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Posts Tagged ‘surgery’

Surgery day

Posted in A writer's life, Romance, RWA Conference, Steampunk, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The day has come. I have surgery, a vitrectomy, this afternoon. To say I’m not looking forward to it is an understatement. I have a few fears. One that the surgery won’t happen. Two that I will lose the plot while having it. (Shit scared might cover it) I’ll be awake you see (Holy moley!). That it won’t work and I’ll have to have another surgery and you know loss of vision. That I’ll have to have a cataract surgery in about a year, if the predicted rapid growth of cataract after surgery happens. That I might have other eye issues in future or with the other eye. The macular hole was totally unexpected. I get checked annually for macular degeneration and glaucoma.

I will be missing the RWA in Hobart! I will have EMO (experiencing missing out) as Matthew told me as FOMO is fear of missing out and I’ll be definitely missing out.

I only got half of my conference fee back and I was lucky to get that. The committee’s advice is to take out travel insurance. A bit late for me though. However, in future I will consider it as I usually don’t take out insurance when I travel domestically. Recall how Matthew and I got COVID when we were heading to the Terror Australis Writing Retreat? That was a lot of bucks and luckily we were able to stay and do the workshops via phone. Not ideal but the best outcome in the circumstances.

A win though for me. I have been able to massage my draft of The Prudential Light into something beta readers can wade through. I sent that off to four of them so it will be interesting to see the feedback. My take on it that I will need to really hone the structure down. I thought I had been introduced to a good editor but they did not answer my email about a quote and timing and I’m afraid a non-responsive editor is a horror story I don’t need. I even texted them and they said I’m in holiday mode will respond tomorrow and they didn’t. Oh well. Time to look for another. Not that I have issues with editors I use at the moment, but as this is a complicated structure for me and has memoir elements I thought I needed to find a specialist and someone who can suggest things, rather than a copy edit, if you get my drift. In the worse case scenario I can do it myself. I did study editing and considered hiring myself out but that’s a lot of creative energy that I can use for my own work.

Anyhow, time to go write a newsletter and send that out.

Cheers!

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Update on medical issues

Posted in A writer's life, tagged , , , on August 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I didn’t want to spoil my cover reveal post so I’m writing this separately, and also scheduling it for the next day.

Last Wednesday while at a work planning day, I noticed that my vision was blurry. I cleaned my glasses, checked for sleep in my eyes, took my glasses off to see blurry faces and put them back on again. I looked the powerpoint screen and asked my neighbour if it was blurry for her. She said it was clear as day.

I then hastily made a Specsavers appointment for the next day, thinking I had had some rapid decline in my middle distance sight. I wear glasses mostly for reading and screen and have 20/20 distance vision.

The optometrist was great. He went through the motions. My right eye was fine. When we switched to my left eye, I swore. What’s wrong? he asks and then I explain that I could see the first letter, a blank for the second, the third one was half there and I could sort of see the last letter. That’s never happened to me before says I. He says ‘Let’s forget that then’ and went to look at my retina scan. It showed a full thickness hole in my macular. A full thickness hole in my macular? What the hell is that?

If like me you have never heard of such a thing, then you will understand my growing trepidation. He says you will need surgery. Will I get my vision back? I ask and he says, yes but probably not the same.

I practically ran out of there. I was so shocked and upset. I had to ring later to ask if I owed money. I went looking for Matthew so I could throw myself at him and bawl my eyes out. However, he’d gone back to the car and by the time I made it there the urge to cry had passed. We spent time looking up what the condition was, how it happened and what the surgery entailed. The optometrist referred me to the retina clinic.

I’ll find out Thursday about the surgery and when. At least I have private and some superannuation stash to pay the out of pocket expenses. I’m luckier than some as I can go private. Most of the tests I’ll have tomorrow are not covered by Medicare.

Anyway, I went to the day job on Monday and managed okay. Tuesday was harder but I wanted to complete a task in case I had surgery before I was due back. I only work two days a week. However, while my right eye is picking up the slack, my brain is having a hard time with a blurry spot in my left eye and this leaves me with a headache, not severe, and a bit of nausea. Not enough nausea to quell my appetite for Turkish Delight and peanut biscuits. Yeah, I stuff my anxieties.

The upside is that I can still watch TV/stream. I can type a bit as I’m a touch typist and I can read my phone sort of. Doing the phone is probably why I have a headache all the time. After surgery it is a different story, because they will replace the fluid in my eye with gas and from what i understand, you can’t see past the bubble until it dissipates. Removing the fluid allows for the hole to repair itself.

There might be a pirate eye patch in my future.

Of course, if I can I will keep you posted.

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