WHY I’M NOT HERE

 I’m not here today. I mean, I’m not supposed to be.

Actually I am supposed to be because today’s the fifteenth and the fifteenth is one of the two days a month that I regularly post blogs. But what I mean is, I’m not supposed to be because I’m not really allowed. Not according to my wife and my surgeon who are in cahoots on this.

Post-op portrait

See, two days ago, I had eye surgery. It wouldn’t normally have been a terribly big deal—cataract operation to put in an inter-ocular lens. But it was the second eye operation—same eye—this year. The first was in mid-February to remove a fibrous membrane that had developed on my retina, deforming it and eventually distorting the vision in that eye (the left) to the point where I couldn’t really see out of it any more.

I had to travel for that one, because they don’t do that highly complex operation here—here being the Patagonia ski resort near where I live. I had to take a seven-hour bus trip through the wilds of Patagonia to the next piece of civilization two hundred-fifty miles from here, a fruit-growing and oil city in the Río Negro Valley called General Roca. I stayed for a week in Roca, which is a pleasant town, and was operated on by an ophthalmological genius, whose excellent work saved me from losing the sight in that eye.

When the operation was over, however, the genius, Dr. Mancini, told me that my sight would very gradually return to normal, but that the retina surgery would almost necessarily cause the eye to form a rapid-growth cataract. So just as I started seeing well again, in five months or so, my sight would again be impaired by the cataract. But that, he said, I could take care of in Bariloche, where I live.

Now, that placed my need for cataract surgery at right around June-July. That’s mid-winter here in Patagonia. So I had an appointment to see an ophthalmologist at the eye clinic that had sent me to see Mancini in late June. But on that date there was a heavy snow and I couldn’t get out to drive the twelve miles from home to Bariloche. I had to cancel.

They gave me a new appointment for mid-July. But, just when the date rolled around, I got snowed in again and had to cancel. You would think living here, the folks at the eye clinic would understand about snow days. But they all live in town, I assume, and can walk to work if need be, so, no, they didn’t get it.

So, they kept putting me off after that until I was again nearly blind in that eye. And still they were telling me, “No, nothing available. Call us back next week and see if anything has opened up.”

Vindictive, I thought.

Finally, I decided to take the bull by the horns, went to see my medical insurance provider and asked them to recommend some other ophthalmologist. They did, and, as luck would have it, he, Dr. González Valdez, was a former colleague of Dr. Mancini’s. I got hold of Mancini to ask about his fellow doctor, and he told me that the man was a highly capable surgeon. Mancini highly recommended him.

I got in to see him pretty much right away. He assessed the situation and scheduled me for surgery right away. When he completed the procedure two days ago, he said it had gone very well and that I should go see him the next day. When I did, he said that while the operation had gone quite well, the retina operation made it more complex as did the fact that the cataract had grown quite tough, so getting the crystalline lens out to replace it with the artificial lens had caused some swelling in the cornea and had broken a blood vessel in the eyeball. But he said that the prognosis was excellent.

No hat? Like telling me to go naked!

Now he has me putting two kinds of drops in my eye every three hours day and night, and another kind of drops every eight hours. I can’t bend or lift or strain, can’t wear a mask, and can’t wear a hat or cap (that’s like telling me I have to go naked). He’s going to keep a close eye on me until I’m fully recovered.

Me, I’m really grateful to both surgeons. Although my vision is still somewhat blurred in that eye because of the swelling and hemorrhage, I am amazed at what I can see already! That was always—since childhood—my “bad eye” (the worst of the two, neither of which was ever perfect without glasses). I’m convinced that, once I’m fully cured, that’s going to be my good eye. And the light that comes into the eye now is nothing short of incredible to someone whose vision has been impaired for some time now.

Thing is, though, I’m sneaking this blog entry in, because, like I said at the beginning, I’m not supposed to be here!

So if you happen to bump into my wife or my doctor…sssshhh! You never saw me, okay?

Talk to you again soon.