I thought a blog was such a good idea.

Turns out I'd rather keep it all in my head.

Post-op

Well, I finally did it. I had my eye surgery on Oct 13th, this past Tuesday. It was kind of scary, knowing that they were going to be cutting into my eye, but the scariest part was post-op. For strabismus surgery, they use something called adjustable sutures. These are basically stitches that have long ends that hang out of your eye that can be adjusted post-operation. The doc did what he had to do inside my eye while I was under. Then, after I woke up, he did a few eye exercises to see how he did, and tugged on the stitches and tied them off to perfect his work. It didn't hurt, but I could feel some pulling, and it was kind of disgusting and terrifying to see someone pulling at strings in my eyes. Luckily, I was still pretty doped up, and somehow the doc got me talking about apple-picking while he was doing this.

In the recovery room, the nurse gave me saltines, apple juice, and percocet. It's amazing how simple things can make you so happy at certain moments. By the time we left the hospital for home, my eye was swollen almost completely shut, but open enough for me to recognize that I still had vision - always a plus. From what I could see of my eye, it was nasty- bloody, crusty, swollen.... just gross. I kind of hoped it would be better by now, but it is Saturday, and it still isn't pretty. It is slightly less swollen, but still red and bloody and painful to move that eye around or to bend over.

Today I took my first shower and washed my hair and am starting to feel human again! If the effects of the surgery on my eye weren't enough to make me feel the opposite of human, watching daytime TV for 3 days straight certainly was. Yuck. Besides the looks I will certainly get because of the grossness of my eye, I am looking forward to being back at work.

Not that anyone reads this...

But at some point I'll start blagging again. Been a bit busy these last few months. Let me nutshell it:

-July 22, bought a house
-Frantically painted, cleaned, prepped, packed for 6 weeks
-Aug 30, moved into house
-Frantically unpacked, cleaned, grumped about ordered couch not yet arriving
-Endured skull-numbing headaches, which are only helping to build the excitement for my upcoming surgery.

This week's goings on:
-getting air ducts cleaned so the air in our house is clean as can be
-getting locks changed and putting in a mighty strong new deadbolt
-delivery of new couch and dining room chairs (yay!)
-replacement of our vintage 1960s broken-ass sliding glass door with a shiny new energy-efficient Andersen slider

Ahh, the exciting life of the homeowner. I'll be back with more interesting musings at some point.

Eye Surgery

For as long as I can remember, I have wished I could just cut off my head and regenerate a new one. My parents always like to joke that I was born with a very expensive head. By the time I was three years old, I had had three eye surgeries. By the time I was twelve, I needed braces and a dermatologist, and by the time I was sixteen, I needed my head shrunk. Unfortunately, we were never really able to afford braces and, luckily, college campuses come equipped with free counseling centers (and by "free", I mean built into the $40,000/year tuition.)

I guess it was also hoped that after three eye surgeries at ages 1, 2, and 3, I would be done. I was born with strabismus, a muscular disorder affecting the eyes and their ability to work together. It was extremely bad when I was born, hence the willingness to put a baby/toddler under general anesthesia three times to cut into her eyes. My condition was greatly improved after the surgeries, but over time the muscles have weakened again. I am not exactly sure at what point my eyes started regressing, but in high school I became acutely self-conscious about it. At that point, it felt like it was largely a cosmetic issue with practical consequences. While working a summer job at an Auntie Anne's, I had a difficult time working the cash register because customers did not know if I was looking at them, and would just stand there waiting because they thought I was talking to someone else. I became so frustrated at times that I would yell at the person "YOU in the red shirt, hello??? What do you want??" Even then they didn't get it sometimes.

Over the past five years or so, my eyes have gotten even worse and are beginning to cause other physical problems. I have nauseating headaches almost daily, and constantly need to readjust my eyes. When I first started noticing it, I was hoping it just meant that I needed glasses. My vision was OK, though beginning to deteriorate in one of my eyes, because I relied so much on focusing it. My doctor prescribed my glasses in the hopes that it would force my eyes to work together. It didn't help much. Two years later, I went back to the doc, hoping again that the headaches and problems focusing were due to my vision. My prescription had not changed.

This winter I finally went to see a specialist in Boston, and after an hour of eye exercises, he explained that my strabismus had indeed worsened and he could practically see my muscles straining. At one point, I felt slightly akin to a circus freak, as he called other doctors into the office, saying, "Hey check this out, watch what her eyes are doing." Apparently my case is an interesting one. Bottom line is, if I don't have another surgery, my eyes will probably get worse, including the pain, headaches, and focusing problems.

The thought of someone cutting into my eye and tying tiny little stitches around the muscles terrifies me, but I know I really need to do it. My main comfort is knowing that I am in one of the best cities in the country for medical care.

My first hurdle has been contacting my old doctor from CA who performed all my surgeries, Dr. Arthur Rosenbaum, and ordering my 25 year old medical records. God, that makes me feel old.

Overheard at Work

"Yeah, I have a Twitter account but I don't use it very much. I signed up so I could keep in touch with my son at college and the North Dakota Department of Insurance."

The State of Nature and Giving Birth

So I just watched one of those overly graphic birthing shows on Discovery Health, and it followed three different women, all of whom were choosing to have completely natural home births. Now, personally, when my time comes, I guarantee I will be screaming for the painkillers, but I do understand why some women choose to forgo the epidural and tough it out naturally. In a hospital. With medical professionals and modern technology. What I don't understand is women who choose to have their babies at home when they have the option of modern medical care; in the case of one woman on the show, "home" was a yurt on the Big Island of Hawaii with no running water or electricity and a good hour from anybody resembling a doctor. These women might be seen as brave, but I see it as more than a little selfish; she is not only risking the life of her baby, but her own life (particularly because she had a high-risk pregnancy). Please understand that I am referring only to women who have the option of medical care; many women in third world countries don't have the luxury of a midwife, let alone a medical team at a first-rate hospital.

I think that women who choose a home birth have good intentions. They have an idyllic vision of having a baby not only without chemical intervention, but surrounded by their loved ones in a warm, familiar environment. They think, "Women have been giving birth since the beginning of time", and only in the last fifty to one hundred years have they started doing it in hospitals. That's true, but it is no coincidence that maternal and infant survival rates are directly proportionate to quality of and access to medical care.

Women may not think about it in these terms, but I think that the home birth movement is trying to provide a path to get back to that Hobbesian "state of nature" - that by giving birth in a tub of water or by doing it alone with only your mother or partner assisting, that somehow that is bringing you closer to the state of nature, the way things are "supposed" to be.

I think this is an interesting theory and vision; however, the anthropologist in me wants to reframe Hobbes's ideas. Is the state of nature a static position that we will forever be trying to crawl back to, to somehow try to get closer to our true selves? Or is the human state of nature dynamic, and simply what it is at any given point? For example, why do we see technology and modern medicine as an intrusive unnatural force in our lives? It's true that most of it does not come directly from the earth, but humans are nature, and by the theory of evolution, humans are naturally adaptive and progress-oriented, always looking to improve our situation. So if medical technology is a major aspect of human progress, then why is that not considered a part of nature? Human brains have developed the way they have for a reason: survival. Our brains are able to develop cures for diseases and learn the ins and outs of the human body to protect our species. So we are not moving further and further away from the state of nature, but progressing along with it.

Family Mysteries

My husband's family history is fascinating - he is a direct descendant of one of the Salem witches, Sarah Wild (also spelled Wilde and Wildes). On his mother's side, he is as old school New England as they come, tracing many branches of his family back to 17th century Massachusetts, and can in fact trace his family back almost a thousand years in England. It blows me away.

But what is almost as fascinating to me is how little we know about my family, specifically my Dad's side. My Dad's parents were both children of Ellis Island immigrants, and because they were relatively poor when they crossed the pond, we know almost nothing about their pre-America lives. What's interesting is that my father's father was born in the US, and we still know very little about him. He passed away when my father was nine, and my grandmother was never forthcoming with information. Sure, she told the same Daisy the cow story every time we visited, but what my grandfather did for a living? Nope, she never mentioned. Where they got married? Not something she talked about.

We've come to discover that my grandmother was my grandfather's third wife. At least. Recordkeeping in the beginning of the 20th century was not what it is now, though light years better than the 19th century. In some ways, I am glad for the effect that the internet will have on future generations' ability to research their family history. But I am also sad for them because there will be no mystery, no discoveries, no dark family history slowly coming to light. Will they lose appreciation for it? Will they be as awed by their ancestors as I am today?

I think it is going to mean that the onus will be even more on parents to instill in their children the importance of history and genealogy, because it will not be a mystery naturally unfolding before their eyes. It will just be Google.