataract surgery, I realized there had been no point in bringing my iPhone with me to pass time because I couldn't read whatever would be appearing on the screen.
After changing into the hospital gown, I had put all my belongings in a bag except for the phone because they said I could bring the phone to pass time.
Later, Valerie, the nurse put my bag, including the phone on a counter out of reach.
After she finished all the preliminary poking, reading, quizzing and dripping drops, there was a lull. I kept looking at the phone and thinking that if she came back, I'd ask if she could please hand it to me.
Then, it dawned on me. What a waste of time that would be.
I would be holding on to a phone with a screen filled with a bunch of blur. Then, I would have to ask her to please put it back on the counter.
I spent my down time looking at a painting on the wall and listening to snippets of conversation from others who had come to "have a procedure done."
Without divulging any secrets, I'll just tell you they weren't all eye patients, and, from past experiences, I knew what torture some of them had gone through for THEIR "procedures."
Eventually, they wheeled me into the operating room, and Dr. Torres fixed my left eye.
After surgery, three former students and members of our 4-H club from years past, came to say hi. All are now nurses in the surgery department.
One of them, Missy, wondered how I felt being their teacher, only to have them being in charge in their professional domain.
There are some neat advantages to staying in your hometown and returning to the hospital where you were born. That wonderful experience was definitely one of them.
When Bill and I left the hospital, I pulled the phone from my pocket and tried reading it with my prescription glasses.
At this point in my vision journey, they weren't the best, by any means, but at least they still helped me make out words and pictures on Facebook and read my text messages.
At home, I tried glasses of varying prescriptions or magnification power. Only one pair of all those in drawers, on counters and other spots around the house turned out to be somewhat helpful.
I'm wearing them right now as I type at my desktop computer, sitting in a much more intimate spot than usual. I have pulled both the screen and the chair closer together, and I can see the letters.
Having already gone through cataract surgery, Bill loaned me a couple pair of his "cheaters" to try. When they worked for the phone and my Fitbit, he said they were probably about a 3 on the magnifying scale.
Later, he went to Co-Op and picked up a two pairs, varying from 2.5 to 3.5.
It was later when I came upstairs to this computer that I realized the Co-Op specials would not work for this computer. Luckily, last night I found the pair I'm wearing in a kitchen drawer.
And, with those, I googled to see if a site would tell what the best readers are for after cataract surgery. I found one, and it seems that the general rule is that a 2 is the most flexible and that maybe a 1.5 would work for a computer screen.
So, I'll follow through on those ideas and throw away or store in a box all the other glasses in this house which will be of no value from this day forth.
In the meantime, the distance views are beautiful, and I'm looking forward to another trip to Yoke's to see if I recognize people better than I did with just one eye fixed.
Lots of new nuances in this process, and when all post surgery medications have been completed, I should have adjusted.
But I'll never take this new gift of better sight for granted, knowing that I am very fortunate to have my good health along with some brand new vision.
As someone said yesterday, it's pretty neat that us oldies can have something in our bodies actually function better as opposed to getting worse with age.
Thank you, Science, and thank you to the professionals who make this happen.
Speaking of age, when I walked through the hallways on my way to surgery yesterday, I stopped at a photograph which I have seen many times before.
All the stuff I was carrying went to the floor and out came my phone (where I could still see well enough to use the camera).
For some reason that photograph of Dr. Wilbur Hayden had a little extra meaning in my noggin yesterday.
I was at the same hospital where I was born more than 76 years ago. Dr. Hayden delivered me, as he did thousands of Sandpoint residents of my era.
When you are looking at the person who helped start it all for you so many many years later, it's a neat feeling.
Dr. Hayden was a family friend. He hunted with my dad, and his first wife Marge was one of my mother's best friends after Mother moved to Sandpoint. His daughter Karen was also a longtime family friend.
So, it was a neat and nostalgic moment, and I couldn't help but think how proud Dr. Hayden would be that so many of us around town still remember him and appreciate him for helping us receive our most important gift: life.
On another topic, Bill did not go straight to the fish and chips truck yesterday after picking me up.
As we drove by, we could see that the line was long, so he went back to town later for errands and for the fish and chips.
"Don't make dinner for me," he texted later, noting that he would have plenty of fish and chips left over from the serving he had already enjoyed.
We don't know how often the fish truck will show up in Sandpoint, but they got the seal of approval from my hubby with yesterday's offerings.
It's a gorgeous morning out there with the sun shining, a little snow on the mountains and the last remnants of tamarack gold enhancing the landscape.
If the weather holds, as predicted, there's an outside chance that when my sentence of "not doing anything strenuous" ends later next week, I can actually fire up the lawnmower one more time and pick up the rest of those leaves that have been falling.
Fingers crossed. For now, I'll follow the doctor's orders, do my multitude of eye-drop assignments and hope for the best.
Happy Friday.
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