The next morning was a different story. I woke up in a lot of pain. My eye was very sore. When they took off the bandage to have a look at it, the tears were pouring down my face. The doctor assured me that was a good thing, tears are good, tears are healing. I saw the three doctors, Matt, Dov and Katherine who had assisted Dr Con. They were very pleased with how it looked and I was padded up again. I spent most of the morning with Peter and resting because I felt dreadful. By Thursday night the pain had gone. It was a little bit uncomfortable but that was it. On Friday they took the pad off again and were very pleased with what they saw. They replaced the pad and I had a long day trying to amuse myself listening to my reading book, listening to the TV. The thing I loved about the Sydney Eye Hospital was that we all had TVs above our beds with very small screens! None of us could see which I thought was pretty funny but we could listen.
The women in my ward were truly inspirational. My sight was the best of the four of us and I realised how lucky I was. I was coming back from my visits to the doctors with positive news and these ladies were hearing bad news. One woman in particular I became close to. She had low vision all her life and was having some serious problems with the vision she had left. I spent a lot of time sitting with her and hearing her story. Although she was having a hell of a week her concerns were still with me. We had been discussing how much we loved having a cappuccino but we weren’t able to go downstairs to the café because we couldn’t see very well!
When her husband arrived on Saturday morning he was immediately given the job of taking us both down to the café and we sat out in the sun drinking coffee, in our pj’s with bandages on our eyes. It was bliss! She was an inspiration as even with the little sight she had her life was a very full one.
This had been a very emotional week. I was on the path to having my sight restored and I realised how hard the last few years had been for my family and me but my thoughts were often with my roommates.
When I arrived home my sight was even more diminished. Life was just a bit harder and my family had to do more for me. I was on an emotional rollercoaster. Poor Peter. Not only did he have to deal with the emotions of my eyesight problems he had to deal with my hormones. While I was in hospital the night sweats certainly kicked in. The beds were awful but they also had plastic covers over the mattresses, which are just perfect for a hot body to lie on. Luckily I had all my lovely pj’s so that after a night of sweating in bed I could change into fresh ones.
The next procedure was due to happen six weeks later and it was during this waiting time my emotions were very erratic. I had one of my cornea grafts removed and was about to have the other one taken off too. I was feeling very guilty. I felt that I was letting my donor down because my grafts had not lasted. I felt I was letting their family down because they had made this amazing decision that had changed my life and now the tissue would just be thrown away because my eyes didn’t want it anymore. I was grieving for the loss of my grafts.
Before I had my transplants I was very shy. I had worn my ‘coke bottle’ glasses most of my life and had hidden behind them. I had met Peter just before my first transplant and we were married before the second. I became more confident and have gone on to do things I would never have dreamed of doing. My fear was that if I lost my grafts I would lose the person I had become and revert back to the shy girl I once was. I was scared that I would lose Peter as well. He had been in my life the same amount of time as my cornea grafts and in my head, because they were going he would too. When I told him this he was very surprised I would even think that. He wasn’t going anywhere. We would get through all the surgery and take one step at a time. These were the thoughts I was having as I was stuck at home and feeling even more depressed and isolated as I waited for the next operation.
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