I didn’t know where to start when the eye surgeon mentioned readers. Many people buy them when their eyes can no longer focus to read. I was going to be in limbo for a while, with eyes that were set for distance vision. The old glasses were no longer usable, and I couldn’t see to read. John helped me pick out two pair. He could read the magnification, and I tried on several before choosing plain readers and sunglasses with bifocals for reading. At Dollar General, they were VERY affordable. Several days later I checked the internet for information. Readers.com had a chart to print (found here). Great! I had picked out the right ones. It would have been much easier if I had known what I was looking for.
Readers are probably not a long-term solution for me, because I think my eyes are different. Right now I see only a blur with one eye, anyway. Until the doctor says it’s time to get glasses, these will be a valuable crutch for daily living. Now, if I only had an automatic toothbrush loader, I could breeze through that cleaning routine!
Thank you all for your prayers and concern. Everything went well, and the next injection is a month from today.
The preparation (eleven letters) took longer than the treatment (nine), just like those two nouns. There were yellow drops, followed by two sets of numbing drops, and a 10-minute wait for them to take effect. That’s when the amusement started. I thought the assistant said, “We’ll give you something to hold your eyelid open.”
I responded, “I HAVE TO HOLD MY EYELID OPEN????”
Hearing my disbelief, she laughed and said, “No, no! The doctor will do that FOR you.”
We both had a good laugh while my eyes were still closed. Soon she said she was ready for him. A man’s voice said, “I heard my name.”
Knowing it was Dr. Komanski, I asked, “Your name is HIM?”
He laughed and said it was better than Injection. He saw the notice sent to me that Dr. Injection Komanski would take care of me.
“Look up,” I heard. In two seconds the eye was held open by some small gizmo, which I hardly felt and couldn’t see. The assistant had a comforting hand on my shoulder as Dr. K. gave me the shot. It was over in the time it took you to read that sentence. There was a bit of pressure, but no pain. She squirted cold liquid into the eye before telling me what was on the instruction sheet she was handing me. I walked out, made the appointment, and John drove me home. Easy as could be!
Six hours later the eye feels the same as it did in the office, a little scratchy. No immediate change was expected in my vision, so I’m still wandering around in a fog. So, what else is new??
It’s official. My eye is leaking. Because of macular degeneration, fluid is leaking, which is causing the big blur in my right eye. Treatment starts in two days – injections that should keep me from going blind. Please rejoice with me. I can read no better than I did a week ago, but there is hope on the horizon. I’ve heard from several people that they are currently taking the injections that keep this condition from going wild.
An added bonus is that the retina specialist uses space in my eye doctor’s office once a week. Instead of driving 45 minutes to Asheville, we’ll go to the next town. Please rejoice with John on that.
Now for the fun. Besides reading, can you guess what routine thing is hardest for me? It’s loading my toothbrush! Depth perception is missing for close things right now. I may be walking around with bright, shiny fingers that smell minty.
My half-deaf friend called to check on me, and we had a few laughs. She said the two of us would make a good pair, one being able to see and one to hear. She is totally deaf in one ear, making conversation difficult. Perception is askew for both of us. She can’t tell where sounds are coming from, and I can’t judge distance easily.
We chatted about coping with the loss of senses. I have an app on my phone that is supposed to translate speech into words on the screen. I hear better than my phone does. She wants to learn to lip-read. You need sight for both of those things. My advice? Don’t lose more than one sense at a time.
I tried to read the title of an icon on my phone to her and had to say, “I can’t read it!”
She laughed and said mock-loudly, “I can’t hear you.”
Hopefully neither of us will get COVID and lose our sense of smell. I presume taste goes out the window with smell. We could feel food without tasting it. My advice? Hang onto your senses, since it’s hard to be without more than one.
A week went by in a blur, a stressful blur. I didn’t mention cataract surgery in July, because it’s very common if you live long enough. Eight days after that surgery, I read a number of lines on the standard eye chart and could read a card in my hand if I held it far away. The date was July 20 when I knew the right eye was working well. Last week the second eye was done. It, too, seemed very good. I gradually came to the conclusion that the eyes didn’t seem to be working well together. Because both were set for distance vision, John helped me buy readers to help focus closeup. Reading was still very difficult. I became aware that the right eye had a spot in the middle where there was only a blur. That screamed macular degeneration to me. My dad developed that when he was about 82 years old, and he was blind for the last three or four years of his life.
On August 17 the eye surgeon could tell that my left eye was 20/25. Great! I hadn’t seen that well since I was seven years old. When my right eye looked at the chart, the only letter I could read was the very top E. The doctor said several things could cause that, so we did a scan of the retina. He put a scan done several weeks ago on the screen, along with the new scan. One was flat; the other had a big bubble in the middle. My supposition was correct. I have macular degeneration. He quickly said, “Ten years ago we could do nothing. Now there is treatment for that.”
The office made an appointment for me with a retina specialist in Asheville for Friday. John canceled his trip to the train club so he could drive me there tomorrow. I don’t know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future.
John and I were out in the heavy rains yesterday, going from one doctor’s appointment to another. By late afternoon, the emergency messages began to pour into our electronic devices. There was flooding in two nearby towns, Clyde and Canton. Grandson David’s coworker couldn’t get home, so the manager took him to her own house for the night. Today neighbor Logan had no school, because all schools in the county were closed due to the flooding. We thought Jonathan Creek would be swollen this morning, but we walked there and found it was not unusually high.
We don’t think the creek overflowed anywhere in our valley. We live on a lower slope of a mountain. If water ever rose this high, it would be catastrophic, and you probably wouldn’t hear from me again. Today the weather is gorgeous – sunny with blue skies and white clouds.
Legoland was three-dimensional fantasy. I loved all the details – guard boxes for the Lego soldiers marching in front of the palace, delicate stairs and banisters, figures in native costume, a stave church, water locks that really worked, trains, and windmills – all made of Lego plastic building blocks. Photos only give you an idea of what the scenes look like.
[Getting a Lego driver’s license was a high point for Lisa. Kate, three years younger, did not grasp the knack of turning corners. One of these girls has spent the last 40 years laughing about it.]
Lisa
Kate
Kate getting help
The ferry from Esbjerg to Harwich is the nearest to a cruise ship I’ve ever sailed on. There was a tiny playground for children, several restaurants and spacious cabins.
Our impressions of Norway were mountains, hills water, colourful wooden houses with bright tile roofs and lovely costumes for special occaions.
Sweden has larger shopping centers and easier parking than Norway and England. We loved the word “parkering”.
Denmark is full of brick houses and old brick churches with hardly any wooden buildings. Many small houses have red tiled roofs, are almost square, and have receding foreheads for roofs. Ends that normally peak have sloping triangular ends. Transformers for electricity seemed to be housed in obelisk towers – lots of wires running to and from them. They were often metal, though sometimes of brick with a tile roof. I particularly liked a double-lane bike path.
Flowers were everywhere in Scandinavia. It gradually dawned on us that we are used to gardens in England, and that is why we didn’t at first think they had an exceptional amount. Scandinavians are more likely to have flowers in boxes and on windowsills than around the yard.
As you may have guessed by now, we had a wonderful trip. So many of the things we did, we couldn’t have done at all had John $ been with us. At the end of the trip we could look forward to seeing our little fellow with John’s sister and her family.
These photos show our two families eating breakfast, playing with trains, and getting ready to leave.
You deserve an endurance medal if you are still with me!
This incident is amusing to me now, but it wasn’t at the time. My phone was in my hand when it rang. Although I could read nothing on the screen, I hit the right area and was talking to the doctor who had removed my second cataract that morning. He called to ask how I was, and I blurted out something one should never say to an eye surgeon, “I can’t see!”
I should have said I can’t read, or more specifically, I can’t see to read. Perhaps he is used to people being overly dramatic, because he asked if I had any pain. I had the correct answer to that – none.
I could see things at a distance, which was exactly as it should be. I could read ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. That, too, should have been expected, but it was a rude shock. I wanted to let daughters Lise and Kate know that the surgery was successful. I guessed the placement of the icon on the phone for texting, but I couldn’t pick out individual names. John got one for me and touched the microphone icon so that I could dictate. If you’ve ever dictated to a phone, you know it is fraught with danger. It maliciously substitutes bizarre words. Somehow I think we got the news to Kate, and Lise called when she got the initial statement.
I was not prepared for the almost total despair that came over me. How could I get through the rest of the week with grandson David and son John $pencer working and John away for the weekend? If important notices came on the phone or computer, I wouldn’t be able to see them. Deleting spam would be impossible. There would be no writing or commenting on blog posts.
David saved the day, suggesting I get readers found in many stores. I had forgotten that Kate pointed toward a rack of readers in Walmart. David mentioned Dollar General, and we would pass four of them on the way home from the doctor’s office the next morning. John was a life-saver, reading the labels and helping me try them on. At the first store we found a pair of sunglasses with clear glass on the top and lenses for reading on the bottom. The second store had a greater selection of plain readers. I don’t know that I picked the best ones, but I can see the phone and monitor now. In about a month the eyes will have settled enough that I can get new prescription glasses.
The highlight of the day featured low light on one of daughter Kate’s last days here. John, Kate, grandson David, and I went up on the Blue Ridge Parkway hoping to catch a gorgeous sunset. It was far from spectacular, but we used our phones/cameras, anyway.
This was my best shot.
There is only one photo from the most fantastic day of Kate’s visit. Son John $pencer took her and David to Lake Logan, where they went out in two canoes. $ was the only one with a phone, because the other two were not willing to risk their new phones on the water. Wise move. There isn’t much to show for their exciting adventure, but their memories are stellar.
A morning walk is exciting enough for us older folks. Thankfully, the animals came out to greet Kate to add sparkle to the morning.
Kate pets CAT
Smoky says hello to Kate
We shopped at two stores that Kate does not have in New Jersey and went on the parkway once more in daylight. The night seemed short, because all too soon she was in her car going home. The drive will take 14 or 15 hours. We have wonderful memories of her week’s visit, the only regret being that we live so far away.
Daughter Kate enjoyed wandering around our supermarket on shopping day, comparing our store to the one she works in. We ate lunch at home before going to Cataloochee, hoping to see elk. It was out of season and early afternoon, so our hopes were not high. On the way, we stopped at a hidden overlook to get a broad view of the valley.
We hadn’t been in the elk area very long when Kate spotted the first one, calmly eating near the road. John took this photo out the window for me.
We stopped to go through one of the old houses left in the park. I’ve been through the house many times, so I stayed on the bridge over the stream. When David and Kate came back, they walked down the stream looking at birds perched over the water.
On the way out of the park, Kate exclaimed that she spotted an elk. John backed up and parked. There were five of them in the woods! I took a shot of the action I saw, which was of David and Kate taking photos. It had begun to rain, making my picture a bit spotty. If you look between Kate’s nose and hand, you can see an elk standing up in the background.
Going to the creek does not count as hiking, but it was a good start to the day. We try to take a photo of our walking partners, at least the first time during a visit.
Sadie, Kate and John at the creek
Kate is really good with Sadie, which is a total surprise. As a toddler, Kate was terrified of anything that moved quickly, especially dogs. She has worked hard to conquer this fear. Here is proof – Kate is testing a harness on Sadie after adjusting it for a better fit.
At breakfast, David casually tossed croissants on his plate. He got up late on his first day of vacation, eating after the rest of us had finished.
I said, “You can do better than that.”
I tried to balance the croissants against each other, but I’m not good at it. I turned around once, and David had them in position.
David’s goal for the day was for him to swim with his mother at Catawba falls. David, John, and I had been there in January 2020 when he took this photo. John and I did not get that far, because there was a rushing stream over the path to the falls. We stayed behind as David picked his way over a few stones above the water. Obviously, he didn’t swim that day because it was much too cold.
Catawba Falls
We made a good start on the hike when Kate and David went down to touch the stream on the way up.
John opted to stay in the car. I felt triumphant when I crossed the stream that had stopped me before. Not only was the temperature warmer, but the stream was low.
The path became steeper and rockier. When we came to this scene where David is on the rocks looking back, I paused.
I felt daring to get as far as I had. It would have been foolhardy to continue. I saw the angle of David’s feet and knew I could easily twist my metal knees. I’ve seen a mountain rescue before, and I did not want to be carried out. They were very understanding and felt comfortable leaving me to sit on a large rock on the left. I enjoyed the people and dogs passing by and played games on my phone. As it turned out, they did not make it to the swimming place, either. The climb was too steep for Kate. They played in a smaller pool, chilled themselves thoroughly, and came back down.
It was several hours beyond our mealtime, so we ate at the first restaurant we came to, a Chinese buffet. The food was good, and we all looked forward to the soft ice cream. We ate ours, and David brought his with him. We say he has a professional advantage to loading a cone, because he does it often at Burger King. We had enjoyed our whole day and came home tired, but happy.
My name is Suki, my human is a writer, and this is about my world. The world according to Suki The Cat. My humans smell funny, look weird, and I can't understand a thing they say, but they feed me, so hey, what are you gonna do?
