The girls and I drove into Braidwood a couple of times to go to the local pool. It was important for me to get my independence back and to have the girls meet some local kids who will be at school with them. We joined the library, found out lots of info about what happens in town and met some lovely people. After one visit to the pool, we were caught in a huge thunderstorm on our way home. The thunder was crashing right above the car, the lightning striking and the rain so heavy we could hardly see. We arrived home to find the house surrounded by mud, the alarm was going off for our waste management system and Peter had gone away for work! I thought about panicking, but did as any good country girl would. I donned my gumboots, went out to check on the system, made sure the water was going into the water tank and that the house had not flooded and then opened a bottle of wine.
I was able to drive for about three weeks before problems started again. I put the contact lens in one day and drove to Braidwood. It was the first time I had driven myself anywhere in my car on my own in a long time and it was wonderful. I arrived in town and had a cup of coffee and was doing the grocery shopping when my eye started to hurt. Starting to panic, I thought, ‘How am I going to get home?’ My eye was watering and was very sore. Peter was away at the time so I drove home with a very watery sore eye and when I got there took the contact lens out and was never able to wear it again.
During my visit to Dr Kate a few days later, she said the cornea was in distress again and the contact lens wasn’t going to be an option. I had an appointment to see Dr Con and he said ‘OK, it’s time to organise surgery.’
He changed his mind about doing a cornea transplant. He decided that implanting an intraocular lens would give me a better outcome but that meant going into surgery for four procedures. On each eye they needed to remove the cornea graft and after four or five weeks of recovery, I would go back and they would implant the lens. That procedure to do the implant is done during day surgery and we would need to stay overnight in Sydney and see Dr Con the next day. Once that had healed they would start the whole procedure again on the right eye. When he told me I would need the four procedures I was very distressed. This was going to drag out for at least another six months and probably longer. Peter kept telling me that we were making progress, it would all be over at the end of the year.
I really tried to keep a positive spin on this. We were sitting down to dinner one night and having a chat with the girls. It was the usual rules and regulations and guidelines chat we have every now and then where everyone gets to have their say.
Caitlin said to me, ‘You’re always whingeing about how you can’t see and how you can’t do things.’ I was quite taken aback by that.
‘Am I being very negative?’ I didn’t think I had been. There were days when I didn’t feel any positive energy at all but most of the time I did get up and get on with my life.
Recording my thoughts was important. When I listened back to the tape for the first time I was surprised at how I had forgotten some of the stuff that had happened, and it was important to hear my voice at some of the points when I was feeling very down.
While I waited for the surgery I certainly had some days where I was very depressed. Restoring my sight was going to be a long process. I had to have four procedures and there was going to be a gap of possibly six weeks between each one, which meant the rest of the year would be taken up with trips to Sydney and surgical procedures. We had to think about Peter’s job as he travelled a couple of days each week, what we would do with the girls as they were in a new school and I didn’t really want to pull them out for each of these trips we had to make to Sydney. We also had our dog and the bunnies to think about. I generally faced this whole episode in a very positive way, I didn’t have a terminal or chronic illness, I had a very supportive family around me and my problem would be fixed but sometimes I didn’t believe it would ever be over.
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