The Day After #Cataract Surgery

This morning I got the protective shield removed at the eye doctor's office.

And, I could see. With the following limitations: It was like looking through brown sunglasses. Underwater. The images weren't fuzzy, but were "wavy" sort of. And dark. And doubled. And moving. And doubled.

Reasons: My eye has been unused/not communicated with my brain in so long that it is actually seeing the back of my (brown) pupil. Is that bizarre or what? The doubling is, of course, because it isn't facing the same direction as my right eye yet. The moving is because the muscles are twitching in response to being called back into action after several years.

However as the day has progressed the "brown" has pretty much gone away, so it is learning to how to use itself to actually see. The twitching has diminished greatly. I still have that "underwater" sense but it is better, and it will take time for the double vision (MAJOR double vision!) to go away. Everything inside looks "perfect" Dr. D said after his exam, so it is all just a matter of time. I have an appointment next Friday and he said that it may be gone by then even.

Meanwhile, pain around the brow bone is common from the drops they applied to decrease pressure and goes away within a day or so. It was bad enough that it made me sick to my stomach. I took pain pills, and have slept much of the day. He told me not to strain my eye in an attempt to get it to work sooner. It closes itself when it gets tired, and of course when I'm walking I keep it closed or I'd be running into everything - lol...when I'm sitting in my chair I open it and look around until it just shuts itself. A wet washcloth in the freezer for a few minutes per his suggestions has helped the brow pain greatly as well.

If I look around with just the left eye this evening, after my first dose of steroid drops to bring down the inflammation, I see colors which are almost too vivid (of course, having not seen them for a few years, they would seem that way), basic outlines of things (but like underwater), and could manage to get around using it alone although not reading or even watching TV....but a vast improvement from this morning. The double vision will be the biggest thing but he said that, worst case if it doesn't go away, there are lenses that will correct that when I'm wearing the glasses. But he's certain it will as my brain learns to "read" my eye again, and learns how to use my eyes together again.

I am feeling better tonight, and happy to have it done and healing. As my eye and brain adjust to be used again, and being used together, my life will definitely be drastically changed - for the better!

A Tale of Two Operating Systems

I remember back in the 80's when I was working in an engineering firm, and the powers-that-be decided they were going to change the entire computer system over to Windows. I saw nothing wrong with DOS and it worked fine for me, but I was dragged kicking and screaming into Microsoft's clutches.

Over the years I have adapted, and have learned to like having a GUI (although I still like to brush up on my DOS commands now and again), and begrudgingly have admitted to liking quite a few Windows features (the real ones, not the bugs-they-call-features!). I've dabbled just a bit in Unix in the 90's, but not enough to be of any real use to me, and looked at Linux a couple of times.

Then a couple of years ago I got my much-coveted Internet Tablet, and it was run on a Linux version called maemo. Thankfully it came with a nice user-friendly GUI which was of great help until I learned just enough coding to get by. I loved it. Still do as a matter of fact, and use my husband's N810 since mine met with an unfortunate accident a couple of weeks ago, daily.

Now it is 2010. My main machine is a netbook running on Windows 7 Starter Edition. My husband is messing around with another Linux version, this one called Ubuntu. After hearing him rave about it and its ease of use, and seeing all of the games that were available simply for the downloading, I installed it and gave it a shot.

Now mind you, there were things about Win7 that I really loved, such as its intuitiveness and its zip compared to earlier versions. There were also things I hated such as the disappearance of Outlook Express and the pastel colors which made things harder to decipher with my poor vision. It crashed, yes, but it also recovered itself which to me was a huge improvement! But after a couple of months it slowed way down, as Windows does. I doubled the RAM Kingston KHX4200S2LL/2G HyperX 2 GB 533 MHz DDR2 Notebook or Netbook Memory and got a bit of an improvement in performance, but really suspected in my heart of hearts that Windows was to blame.

So I started using Ubuntu more and more. I still used Windows during work hours but switched over to Ubuntu in the evenings and weekends. I got used to it more and more, added more apps, spent lots of time on the web, and still it never slowed down...

For my job - a phone answerer/scheduler for a pest control company - I use a Google Voice number that I then send to Skype and/or my cell phone. Skype is great, GV is great...but about a week ago I started getting dropped calls and error messages. Not happy that I had to start using my cell phone full-time (I love the headset and call quality using Skype with the netbook) I tried making all sorts of adjustments to both Windows and Skype settings. Nothing worked.

Jump to today. I put all of my files on a memory stick Kingston DataTraveler I - 8 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive DTI/8GB and shut down Windows for good. Well, I'd like to say for good...in reality I will have to use it when traveling, since my USB internet access stick will only work with Windows.

But, since switching over, I haven't had a single dropped call, or even distortion in a call. My YouTube videos aren't choppy anymore. I have a half-dozen apps running and nothing is slowed down. My favorite game isn't jerky. Same machine, same memory - different o/s.

Buh-bye windows...you'll go on trips with me, but the honeymoon-that-never-really-happened is now over.