Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I went to my eye doctor today, for my once-a-year eye exam.

I told the assistant, and then Dr. Lazzara, that my vision seems a bit worse in the last year, and also that I thought I needed new glasses, because the current pair have gotten scratched over the last few years.

The new glasses will have a slightly different prescription, and Dr. Lazzara thinks the new glasses will solve the problems of blurring and difficulty with small print.

He also suggested that I use the hypertonic saline twice a day, and see if that gets me more hours of reasonable vision: the Fuchs dystrophy isn't much worse than a year ago, but I was already noticing effects a few years ago. This is the main reason I go out to Arlington to see an ophthalmologist, instead of just visiting an optometrist closer to home.

Since I was going to Arlington, I stopped at Fabric Corner for iron-on patches to mend a pair of jeans, and went to Penzey's after the eye doctor, for ground cumin and high-fat cocoa.

This was a follow-up to my appointment last month to have the doctor ( eye stuff, mild ). All is basically well. He gave me a prescription for computer-distance glasses, as well as the progressives/bifocals I already have.

ETA, Before I forget again: The doctor explained why I'm having more trouble with small print in the mornings. Corneas (or at least my corneas, with the Fuchs dystrophy), swell a bit with fluid during the night, and then return to normal after waking, but not immediately.

And then I came home, via Lyft, because it was pouring rain and I didn't want to wait outdoors for the 62 bus.

I won't be seeing the eye doctor in November, because the other eye doctor did a full exam in July. I now have an appointment with Dr. Lazzara for next July, in Arlington, at a convenient hour of the afternoon.

I saw the eye doctor this morning.

tl;dr Nothing is seriously wrong, but I am likely to need a follow-up visit.

I made the appointment because I was noticing blurry vision intermittently in my left eye. I also noticed that I needed brighter light and/or larger print for reading than a year or two ago. I saw Dr. Umlas, because the first available appointment was with him--and that was three weeks after I called, at 9:15 a.m.

A technician asked me questions and took various measurements, then gave them to the doctor. He checked a few things for himself.

Most likely, this is cells growing on the artificial lens from my cataract surgery. Both the tech and Dr. Umlas said that Dr. Lazzara (my usual eye doctor) had observed a little of this when I saw him last October. It's also possible that this is from further thickening of my corneas (Fuchs dystrophy). If so, treating that is simpler than it used to be, with quicker recovery.

So, I can stop worrying that something is seriously wrong. Dr. Umlas is going to put the results of today's visit in front of Dr. Lazzara, and see whether he agrees that I should have a quick laser treatment to clear the artificial lens. If so, I'd have to go to their Lexington or Concord) office, because they don't have the equipment in Arlington.

From there, I went to Penzey's for herbs and spices; the clerk was very helpful, going around the store with me because I told him my eyes were still seriously dilated. I happily handed him my shopping list, and he asked a few questions like "do you remember which sweet paprika you usually get?" This time, I remembered to bring the Penzey's gift card with me, and used up the remaining $18 on the card. (They periodically offer gift cards at a significant discount, which are worth buying if you shop there regularly.)

When I was almost home, I tripped and fell while crossing the street. Fortunately, adrian_turtle and I had wound up on the same bus, so I assured the helpful stranger that I'd be fine, and Adrian \sat with me for a couple of minutes, then helped me up. I scraped my right knee in a couple of places, and it will probably bruise, but there's no serious damage: I landed about evenly on both hands, and Adrian says the brim of my hat absorbed a little of the impact and may have protected my head, including my nose and eyeglasses.

Since it's a very nice night, I asked cattitude to go for a bit of a walk with me, just around the neighborhood.

We saw pretty sky, one other walker (on the other side of the street), a few cars and, a few blocks away, the 73 bus.

I wanted to go out because this was probably the warmest it will be in the next 72 hours, and I like walking around in the dark sometimes. This part of Belmont, unlike our old neighborhood in East Arlington, has street lights at least as far as we went or saw. To go from our old place to the Bikeway in the middle of the night required either very good night vision or a flashlight. The street lights are definitely useful for walking around, but without them we might have seen more than one star.

The lights in the neighborhood are spread out in a way that means a lot of them produced the odd radial lines that are an effect of my post-cataract replacement lenses. I asked Dr. Lazarra about that, in one of the post-surgery follow-up appointments. He said it was a known and harmless effect: the synthetic lenses aren't as flexible as the natural ones in the human eye.

cattitudeand I went over to Alewife to do some birding today. This was the first time I'd been there since I had cataract surgery, and I am so glad to be able to see well enough that birding (and looking for frogs and such) is fun again, rather than frustrating.

We started just outside the Russell Field exit of the T station, with a Great blue heron nest Cattitude had seen about ten days ago. He brought a camera today mostly in the hope of photos of nestling herons; someone came past while he was pointing his camera at it, and asked if we knew what kind of birds those were. She then said she'd been walking past and trying to figure it out; I remarked that I thought this was the first time we'd been asked that since we left Inwood, when it happened fairly often (because people had gotten used to seeing us bird-watching). I only spotted two birds; Cattitude, looking through the camera's good birding lens, saw three, so at least one young heron.

Then we walked around Alewife Reservation, slowly and carefully; slowly because of recent hip and knee pain, but we would have stopped frequently in any case, to look at, or for, things. We saw a good variety of birds, including red-winged blackbirds, a flicker, grackles, Canada geese (two adults plus goslings), I think a song sparrow, and of course a few mallards. One of the red-winged blackbirds landed on a railing, near where two people were sitting; hopped toward them and looked meaningfully at something they were eating; and then flew under the bench to pick up crumbs. I am used to mallards, geese, and gulls being that tame, but hadn't seen red-winged blackbirds do that, though I know they can be bold, having once gotten closer to a nest than the birds liked.

We also saw several turtles, a few frogs (I mostly took Cattitude's word that those dark lumps in the water were frogs, rather than rocks or carvings of trilobites), and flowers. Lilac season isn't quite over, and I think I smelled lily of the valley while we were walking through Alewife reservation, as well as the fine patch we stopped to sniff while walking along Highland Avenue to the bus stop.

I think I found a good balance between having fun, and turning back when I needed to; both my hips and then my left knee were sore by the time we got down to the train platform, but resting quietly at home helped a lot. I have since done a few of my PT exercises, and didn't feel the need for acetominophen to supplement the naproxen (NSAID) I took before we headed out.

I can't tell if the skin on my hand is drier than it was, or if I'm just seeing it more closely than I'm used it.

The drugstore reading glasses are good for closeup work, which apparently includes looking down at my own right hand; usable for my computer (and I am going try moving the monitor close to my chair to see if that helps; and actively counter-productive for medium-distance things like, say, walking into the bedroom. This means I keep noticing that I forgot to remove my glasses. (The cheap non-prescription sunglasses are fine for walking around outside, riding the bus, etc., but I need the reading glasses to use the Transit app on my phone.)

My glasses had been feeling a bit too tight (pressure from the earpieces against the side of my head). A couple of weeks ago I went and got them adjusted. That was odd in itself: the place I'd had them made was no longer in its nice corner store, which had a for-rent sign, but (according to a sign also in the window) in a trailer around the corner. I went in, and someone who seemed to know what he was doing adjusted the earpieces.

What I noticed right away was that they're no longer too tight, which is good.

What I've gradually been noticing is that they're slightly off horizontal, which is bad. And may be giving me a low-level headache.

The spares I got online also feel odd, though that may just be that even with the same prescription, they're a different physical object, different shaped frames, and such. Either that or someone messed up and I didn't notice at the time. Either way, when I put them on at what seems like the natural place, I am not seeing clearly. So I have put the off-kilter pair back on. I need to get them adjusted, probably on Monday (tomorrow I intend to take it very easy, and it's a mile or more to the nearest eyeglass place, and even with buses that is going out and doing stuff and not entirely restful). On the other hand, waiting and being off-kilter is also not entirely restful, and Monday I have a full day of work and a desire to go lift weights in the evening.