Four More Days



Friday is the awaited cataract surgery on the right eye. This rapidly developing late unset cataract has been a daily surprise for me. And I have been looking for ways to explain it to myself and others. Today for instance my computer screen was painful to look at. It was just too white. And too bright. I toyed with putting sunglasses on over my reading glasses.

The illustration above taken from Google Images really came closest to explaining what I have been going through just since January. With most people cataracts grow slow enough that they are almost unaware of them until they are removed and the colors are richer. To me the world seems too bright and everyday too much brighter. Night driving is out. Sunrises and sunsets can be painful. A flash of light blinding. And I understand for some people light even becomes painful.

I have become very picky about light. As an artist I suppose I have always been sensitive to light but that is rather different. My studio has tons of lights on different switches and almost all on dimmers. And lately I find myself working only with a low diffused light. One that does not blast my retina. And I squint a lot to keep light out.

There is also a rapidly growing cataract in my left eye. One which my eye doctor tells me I will really be aware of after Friday's removal of the one in my right eye. So I will probably want to do this again really fast. I want that deer in the headlights feeling to go away.

Comments

Post a Comment

I write for me but I care what my readers think. Please be polite and no scamming.

Popular posts from this blog

Swimming

Image
For much of my college career my fitness workout was swimming on the B squad of the swim team. I remember it as the days before heated pools and women coaches. I also remember being so exhausted and cold I could only lean against the shower wall and throw up. Not exactly warm fuzzy images but I was in awesome shape. Needless to say it did not leave me with a overpowering desire to swim laps. Point of fact for years my swimming became really informal: Swimming to shore after the canoe tipped over, challenging my sister once a summer to across the lake and back, seeing how long I could back float without moving a muscle, and a scuba course. I also played around with other ways of staying fit: aerobics, bicycling, jogging, skiing and dance classes. All of which seem to be bad for the knees, back or feet. After my ski accident my physical therapist steered me back to the pool. Damn if I was going to swim laps! However, aqua fit was just getting rather seriously taken so I took it. It r
Read more

The Pruning the Crown of Thorns

Image
Crown of Thorns Before I am a lover of Euphorbias . They are from the deserts of Southern Africa and Madagascar. They have evolved physical characteristics and forms similar to cacti of North and South America and are often incorrectly referred to as cacti. My big Crown of Thorns was one of my first of a growing collection of these succulents from the spurge family of Euphorbiaceae. I picked it up as a 6 inch plant in a New Iberia nursery when my sister and I were touring the northern gulf coast. I believe that was 15 years ago. I made an attempt at limiting its height a few years back to allow it to devote more energy to the new branches and make it a denser plant. That failed. And the height of the plant continued to challenge the window space and soon the long branches were leaning over and leaning against the window. I googled and found the proper way to prune this treasured plant. Still it was very difficult to cut off the four longer branches. Even with a plan. The f
Read more

Polyethylene Packaging - a Dark Times Journal entry

Image
I was in the fourth grade when our family moved from El Paso, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico. We moved because I could not breathe the air there. I want to say they cracked petroleum there. But what did I know beyond the sky was sometimes yellow and I could not breathe. Mom was pregnant with Debbie, and Gary and I rode in the backseat separated by a round tank full of Dad's tropical fish. Dad had a job with Sealright, Inc which made paper milk cartons. Sealright was a polyethylene packing subsidiary of Phillips 66. The petroleum company. I was rather proud of myself for learning to say that, and to not laugh when adults would stare at me not knowing what to ask about that. Albuquerque smelled better. Then. Before all the freeways were built and the shape of the valley trapped the exhaust down near the ground in the winter months. We lived in the foothills. I could breathe. I learned that if I could see the air I could not. Still it was better than El Paso though I missed our trip
Read more