What a month

I've been busy and a slacker - again - so you'll get another long catch-up post. Here goes...


On September 14, Xavier and I (kind of) celebrated our second anniversary. Happy birthday to us! :) Unfortunately, I was still on the mend from my eye surgery a few days before, so there wasn't much celebrating, but it was nice to hang out with him. It's just so crazy to me that we have been together for so long. And happy. We've been through a wedding, his father's passing, a move, 5 months of me in New York, a dissertation, and everyday life with me... I'm sure he never thought life with a boring girl from Idaho would be such a whirlwind of craziness. I have loved every minute of it and am so lucky to have found him. He takes care of me, he offers advice, he cooks and cleans and does laundry, he deals with my idiosyncracies... and still sticks around and somehow thinks he's the lucky one. Thanks, Xavo. Love you.


On September 15, the eye doc proclaimed me healed and I was back to work. On September 22, the same awesome eye doc told me that thanks to serum tears, the scar tissue he couldn't remove during surgery was almost gone. The man was giddy. I was, too, though it may also have had something to do with him telling me I could wear eye makeup again.

September 26 was my youngest brother Tim's 19th birthday, which totally creeps me out. He's not allowed to be that old. Partly because I'm not allowed to be that old. I still remember when my mom had him: I was in the fifth grade and even though I told my mom that he was beautiful, I walked out of her hospital room and promptly told the nurse he was the ugliest baby I had ever seen. (In his and my defense, he was also the first brand new shriveled baby I had ever seen. He grew out of it.) Within the next few weeks, I started resenting the fact that as soon as I was about to escape the permanent job of babysitter - because Brett was finally old enough to be left alone for an hour or two - my mom had to spoil the fun and have another one. Needless to say, that didn't last for long. He's way too cute and way too fun. Happy Birthday Tim! He'll be leaving on a mission to Brazil in November and Xav and I can't wait to see him at his farewell. I'll do my best to write him and I will laugh at him every time he complains about having to wake up early.

September 27th was the day my dad died seven years ago at 46 years old... So strange. It hasn't quite hit me yet, but I'm sure it will. My dad was a great man and I miss him every time I hear some good classic rock. I remember growing up as his own little one. You'll notice in the picture that I'm totally chillin' with him - and not even touching my mom. (My mom got Tiff.) I remember working with him in the backyard and him sneaking me Pepsi - right after my mom told him I couldn't have any. I remember going biking with him on my little XR100 and shooting my first elk at 12. I loved driving with him to all of his city council meetings, playing name that tune en route (hence the link to classic rock), and learning to 'hold it' until we got there. (We didn't stop for bathroom breaks and I now have a bladder of steel.) I still miss my truck he got for me in High School. I remember getting the phone call from my mom the day after his snowmobile accident in '99 and figuring he was fine because my mom always overreacted. I hated those next four years and missed my dad, but was torn because everyone kept telling me that I was supposed to be grateful he was still alive. It's disappointing that my last note from him included mention of my crappy ex and I wish I could have grabbed more of his things when I was home. I still wish he could have met Xav. I really wish he could have been here when I finished my PhD. Making him proud was always my favorite thing to do.

Thank you!

... thank you, thank you, thank you for all of the prayers and crossed fingers and blessings. The surgery went well on Thursday and I am on the mend. No pain, minimal light sensitivity, and I'm already back to work today.

And I have no doubt why that is. So thank you all.

PS In the meantime, yes, I look kinda funny. No eye makeup for two weeks means my blond eyelashes blend in to the rest of my face and my eyes disappear. Not to worry - I have lots of eye makeup to play with in another week and a half.

Thanks for the reassurance

I am signing the consent forms for the surgery and remembering they're less than reassuring. No offense Kelly, but I just don't like lawyers. I have to sign consent that I am aware that the risks of the procedure include (among other boring things) blindness, loss of bodily function or life, transmission of Hepatitis and AIDS, total loss of vision or loss of eye, perforation of eyeball, and destruction of optic nerve.

I know this surgery isn't all that complicated and isn't major... But these consent forms are ridiculous. Then again, they exist because it has happened to someone at some time. That thought isn't very comforting, either. Good thing I have a great surgeon who, as Xav pointed out, loves me.*

Thanks again for the well wishes and prayers. Xav has agreed to keep you all posted.

*He also has a PhD and was a great cheerleader through my schooling. He completely understood when I wouldn't have the surgery until after I finished the dissertation.

You'll shoot your eye out

Or, in my case, you'll get doctors to shoot your eye out. Sort of. For those of you not in-the-know, my eyes don't always like me. I'm incredibly near-sighted and decided to fix the problem in 2004 with Lasik. What a beautiful, wonderful thing those lasers were. I could see morning, noon, and night, didn't have to wear glasses, didn't have to struggle with toric gas-permeable lenses (yes, it hurts as much as it sounds), and could finally wear sunglasses. Hooray! Knowing how near-sighted I was, we under corrected on purpose, with the intent of touching up later with a more precise laser. For those of you keeping score who understand diopters, I think I remember hearing I was around a -10 in one eye and a -12 in the other with 3-ish astigmatism in both. Translation: really, really blind.

In late 2005, I finally started noticing my 20/20 eyes weren't quite 20/20 anymore. So Xavier and I headed back to Hawaii to have my original doctor do my retouch. For lots of boring reasons, we did my retouch via PRK instead of Lasik. Essentially, Lasik on top of the flap. If you're wondering about how these feel, Lasik is a bit scratchy and uncomfortable for a day and PRK feels like cats with red hot daggers are clawing your eyes out for almost a week.

Things were all happy again until I noticed my vision in my left eye was getting foggy. Not fuzzy and out of focus, but foggy, like my glasses (which I was not wearing) were dirty. Lucky, lucky me, I had developed a complication: when you do stuff on top of the flap, you can develop corneal scarring, which clouds your vision. Traditionally, scar tissue develops if you spend lots of time in the sun without sunglasses. That's definitely not me, but it also looks like prolonged computer use can do the same thing. Hmmm... At the time, I was working full time on computers and working on my PhD after work on computers. Busted. So in April of last year, I had a lamellar keratectomy on my left eye, with a 20 second treatment of mitomycin c (MMC), an anti-cancer drug that also stops corneal scar cells from forming. And the few days of "discomfort" they warned about? How about 2 months in a dark room because the pain and light sensitivity were excruciatingly painful. Apparently I have sensitive eyes.

I was back to 20/20 in my left (the scar tissue grows on top of the cornea enough to change the angle at which images hit the lens, making me near-sighted again) and seeing clearly. Imagine my surprise when away in New York, my vision seemed to decline again. Once I got back to Tucson, I visited my doctor and discovered that the scar tissue was back with a vengeance and we would have to do the surgery all over again with a longer treatment of MMC. This visit was in January, and there was no way I was letting this man touch my eyes when I had a dissertation to finish.

So here we are today: I have dropped an entire 1.5 diopters in the left eye (from -6.5 to -8) since January and it's all thanks to the scar tissue formation. Doc says it needs fixed and the big day is Thursday the 11th when we'll do another lamellar keratectomy but with a 60 second MMC treatment. I will also be treating with serum drops, which are clinically proven** to treat dry eye (which is a side effect of messing with your eyes) and anecdotally shown to help prevent the formation of corneal haze.

I could really use some prayers here. I sorta like my eyes and I like seeing. Oh, and now that I'm back to being an intern with IBM, I only have four sick days before I have to start taking unpaid leave. I'm not whining - okay, maybe a little - I'm mostly identifying my constraints and hoping the big guy upstairs goes along with "the plan."*

Oh - and consider yourselves warned. The blogging will obviously stop, because computer screens are light sources and they hurt. I'll be sure to ask Xavier to post updates, though.

*My mom once asked me the best way to make Heavenly Father laugh. Her answer: Tell Him your plans.
**Sort of. No double blind tests have been conducted, but that's a limitation of the drops themselves. Basically, serum drops have to be frozen for storage and then thawed and kept in the fridge while you use them (one dropper lasts 3-4 days). They are also a light yellow color. A double blind test is difficult in this case because a) frozen saline drops change consistency, b) saline drops are clear, and c) patients talk to each other in waiting rooms and figure out that they're being treated differently. But there are some decent studies with promising results. I have noticed great results in relation to dry eyes and hope they'll help with the scar tissue.