General Chat

I headed that off with mine -- blind as a bat for distance since I was 8, so figured the cataracts were my chance to go bionic and be able to see specks of dust at 20 paces. Had the first eye done, and realized what I'd done -- I knew I needed glasses for reading, glasses for computer, glasses for TV and glasses for driving already -- so what made me think it would be any different with a new lens than it was with contact lenses?

I realized I could live being unable to get out of bed without glasses lest I crash into furniture, having done it all my life ... but I could not live without being able to read without glasses. The thought of being somewhere where my glasses weren't and being unable to see print on a page terrified me. So I had the other eye (the bad one now) 'set' for reading distance. People had suggested that to me, and I'd thought ew, weird, but it works. ;)

Wow Janey


That sounds horrible .......... but great news that they can do something to correct it.



I had cataracts removed from both eyes in 2001, 6 weeks apart (supposed to be 4-5 months wait between them, but my surgeon played the system and succeeded). I'm lucky .... all went well, and I now have long sight after being so short sighted that I had "coke bottle" lenses.


In fact, I had to learn to "see" again in one way, because I can't see things that are very close to me ................. even with reading glasses I can't see as clearly to take out a splinter (for example) as I used to be able to see by taking off the old glasses!



Good to hear the other half is behaving.

Absolutely, Jean. I work with my eyes, not to mention playing with my eyes. I'm a completely visual person - music isn't my thing, visual art is; tell me something and I'll forget it before you're finished, write it down for me and I'll remember it forever.

Amazing, though, what you can get used to -- the way my eye is now, I'd have thought before it happened that it would make me suicidal, but you just get on.

The good thing is that I'm assured that this surgery will fix everything (except the glaucoma, for which there are the drugs) -- no more weird lens effects, no more pain/irritation, no more floating globs (which also scare me silly sometimes, thinking I've seen something moving out of the corner of my eye), no more filmy effect (the doc described it as saran wrap, and it is - that's the scarring on the retina, apparently). It beats cancer that way, anyhow!

I would class the trouble with your eye as on a par with cancer. Sight is SO precious.

All is very very well with him, thanks for asking! He is testing and adjusting and has bought a box of patches, with a start date of Saturday. Looks like I'll be joining that party.

Me, I just got back from the retinal surgeon, still not seeing the monitor too well. ;)

Surgery in September (hopefully there will have been an election by then) to correct the botched cataract surgery two years ago. Replace the mis-placed lens (which refracts light and causes double vision and irritation and pain), a vitrectomy (removal of all the vitreous fluid in the eye) to clear out all the crap inside my eye, and probably removal of scar tissue on retina depending on how bad it looks once they're in there. What jolly fun. I'll still have the glaucoma in that eye, probably caused by the steroids used to counteract the swelling on the macula caused by the debris in the eye ...

But hey, it ain't cancer!

so


I hope all is well with you and the OH?


I brought the 2x4 piece of cedar back here with me ... figured I might need it this summer!

Thanks for the thought! Somebody in hospital said something about what I needed to do regarding my husband and I said I would, if I had one! ;)

He's got anti-nausea prescription drugs he takes before eating, but I'm not sure whether he grasps the concept here. I doubt that was intended to be for more than a few days ...

And he's testing and adjusting and testing and adjusting -- and he's got an appointment with endocrinology sometime in the very near future. And he's feeling fine, and back to being a sullen lump when forced to watch the very last edition ever of CBC Sunday Morning yesterday -- call me a sentimental fool, but I've spent most Sunday mornings in the last eight years watching it, one of the best current affairs shows on TV, and two hours of flashbacks and audience appreciation was just fine with me. He was welcome to go twiddle with a computer or a guitar, or his thumbs.

The 2x4s so generously offered can have more than one use.

Now you be careful. Did you read the wiki article?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_ketoacidosis

Should be required reading before they hand out the insulin / hypoglycemics to anybody with a new diagnosis. Nobody told us.

Spent the weekend shopping and cooking and counting carbs. That's generally good for a day of rising sullenness as the pots and pans pile up in the kitchen (actually I'm extremely efficient at minimizing pot and pan use) for poor old No.1 to wash, and he gets to feeling overwhelmed by the stock of food in fridge and freezer. I do wonder he hasn't figured out by now it doesn't materialize magically in the microwave when he's hungry.

There, there's my whine. Back to work with me. Seriously, you be careful!

Fancy seeing you here, Brian. ;)

I think if you're going to get diabetic, doing it as an oldster is the way to go. Even No.1 should be able to live out a good part of his 3 score and 10, or however that goes, without drastic consequences.

The kind you can control with diet, type 2, is definitely the best kind. Unfortunately they dangled that in front of No.1 for two years and then took it away.

Say hello to Myrtle too, from me and me mum!

I'd love to go to the Far North!!

Furthest north I've been is Dawson City .......... maybe Fairbanks is a little further still, but that's in the US and we only spent enough time to fill the gas tank having discovered the guy we had hoped to see wasn't in town!!

Our dream is to ride the train to Churchill to see the polar bears.



............... and I always, but always, notice the temperature in Iqaliut!!


I'll wave as we pass through Ontario .... so long as I am not asleep!!! I think we leave the great metropolis of Toronto at 10pm on the new schedule.

Take care


~~~~~~

Hey Janey, cuz.

Best wishes for your OH recovery.

MIL (Myrtle) is living with us and was diagnosed diabetic a few months ago, but is just on a careful diet. But at 88 with vascular dementia setting in, a bit too much sugar makes her more confused.

Keep in touch.

Like cold ... or not like Las Vegas. ;)

http://www.baffinislandgcc.com/weather.html

Baffin Island Golf & Country Club Weather Station
The weather network had to relocate its reporting station 800 miles south from Pond Inlet to Iqaluit after the bottoms froze out of the recording thermometers 12 days in a row.


It's -2C there, in Iqaluit, at the moment, the weather network tells me. Not much worse than where I am. Danged cold wet spring in Ontario this year!

Oh, you disappoint me. I thought you were saying you had been there, Baffin Island. You don't get to meet many people who've been to Baffin Island.

Given a choice between Baffin Island and Las Vegas (all expenses paid for both, of course), I'd take Baffin Island. Maybe that's because I've been to Las Vegas. ;)

Really, Baffin Island? A military connection? Not many Canadians have ever been to Baffin Island, for sure.

I've been to Winnipeg. Portage & Main in February. Classic Canadiana -- Portage & Main in February is the synonym for COLD. ;)

Hey, I thought you were going to stop by and bring me an authentic west coast 2x4!

Everybody drool -- Sylvia is flying cross-country (this country, Canada) and taking the train back. One side all the way to the other. The thing every Canadian kid dreamed of doing in the 50s ... and this one has never done.

Hitchhiked a fair bit of it, though!

glad to hear himself is home




I leave tomorrow for NS

.......... so do try not to have any more entertaining catastrophes until after I get home on June 13!!

Please!!

Did you miss the part about the 2x4??

I care that much. A 2x4's worth is a fair bit, I'd say.

Imagine, coming onto my life-and-death thread and cracking jokes!

;^)


I was dragging my feet and now that you've popped the thread up, I must report.

Yesterday morning I'd let his nurse know plainly that I was not taking him home yesterday, when she said they might be discharging him again. Not accepting delivery until they had fixed him, which they had not done last week, and I simply was not going through what I'd been through again. (I should have said I'd accept a refund or exchange though ...)

That apparently did the trick, and they kept him. So I'm sitting here at 11am (what's that these days, 4pm funny Englishy time?), and an email comes in reporting that a certain on-line financial transaction has just been completed. An email from No.1.

I hadn't been able to get through to him yesterday evening after they moved him from the acute monitoring whatsit room to a regular room and didn't transfer his phone, and so I was waiting this morning until after shift change (7-8) and rounds (9-11) to try to get hold of him. He got hold of a cab first. There he was next door, sending me emails.


So the 2x4 will be kept in reserve. Since starting all this, it's become clear -- and the pros have finally agreed -- that this wasn't to do with non-compliance, it was to do with the virus that attacked him. But if he doesn't get with the program anyway, it won't be a virus doing the attacking.

The same diabetic nurse was having her second go at haranguing him today about testing, adjusting, eating, testing ... and he said Fine, exactly how does that work when all I have done for two days is sleep and puke? What's the correct adjustment for that? Er, she said.

So he's set up with an anti-nausea prescription drug -- it's apparently the shutting down of the digestive system that starts all this -- and his appointment at the endocrynology department. And life can go back to its dull normal self.

I'm just going to have to come up with some other amusing tale of woe to entertain y'all now!

n

Hi Janey - so sorry for you, but glad you are insisting that the patient only comes out of hospital when stabilised!

(PS thanks for replying to my pm) Jx

Glad you find that idea with the cauliflower cheese useful.Another thing I do is an omelet filled with grated cheese and usually peas.OH has difficulty picking up peas as a side veg. I usually serve with home made bread that I know has only the sugar needed to grow the yeast. We have a sugarfree jelly with fruit and a small amount of ice cream, lowest sugar I can find ,tesco's cheapest!
My main problem is getting him to eat at all!

US restaurants ... ooh, nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there! ;) They compete for who can pile the most sugar and fat onto a single plate -- a Denny's breakfast fer example. And then there are the all-you-can-eat places, and the sad sight of people eating all they can eat, plate after plate.

That is the thing. Once you start reading labels, you can never go back. A package of Kraft dinner (c'mon, who eats a third of a package of Kraft dinner??) has as many carb grams as two real meals worth of my homemade whole-grain macaroni and cheese! The ratio is even better when I take the suggestion Jean (Monmouth) gave me last year and replace some of the macaroni with cauliflower. (And I thought about it, and what other veg goes with cheese, and now my macaroni and cheese is 1/2 macaroni and 1/2 cauliflower and celery.) Thanks, Jean!

Have you seen/read the documentary/book about the guy who ate exclusively at McDonalds for a month? "Super Size Me", that's it. No.1 was quite impressed by that one.

But no, really, he doesn't try to lay off any of his responsibility on me. He even makes his own giant batches of lunch chili these days. He just needs to buckle down.

Speaking of him, time to find out whether they're really planning to evict him today as I heard mumbling of this morning. I'm not having it.


edit to add -- it seems my carrying on this morning about not sending him home til he was fixed did the trick. They have finally agreed that this is virus-related and not non-compliance-caused, and that he needs to stay in another day. He ate his whole sorry lunch, too. ;)