Next Steps

In the dim light,
there is clarity,
the day comes with more light,
confusion reigns,
obscurity, confusion, double vision rules,
Ah! The glasses!
clarity returns.

It seems that i have used "Next step' as a title before, maybe many times before, The Adventure is not over! The glasses have their draw backs, I pretty much have to be looking straight at a person to get the best view. With the glasses, I must relearn distance. often i reach for an item and it is further away than I think.
There was more "singleness" this morning, than other mornings, perhaps because of the cloud cover, but I can hope that maybe things are improving.
There is a portion of me that believes I will never be fully independent again, and that portion thinks it may be all for the good.
There is a need for therapy for my eyes, that is scheduled for the beginning of March.
Will I be able to go back to work sooner? I hope so, I actually miss the place and have dreams about it. I also need to do a reality check and let my doctor decide on that course, it is actually considered a "BT, level 2, sentinel lab", something one does not just go waltzing into while there is visual confusion. I get to talk to the doctors soon about this.
I will need to get my visual reflexes checked to see if I can drive again. At this moment, I would not put myself behind the wheel of any vehicle, mostly because of the visual confusion, and all the doctors agree.
One more check by the optometrists at SUNY, scheduled for April, they do not want to let me go.
My blood pressure appears to have stabilized at half the medication i was taking before the operation and I may have found a medicine cause for a lot of the acid reflex, I will talking to the doctor about this soon.
It feels like the pieces are slowly coming together, it has been a long time for me. It has done a lot for my emotional, spiritual heart and reopened my creative side and for all of that I am truly grateful. There is no, "why did this happen to me", going on. I am truly thankful for my life, even if sometimes I am frustrated.


As an aside - I love getting comments on this Adventuresome blog!

Next Steps

This week and next i get to take my next steps to getting better. The first is an endoscopy to find out if there are physical things that are causing my eating difficulties. Since there is a lot of variance, it is possible it is the slow repair of the brain getting its act together, but we have to know for sure. this is Thursday. Next Monday, I get to go to SUNY school of Optometry and get my eyes checked out. This is a big one and I really want some answers for correction here!

Streching

In this wonderful adventure I have been on the past months, I find myself terribly restricted, not able to really get out of the house much (this is what I was trying to do when I had my blackout in December). So the snow and ice really do not help. Walking outside is not only difficult, but down right dangerous. Yesterday I had a chance to ride to pick up the closest people to me as they flew in to LaGaurdia. The trip was fine, but I learned that it is easier to patch my left eye for travel, even tho it seems sharper. I walked only a short way across the road from the parking lot to the terminal and was tired. I tripped slightly (no, I did NOT fall) and was slightly disoriented. This appears to be totally optical. I sat down, closed my eyes and things came together, met Marie and Scott and went back to the car with no other incident, but when I came home I was tired. Today, I had the chance to go to a few stores looking for a CD player. Walking and looking in the stores was tough. One eye sees distance than the other and the other sees closer better. At some point the eyes get tired and my hands seem smaller (a quater looks like a nickle in size as a comparision). Talk about disorientation! I ran into more than one person, by turning on the patched eye side and think I may have hit someone with my cane. I do actually use a cane, it "catches" me when I lose my location (best way to describe it). With all of this the days go on forever and I do get 'cabin-fever' and wish I was some place sunny and watrm. On top of all of this, I still have this stomach issue where if I eat just a bit to much, the food will not go down completely and eventually gets coughed back up (no it does not go down the wrong way, it goes through the swallow mechanism as far as I can tell). These are my issues to address for the New Year. I have an appointment with an optomitrist in New York on the 12th for work on the eye /double vision and my regular doctor on the 30th of December for the rest of it. It does not change my general positive attitude, but these are my next challenges as I go on my adventure.