19 December, 2010

Cool library in Wales...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...
or not puzzled...loving it....Welsh libraries...manuscripts...illuminations....oh I would so love to see these for real!
The National Library of Wales - Alexander the Great MS 15c

from the goddess of learning

18 December, 2010

Pain full thoughts...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I've had low blood sugar, migraines, colitus, acid reflux, back problems, and high blood pressure since my mid teens. Fibro in my late teens. Chronic fatigue, hyperthyroid, thoracic outlet, and carpal tunnel in both hands in my late twenties. I got pregnant and my migraines went to clusters and then daily clusters. Then they gave me drugs that made me obese. I developed high cholesterol, hypothyroid, high spinal pressure. Now finally diabetes, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and uveitus.

Now by the luck of the draw the pain isn't upping my blood pressure, it's lowering it.  Which I didn'..t know could happen. So now if I bend over at the wrong time or move too fast I pass out. Orthostatic Hypotention...? WTF?  Sounds fun, huh? Wee.... yes, that's sarcastic. One more weird ass thing to explain to people that doesn't kill me,  or put me in more blinding pain than I've been for the past 17 years, but one more time my body triumphs over my mind.


I watch others who I know are in so much pain, and I try not to make it a contest about pain. Just getting through each day is a miracle, so how can pain become a contest? But when you so constantly feel like you have failed at all life has thrown at you, it's hard not to see it as one more in a long string of things you've failed at...pain tolerance....you just don't measure up there either....no wonder you just can't take any more...

Knowing that I'm going back to biting, grinding, soul numbing pain that never ends, of the sort that if you were an animal and could bite a limb off to it stop you would and that there is no medicine or trick or activity or meditation or THING that I can do or NOT DO in my life to stop it from coming back to me scares the hell out of me. The medication is not as effective as it was...soon it won't be effective at all...again

The pain doctor, and the psychologist she sent me to, think I'm giving up, and that I have a negative outlook. I don't think that's the case, or I would have swallowed a gun long ago. I just don't think either one of them intimately knows pain. Most of the people who try to regulate it I don't think have ever known or lived with much real pain in their lives or they wouldn't really give a rat's ass about the small percentage of people who abuse medication and would have more compassion for those who have to live in the pain. If crawling into a bottle or a bottle of pills would give me back some of my cognitive function or reasoning powers around the pain, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Hell, I'd do it if only to get a teensy break from unrelenting agony occasionally.

But I'm not dying and so I have to live on in unrelenting agony because my government wants to be my mommy and knows what's best for my body...even better than my doctors...and they've known so well what is best so far....

yeah...from the sometimes goddess of sarcasm and pain

06 November, 2010

Floriography---or not, Botanical Symbolism in the Middle Ages

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...
Presented by HL Sannan Cairngorne of Hauksgarðr
October 9, 2010

The Victorians called it Floriography. We call it the "Language of Flowers." To the Ancient and the Medieval mind, it was their gods, or God revealing himself or herself to them. We have fairly standard lists of meanings nowadays between the internet and florists. Victorians used to carry lists around with their meanings and they could vary from city to city and country to country. It wasn't much better in medieval times, but there was a bit more agreement on what meanings were attached to certain flowers and what they represented or who.

The use of botanical imagery in painting proliferated especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as artists became increasingly interested in the realistic depiction of objects from the natural world; the purpose of this imagery was often, however, twofold. Beyond their decorative properties, plants and flowers usually had a symbolic meaning or association that related to the subject of the painting. Thus, a plant could be depicted either as an attribute, giving clues to the identity of the subject or sitter (as in 43.86.5), or as providing a moral or philosophical annotation on the subject.

Botanical symbolism has its origin in the literature of antiquity, where plants are often used in metaphors for virtue and vice. In classical mythology, human beings are transformed into plants as a reward or punishment, as in the story of Narcissus, the vain youth who fell in love with his own reflection and was changed into a flower that bears his name. Certain plants are also mentioned as attributes of gods and goddesses: grapes for Bacchus, god of wine, and corn or wheat for Ceres, goddess of agriculture. Classical texts on farming and natural histories by Pliny, Cato, and Lucretius also recorded some of the traditional lore associated with plants. Many of these ideas and associations were passed on to scholars and artists during the Renaissance, a period of revived interest in classical texts.

Religious writings also provided a wealth of plant symbolism. The Bible and the Apocrypha contain many references to trees, fruits, and flowers in moralizing similes and parables. The Song of Solomon is particularly rich in allusions, as in a verse proclaiming "I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys," possibly referred to in Procaccini's Madonna and Child with Saints Francis and Dominic and Angels (1979.209) by the inclusion of a vase of roses. Christian writers from the early medieval period through the Renaissance also used botanical imagery as a means of explaining and interpreting religious beliefs.

A third major source for plant symbolism was the medieval herbal. Herbals described the natural properties of plants, the method for their cultivation, and their use in cooking and in medicine. These properties, as well as the plant's shape, color, taste, smell, and season of blooming, usually lent themselves to a moral connotation: the poisonous hemlock represented evil and death, while the clover, with its three leaves, was a symbol of the Holy Trinity. Used also as a salve against snake bites (according to Pliny), the clover was sometimes regarded as an emblem of Salvation, where the bite represented Original Sin, encouraged by a serpent in the Garden of Eden. (1)

There are hundreds of examples of botanicals in artwork in the middle ages. Looking at it again with a fresh consideration to another layer of symbolism or meaning that the artist meant for there to be extant in their work brings more depth to the appretiation of what the emotion is they are trying to convey. The following pages are a table with a few flowers to give you a start at identifying some of the flowers and herbs that might have some meaning when you are looking at a work of art and just might be telling you a lot more about what the artist is trying to say.

Related research:
Source: wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_flowers
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/flowerinfo.htm
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hi/te_index.asp?i=16
http://www.earthlypursuits.com/FlwrsPer/FPtitle.htm
http://www.earthlypursuits.com/FlwrsPer/FlwrSent.htm (list of meanings from 1840's)
http://www.victorianbazaar.com/meanings.html
http://www.thegardener.btinternet.co.uk/flowerlanguage.html
http://www.terrafolia.ca/flower-dictionary.html

Period source referenced by marygardensmain.html site for botanical naming in Middle Ages
"De Plantis A Divis Sanctisve Nomen Habentibus" by Johannis Bauhin, Basil, 1591

03 June, 2010

don't take my energy...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I am, as those overly PC people put it, "differently-abled." I've railed against it, against my genetics, against gods, and all involved.

Most people don't get it because it's invisible. Over the years I've commiserated with others in similar situations because they too, understand...that's why I'm frustrated and get pissed off when they blithely steal my family's spoons. Yes, I consider it a theft. Because otherwise I was in an untenable situation and would look bad...

So it was that I use energy I and my family didn't have to waste on somebody that KNOWS how little we have because they are in the same boat, or look like awful shirkers who leave these poor people stranded alone to pack up all by themselves.

It is worse because my husband has now joined the ranks of the uncontrolled diabetics again (no insurance), with other problems that go with it like high cholesterol and high blood pressure and his sleep apnea. He's losing weight. But somewhere recently he lost his backpack that had his diabetic blood sugar monitor in it, and half of his medicines and of course we can't afford to replace it without insurance. A doctor visit alone to our doctor is well over $200, but it's getting critical.

So I've been rationing his energy, like I ration mine, like I ration that of the rest of my family...others think of it as how many spoons they have to get through a day. It's a good analogy to get the point across. Your energy is finite and people who have an energy reserve don't get that...but people who are disabled themselves SHOULD!


I've had to tailor my family's life to our reality. It used to be what do you want mommy to do, this school thing with you, or a movie with the family over the weekend? A family night? or some one on one time? It was always mommy and always an either/or. Now it's daddy as well, or both.


I ration my energy day to day. I ration my husband's energy. I ration my family's energy.


I even explain to people that we make choices between what we can do and what we can't based on the disabilities and amount of energy it takes to deal with it.


With small children and disabilities we found we couldn't event. We especially couldn't autocrat as we loved to do. I stopped going to most events and my husband went alone to some of them. I stopped cooking at events. We stopped putting up an elaborate period camp. All of our activities got rationed. Saying "no" became a hated skill I had to learn for my sanity and my family's ultimate survival.

We went to few events, even fewer activities because my disabilities made daily life a chore and just living it to raise children took all my energy.

Now my children are old enough to be a help. We are learning how to streamline our SCA lives to sometimes be able to still be able to afford the energy it takes to go to and sometimes even to run events, but I need my entire family's energy to do it for us all to get there and we plan our vacations from the everyday grind of pain and "can't do thats" accordingly. We all pitch in to make it work for our family.


Now, there is a down side that I have found with our love of our new group. My husband hasn't learned the ability to say no, and I find myself feeling responsible for people who are availing themselves of our too finite family energy reserves so that we are left with less than nothing when we return home. It will really mean fewer events for us, that's the bottom line.

I can't allow my husband, who is our only almost able-bodied bread winner at this point, to cripple himself like this for multiple days on our return from what is supposed to be a "fun" event. As a family, we can't afford it. Individually, he can't afford it, health-wise.


I can't afford it, selfishly, when he is my only support for transport, and the only support for transport for his disabled mother as well.

Don't get me wrong. We had so much fun with our friends at this last event, but we knew our limitations, and the limitations of our conditions and didn't even do our normal volunteering. My husband didn't fight; crap, he didn't even marshal. That should have clued people in to just how messed up he was. He went to bed just after dark on Sunday. This, from the man who like the night owl he is, normally helps me greet my pain filled dawn.

He's only like this when his diabetes is messed up like it was this last weekend and the injuries are stacking up from the weather and the packing. I doubled my meds. I'm not supposed to, but I can't pack otherwise, and I was relieved it only took us about 4 hours to pack our own stuff up. We woke up and immediately got to it like we normally do, all of our family pitching in and doing what we can. We even ate as we packed and just got it done. I was thankful to the bit of help we got to fold up the one tent and tote the couple of heavy things I can't lift. It was all of about 10 minutes to help us finish up or so I would guess. I probably made it longer trying to get in the way and bend over myself, but for some reason people kept being concerned I'd faint on them or some stupid sh*t like that. ;D (Thanks Aislin for the assist folding the tent!)

I had to think long and hard why I've been so upset the last few days while we've been recovering and pretty much bed bound. And I think it was so hard because the next 2 hours was spent packing up a camp with only half the people who had shared it helping after they had made an INCREDIBLY slow start to their day and it had put them way behind everybody else. I found it hard to not feel resentment as the kids all sat in the car and Mom in that camp did most of the work, disabled as she is.

It bothered me most because, while I don't mind helping, I expect EVERYONE to do what little bit they can if I am going to be using up energy my family doesn't have to spare, and I felt like my husband and I and a few others were paying the toll so that the disabled gentleman in that camp could overuse his own energy and enjoy himself that weekend. We paid HIS price. My husband even warned him not to pack so much and was ignored and we still paid his price. As well as the price for the non-disabled people riding with him who could have been helping but sat in the car instead for various reasons. They may have been valid reasons beyond getting food; I don't know. I just know that energy was fading fast that would have been conserved if there had been more help and more fellow feeling.

Courtesy requires that people not be able to say things when they are so angry they are being abused and they feel they are being taken advantage of. That is wrong. It is discourteous to us all to take advantage of us by relying on our courtesy and goodwill to do your work.

A two hour drive home took 5 hours because of the stops we had to make to calm the spasms of pain my husband was having ,and I was in no shape to drive because I'd had to double my meds to "help" pack up when I went beyond my limits. I felt absolutely helpless. I didn't have anything I could medicate him with and I was too medicated to drive. All we could do was wait for the muscle spasms in the back and shoulder to lessen enough for him to drive again.

Then he had to race the clock to get home to help a disabled mother try to get a battery for her car working so she could see a doctor. He ended up back out on the road, muscle spasms and all.

So...I need to get this said. I may be seen as the wicked witch of the west or of the local area. But, I did my volunteering in the background and what was within my energy to do at the event, or would have been, based on what my family packed and what we knew we had to do.

I've had 2 eye surgeries in the last 4 months and have been fighting medication changes that are swinging my blood pressure and blood sugar up and down, and I'm lucky if I can bend over without fainting. I make us pack only what we need. My husband didn't volunteer to do the things he loved because he hurt himself helping people a few days before the event and knew that packing up and slogging in the mud would be too much for our family energy to absorb.

As adults we make those decisions daily, and yes, we made the decision to help the pople we did, because their being left behind to do it on their own would have reflected badly on our own group and ultimately, on us. So we made the choice not to look like slackers who had no conscience.

But they, as well, are adults, who have been disabled a long time. Long enough that they should know their energy limits and not ask others to give them spoons. Aislin doesn't have many spoons to spare. I don't have them and my husband doesn't have them to give. We were put in a position to be made to look bad if we didn't and that's what made me upset.


Many people in our group are disabled. We seem to have an overabundance of "differently-abled" who need to steward their energy wisely and, as such, we need to help each other as a community, but we need to NOT count on abusing that help. Because those of us that help are giving up our energy and spoons and future days of being able to take moms to hospitals and go with kids to events at their schools to you too! These are things that have been missed...


I recognize it when I have to ask for help, and I sure don't expect to receive it. I am amazed and humbled by the willingness of our members who can give of their help and do, but expecting the help is an abuse that will see the help drying up and blowing away for everyone.

Why am I cowardly bitching here instead of in an open forum where I can be answered face-to-face, or in a one-on-one meeting where I can address the problem diplomatically with the major individuals involved?

Mainly because of my old nemesis, disability. I can't string sentences together and when I have an issue to address when I am upset the ability regresses even further. My IQ drops by 20 to 50 points and I spend many minutes fighting the fog and being frustrated and losing the point of the whole exercise, and by then, so has the person I'm trying to confront. So I have found that writing, with the ability to stretch it out, find the right word, and ask for the person's feedback, can actually facilitate one-on-one communication for me. It is still just as hard for me to confront someone as it ever has been. I still need to get my courage up so I'm not walked over and then I need to find the words so that I can hope they'll understand my feelings, and not just blow it off as unimportant. Because if I sat down and took the time to draft it out and write, it was majorly important to the future of that relationship.

from the goddess who has been hibernating with her god for 2 days recovering...

28 May, 2010

Video games for eye surgeons...I swear to God...


Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...
I made this eye bead necklace for my eye surgeon. Dr Rebecca Armour at Casey Eye Institute. She's great. Gave me back most of my vision. Eye beads have been used in history as talisman's to protect from the "evil eye" which is why the theme is so common in beads. ;D

So many cultures thought that you could illwish through the evil eye. Also, beads in the representation of a body type are thought to protect that body type. So this is a double whammy. ;D

The only bead that I actually burned in my torch was the eye bead itself. The rest are store bought glass and mineral on polycoated tigertail with brass accents. But I strung it!

My lampworking teacher, Epona, taught me how to make the eye beads to look so realistic! They are almost scarry. So now I'm having to figure out uses for spotted white beads. ;D

LOL. I had the final YAG surgery for the eye. I was concerned because my little black dot friends from my uveitus in all levels of my depth perception were disappearing from my vision and I couldn't see small text as well with that eye.

I got ahold of the doctor on their cool internet contact system at OHSU and Casey Eye, very neat to be able to just leave an email for a non-emergency and wait for a non-emergency response. I asked, "Do you want to see me this week, or should I just wait until my surgery that is scheduled for June 2nd?" 2 days later they called with an appointment time on my phone. She worries as much about my retina as I do.



I was worried needlessly, It was flatter and less swollen then it has been in 2 years. YAY! So, she was like, "Let's just go ahead and do the surgery now."

???? Eeek!

It was like asteroids for eye surgeons. She gets to point a laser into a mirror and blast it through the new lens and cut the cloudy layer left at the back of the lens pocket in a circle around the pupil so that the light can clearly focus to my retina. There was this little popcorn popping feeling with each laser shot and kind of a small sting....they add up by the way and eventually the little excized circle was going to drift to the bottom of my eye and dissolve over time. Weird stuff.

I told her that she just liked playing asteroids...she laughed.

My eye is now at 20/25 plus2 whatever that means, when it is corrected. That is what it will be for the future at best. This is so much better then the white wall of doom!

from the goddess of two eyes who can see the periphery again when she's not passing out...and that's another story...

13 May, 2010

The Spoon Theory written by Christine Miserandino

For those who don't quite 'get it' when I talk about managing my energy during a day, or only having so much or being out of it....or what it's like to live disabled. This is the best analogy I have EVER read.


The Spoon Theory written by Christine Miserandino

Posted using ShareThis

12 April, 2010

Eye strain...and growing tolerant to modern meds

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I'm getting tired of posting these updates...and I'm sure others are tired of reading them. But it beats having to tell you all ad nauseum in person all the health woes of the woefully insane who has Hashimoto's (Fibromyalgia, chronic migraines, diabetes, arthritis, and, and,....bleck).

For those who haven't looked it up yet, Hashimoto's Thyroiditis is another cute imune system disorder that doctors can't really treat. It normally starts with attacking your thyroid, thus the name, but when it's under control in the thyroid arena, it can chose other organs of your body to attack, just like lupus and sarcoidosis are known to do.

Some of the people that I know that have it, are theorizing that mine chose my left eye to attack.

It's as good a theory as any other, since this is exactly the theory the doctors came up with...they were just trying to assign sarcoidosis to it...it seems that the doctors at Casey Eye haven't met Hashimoto's yet. Doctor Dreamy meet Hashimoto's Thryroiditis, Hashimoto's meet Dr. Dreamy. otherwise known as an escapee from the cast of "Grey's Anatomy." (I swear to God it is true! LOL.) I think the doctors up on the hill need to pass a casting call as well as an IQ test and medical school in order to work there. Hmmm! I wonder how that's included in the job anouncement?

But, back to the serious stuff of updates...the vision is at a blurry 20/60 now with my corrective lenses and isn't going to get much better. I can see to do close work illumination and such without my glasses much better than with them. It seems pretty solid that I will end up having the laser outpatient surgery to correct the rest of the blurry vision. I still have a seriously weak eyelid on that side and the eye muscles get VERY sore very quickly with use, but I am trying to push them in order to get the peripheral vision back.

Other than the eye, the meds for the cluster migraines have pretty well stopped working on a daily basis so I am back to most days being at a 8 or 9 on a pain scale. It will probably take me a while to adjust again to that level of pain and the associated lack of conscentration and cognitive function it allows me. I'm trying to avoid the snappiness and grouchies that I know go with the chronic pain in the head.

Been there, done that, I own a closet and dresser full of those tee shirts. It just gets tiring not to be able to think or form a sentence and to have the people around you talk over you and complete everything you say.

One bright spot on this~! with the migraines back I can't really feel the arthritis in my back and the joint degeneration in my neck. LOL

So unless we go 4 wheeling in the woods, or I'm sleeping too long my head is out screaming my spine. The silver lining to every cloud. I still need the meds to get around when my head drops below a 7 or so...cuz the back pain is above that...gee, doesn't THAT make me a fun date at Christmas? LOL And to think my daughter is cringing because she's looking into a possible future...

Love and kisses and blessing to you all from the poster child and goddess of
it doesn't kill you it just makes you wish you were dead

03 March, 2010

Just a quick eye on it

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I had a call on Sunday from the on call doctor that I went to see on Saturday for the decreased vision in the eye with the cataract replacement. I guess I was the subject of a confab of doctors.

General consensus ended up being that I was to continue to double up the steroid eye drops for the rest of the day but then taper off that evening. But I needed to get to a pharmacy and pick up a prescription for systemic steroids. We ended up leaving the fighter practice and social time at Vindrbek a bit early, but we had to rush to the pharmacy before they closed 'cuz I had to get a whole lotta dosage in my stomach THAT night. Yuck!

I like that the doctors are on top of it, but when they move that fast, it's kind of disconcerting. Especially since I was seeing her the next afternoon.

I have now been told that the pressure in my eye is WAY down (good, good news for someone with the steroids shot in it). But I also now know that the cornea is swollen, the cells are floating in the front, and I have and area of cloudiness that formed with the cataract behind the lens as the cataract was forming that they tried to abrade off of the area during my surgery, but had no luck clearing. So I still have a cloudy layer in my eye and may need another surgery to clear my vision in 6 or 8 months. Again, if we can get the swelling under control.

I also found out why they went for the steroid shots instead of the systemic steroids to start with. THIS doctor actually answers questions. Systemic steroids are known to mess with diabetics blood sugars and to shoot them sky high and so they were holding off on using them as a last resort. They also wanted to have a last resort.

Okay, this treatment finally makes a little more sense. It still sucks that the treatment causes the blindness, but if you don't treat the edema in the back of the eye, you end up with damage to the optic nerve, which they can't treat at all. Permanent darkness.

Think I'll take the white cloud...but I sure wish the doctors had been more forthcoming about things. I've had as much if not more schooling than most of them and I get damn tired of being treated like a mushroom whenever it comes to my healthcare.

from the goddess of mushroomland

28 February, 2010

Not so Eye to Eye...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...
Today I got the scare of my life...my vision started to decrease again in the eye they just did surgery on. I spent 4 hours pacing and rereading, or failing to read, the same set of letters.

I finally called the on call opthamologist. We had to go down there and meet him at Casey Eye. He was a sweetheart and looked up and down and all around in the eye, looked at my chart and the notes and let me and the hubby know that it looked like some pigmented cells from them cutting around the pupil and freeing it to dilate were floating in my eye and obstructing the vision worse than it had been on Friday.

I also had a shocker and learned that my uveitus doctors hadn't bothered to tell me that one of the times they were treating "swelling" in the back of my eye they were actually treating me for a cyst on my retina. I HATE it when doctors don't tell me shit. This is a prime example of why I trust doctors SO MUCH! (Feel the heavy sarcasm?)

I'm home. I need to double up on the steroid drops I'm using and use them twice as often, and I have a whole new set of scarey symptoms to look for, but he really reassured me about how the eye was doing. And the pressure in the eye is down to a normal level from 30 on Friday to 16 today which is WAY good news.

from the two eyed goddess

26 February, 2010

Eye c's U....

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

It's happened. They cut my eye open like some cavier on a plate... really they did.
I just had to forget that I don't get numb very quickly under the administration of local anesthetic. Ooops!

Felt every cut of the knife as they cut around the cornea to lift it so they could free up the scarring around my pupil. I felt that cutting around the outside of the pupil as well I would swear.

They kept adding more eye drops and more pain meds to my drip line every time I said, "that REALLY is a BIT uncomfortable...translation

THAT HURTS LIKE A MOTHERF***CKER!!!"

Then she asks me to bear with her for just another moment. So I ask for something to hold onto. Two nurses bravely volunteer their fingers...2 and 3 at a time, but then tell me not to break them. ;D They didn't realize it was hazardous duty. I'm supposed to be an old lady. And I don't think they really realized how much the pain meds HADN'T taken effect.

I dropped back to one finger a piece. It's harder to break a single finger by squeezing. ;D

But then the doctor asked for the crusher...which I told her wasn't extremely comforting from the patient's side of things. I'm assuming it's the ultra sound tool that dissolves the actual protein lens in your eye so that the prosthetic one can be inserted. That part of the surgery took about 5 minutes, tops. LOL She's that good.

But I swear I got to watch her reattach something around the cornea, and I was seeing rainbow halos around the cornea and everything was this lovely shade of old blood through that eye yesterday. Cuz of course they drape your face in a lovely blue sterile sheet and tape it so that only the eye they are working on is open to the room. Makes for an interesting viewing arangement...NOT.

At least my arms were free and they took my claustrophobia seriously and gave me some GOOD anti-care pharmacueticals...better than valium according to them...I'd believe it. I really didn't much care that I knew I was all bound up with people all around me and cutting on my eye. Weird stuff.

Also got the financial shock of the week yesterday. It seems the doctor's scheduling department forgot the little detail of the $400 insurance deductible. Ouch! So that gets added to the rest of the medical bills that we've been trying to pay off all year, and I thought we were finally seeing some light!

But today I had the post op check and got the plastic shield off. I have 2 eyes! Binocular vision! I see in 3-D again! I have depth perception!

For those of you that have never been without it. Try putting gauze over one eye and taping it shut for a day or two and seeing what a massive pain in the rear it becomes. You can still see and do things. But you have to feel your way on anything that involves placing a paintbrush, needle, wheel, bead, fire torch, aargh! The list became endless. Made me so appreciate my vision. I may not have the perfect close vision I'm used to when I'm done, but the clouded wall I've been looking through will be gone! I cried.

Dr. Armour says I should wait a week to see Avatar again so that I really can appreciate the full 3-D effect. (More in another post on my thoughts about the movie without the 3-D.) And I have to wait a week for the lampworking as well. Aargh! I have this really cool idea for a necklace for my sister's birthday next week, but I don't even know if it's possible yet. Darn it!

Anyway. My body and surgery were a bit weird (what's new) and the pressure in my eye is a bit high today so I'm really supposed to keep track of stuff this weekend and report ANY loss of vision or increased pain. I added another couple of eyedrops to my arsenal and another appointment to my week next week, but I console myself with the fact that...I've got EYES....

from the goddess of vision...

24 February, 2010

Eye again...







Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...
No, that is not a pretty starry planet...that is the starry form the retinal scarring took in my eye as of last February. The picture was kindly supplied by Casey Eye for me so I could show the few people who are bored enough to read my blog what it looked like. ;D
The next one down is what it looked like in November. Uveitis and the associated infections have definite effects on the retina of your eye, and in this case on the pupil and iris. It actually scarred the pupil and built up scar tissue that glued itself to the lens.
I've also had to have all the explanations made to me about the swelling (macular edema) in the back of my eye, and they take pictures in cross sections across the plane of my eye socket to keep track of how swollen it is compared to what it should be, or what it was the last time.
This one with the colors is almost like a thermal shot showing the swelling as higher topography across the back of the eye in November. And then a cross section through the actual swelling.
They did the same cross sections in December before they did more of those lovely steroid injections into my eye socket.
You remember. The ones that carried a risk, but that I didn't realize would CAUSE a cataract. Gee! Learn something new all the time...and doctor, why didn't we go with the systemic steriods? I still haven't gotten a good answer on that one.
These pictures in December were just before shot number 3, or was it 4? The cataract was now bad enough that everybody is pretty well admitting they can't see squat through it.
Got the good news on the 9th or so of February when I started writing this that the eye doctors are willing to totally disregard all their own guidelines for macular edema and go ahead with the lens replacement for my cataract after only 2 months of the swelling being reduced in my eye.

My surgeon obviously is worried enough about the edema coming back quickly that she scheduled me for as soon as I could clear my schedule...she wanted me in there the next week.
Somehow it's not as reassuring as I would like it to be. But I guess they are realizing that if they can get the lens replaced while the swelling is quiet at all that then they can keep injecting the steroids into my eye socket as much as they want without further damage to the lens...the synthetic one won't cloud like my real one is what I've been told.
The cataract has gotten bad enough that there is only one machine they can photograph the back of my eye with, and it's the new machine that is only available up at Casey Eye Institute itself. The doctors can't even really see to the back of the eye much any more, and they are even admitting it to me. ;) Go figure. More later....I've actually done it...
from the goddess who sees....

01 January, 2010

Totallus...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I was told that I had to post. Something about keeping people updated and making people feel like I'm including them in my life...Not that I don't want to include people in my life, but I just don't dwell well on stuff. That big white wall of Dodge Ram pickup truck I still see in my head every time I close my eyes...yes, I totalled my van, or rather, I had some help totalling my van.




I was doing great in the snow, I LIKE driving in the snow, even nowadays...I kept from taking my pain meds, so I'd be alert and was taking it slow and steady and this NICE (heavy sarcasm here) young man, decided that he needed to lose control of his pickup that was travelling in the opposite direction. He SAYZ he was going about 25, like I was...my airbags and body bruises and memory think more like 45. The impact from the front even crumpled the doors down the side of the car, and you can't see it, but the whole engine compartment is askew with the hood sticking out on the driver's side weirdly.


If it had been a sedan that had spun out I could have steered and avoided it. As it was, I avoided his truck cab. But it was the choice of his truck or the oncoming traffic...so I chose the white wall of his truck and I remember making the choice consciously and how time suddenly speeded way up again. It sucked. Until I made that decision, while I was maneuvering and avoiding traffic I had all the time in the world.

I love cell phones. First call I made was to my hubby. After 17 plus years it just seems the natural thing to do. He was absolutely wonderful, but it drove him nuts not to be there to take care of everything for me. Him and my sister. She called every half hour until I agreed to go to the emergency room to be checked out. I swear to God, no lie. Every half an hour. My mom had NOTHING on her when it comes to persistence.

The accident was before dark but I ended up spending 3 hours on Tuesday night on the side of 99E in the snow, with no heat or light in my van waiting for the tow truck. The kid in the pickup got to drive away. Hooray for me.

R met me in Oregon City to get me home from the tow yard, but the traffic advisories said no to going up to see my doctor at OHSU at the top of the hill, suckage. So we stopped at an emergency room on the way home. By that time it was about 10pm and even with my normal load of meds I couldn't lift anything with my right arm, couldn't walk on my left leg and was so stiff that R said I was walking like I was over 100.

They took some scans after we realized that I couldn't lay back and support my head with my neck. All the muscles in my body decided it was time to rebel on me. After telling me I had some good bruises and strains and sprains and giving me some IV pain meds I was sent home to the Gorge, on the closed I-84. Three hours later we made it home coming up SR-14. I finally crawled into bed at about 7am and got a call from my car insurance company at 8am. I wasn't coherent enough to answer. So here's the scoop, the pictures and what went down.

I've slept for 2 days straight. I still can't lift much with my right arm and my bruises are a colorful addition to the winter white of my skin. I've had ice on my left knee for 2 days on and off and have been pretty much taking my pain meds and muscle relaxants with some anti inflamatories. I figure by tomorrow I should be able to go back to some of my PT routines and my chi-gong.

I'm going back to bed to nurse my poor abused body...happy new year to all...

from a puzzled goddess who wishes she could get her van back

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