Post-operative

The first cataract operation was done on Wednesday, and my daughter was with me, to drive me to the hospital, and bring me back home, and to note all the instructions for eye  drops, etc. She was great.  I am so glad she was with me, and able to get me home and organised before catching her flight home.  It made me better able to tolerate the fright and the stress.

When the anaesthetic is administered, so is an amnesiac, so that there is absolutely no memory of the procedure. This is a good thing. When you wake up you are plied with tea and biscuits, and tissues to mop up any tear duct which insistently and independently overflows. My daughter sorted me out and organised everything before flying back home.

Yesterday a friend took me for the first check up, and it was declared satisfactory. I am not permitted to drive yet, which cramps the style somewhat, and I decided to have a quiet day at home, rather than trying to get to the Italian class and then the lecture. I cannot get to choir, or drive to do some food shopping, but there are plenty of places nearby, such as sushi, quiches, and there is plenty of food in the freezer. I walked to the shops to buy a bag of chips and other things which are bad for me.

My expectation was that my sight would be improved immediately, but this is not so. It is a gradual improvement. But colours look different. The better eye, which is to be done next week, sees as before, but out of the left eye, the colours are all wrong. How weird.

Even weirder was the fact that while typing this, the alphabet suddenly changed into a language with a non-Roman alphabet which obviously wrote from right to left. Now how the heck did that happen?
 I should stop now while the earth is still spinning correctly on its axis.

Yet more proof of one's myriad imperfections

it took me four goes to type that heading. I blame my own incompetence, the fact that I am typing this with one finger on the iPad, and so on and so forth.
I am typing this on the iPad because my iMac has just been taken away to be made better. It was made worse because I foolishly downloaded an upgrade, only to remember too late that the upgrade will not support Word, or, in face, my photographs. I did manage (I think) to copy the documents onto a disc, and even this caused me a certain amount if grief because it took me some little while to get the disc out, until from the far off and dim recesses of my brain I remembered that the keyboard has an Eject key. Ecco fatto!

My next step was to search the internet to see whether I could  uninstall the software update. Oh No. Alas, and  Woe.

Off I went to the knitting group , where it was my particular and designated task to teach people how to crochet granny squares. There are some very speedy learners there, and we all had a good time. Usually some of us have lunch together afterwards. I told them all of the latest in what seems to be a long list of mistakes and other silly and humiliating things I have done. We all laughed heartily and shared various other horror stories. Then I said I needed to get a computer person to come and see what could be done. Oh, they said, there is a shop in this little arcade, where we always have lunch. You walked right past it, they told me.

So I went inside and discussed my errors and problem. It reminded me of going to Confession. The man came to my home and checked this and that, installed something else, and said he would need to take the computer back to the shop so that it could do all the things he had told it too, while he could be in his shop attending to people like me and perhaps with a few normal and rational people as well.
I hope all will be well, although I will have to learn a little about the alternative word processing system. This sort of thing is supposed to keep the brain active.

Next week is the first cataract removal. My younger daughter is staying here for a couple of days and will be able to take me to the hospital and back home, if they finishe me in time for her to do that and still catch her 3pm flight home. It will be a great comfort to have her with me. I should be all better before I leave on my trip. Perhaps after both eyes are better I can marginally improve the French and Spanish which are in my brain. Somewhere!