Stitches update

The stitches in my back are going from ouch-y to itchy. I bet a lot of you know what I mean. Don't you just hate that? Luckily they're in a very inaccessible place over my right shoulder blade.

Nothing quilt-y to report, since I'm still doing bindings. I'm......so......bored. ZZZZZZ..........

I'm in stitches

I had a cyst removed from my back yesterday. I have stitches. Ouch.

I went through this a few years ago with a pre-malignant cyst on my arm (we didn't know how about the pre-malignant stuff until the path report came back). How did I forget how sore these incisions get?

When your doctor is on vacation . . .

. . .and you have a problem, unfortunately what you are often told to do is "go to the emergency room". At least that's what happened to us. Seven hours later, we left the emergency room (at nearly midnight) with unresolved issues and instructions to go to the office of the doctor filling in for our regular. Well, you can just imagine how that went. We were there for three hours, filled out every paper imaginable since they didn't know my husband from Adam, and finally got the type of examination and care we expected to be able to get in the emergency room of our large local hospital. Not all the answers yet, but some "This is not the problem" answers which are a bit of a relief. Now we have to go for tests tomorrow afternoon, and who knows how long that will take.

The ridiculous thing is, if our doctor or her office had told us "Dr. X is filling in for me, call him if you have a problem", we could have probably seen him yesterday afternoon before his office closed, and avoided all this. Why they didn't tell us is a mystery, since it was arranged for Dr. X to take care of emergencies with her patients.

It truly IS "always something"

Well, we packed off our fourth of July guests (sister-in-law, her husband and her two teen aged sons) on Saturday night after 3 days of visiting and near-constant eating on the teenagers' part. I don't have much experience with teenage boys, but good heavens, can they pack the food away. I don't think we could afford to have them around much. The grocery trip stocking up to feed them for 3 days cost twice my normal weekly bill. It became quite fascinating to watch the food disappear. And, there appears to be an abnormal attachment to catsup going on. They ate it on everything. Don't know what to think about that.

Sunday was abnormally quiet with just the two of us in the house again. I spent a large part of it in a semi-recumbent position, recuperating. It's exhausting to entertain people, even relatives you want to see.

Then, we both had eye appointments today with the ophthalmologist. His was a scheduled checkup, nothing out of the ordinary, but mine was an examination because I realized I wasn't seeing at a distance very well with my current glasses. Since I've only had them 20 months, and since I kept the last pair for four years before my vision changed enough to warrant new glasses (to be honest, I was tired of the frames, my prescription hadn't changed all that much), I was concerned enough to schedule an appointment before the fall, when I was going to anyway.

Well. Turns out I am developing cataracts in both eyes, but the right one was enough to affect my vision. They can still correct my vision to 20/20 now, but when they can't I will be facing cataract surgery. We have no idea when or if that will happen, but the thought has spooked me. I knew something was up when, during the eye check, they show you the letters in a box flanked by two bright light bars at the top and bottom. She kept adjusting the size of the letters but the glare from the lights washed out the text box so that I couldn't read them with my right eye. I could read them with my left eye after some adjustment to the text, but it was hard.

This was one of those situations where I knew too much. I realized that meant I might have cataracts forming, since difficulty seeing in glare from bright lights is a symptom of cataracts. I had to mentally stew on that fact while they stuck the phoropter lens thing-y on my face to determine my glasses prescription (yep, changes in both eyes, but more in the right) and while I waited for the drops to dilate my pupils. Then the doc looked me over and pronounced what I already dreaded.

So now I'm a bit freaked. I need to keep a close check on my vision, and tell her if it deteriorates any more, and take the vitamins and supplements she recommended which may help. (This last item surprised me, because I never have run into an MD before that suggested taking vitamins or supplements of any kind, or actually seemed to have much knowledge about nutrition.) I consulted medical websites, such as Johns-Hopkins, after I got home and found out that a medication that I take may contribute to the formation of cataracts. Something else to discuss with the prescribing doctor next month.

On to brighter topics. On the quilting front, I haven't touched the sewing machine since I got back from Mom's house, but I intend to complete "In Lucinda's Garden" soon. I posted a photo of the Double Delight quilt on Quiltville's Yahoo group and got two comments. I wasn't really expecting a gush of compliments - but was glad two people noticed! And I have two designs burning a hole in EQ waiting for me to start them, as well as five, count 'em - five, tops to quilt for Project Linus. If I wasn't spending so much time watering the flowers and tomato plants, maybe I could get some more sewing done.