Pucker Up!! - Eye Surgery

On Wednesday I finally had surgery for my macular pucker.

A macular pucker is scar tissue that has formed on the eye's macula, located in the center of the eye's light-sensitive tissue called the retina.

The macula provides the sharp, central vision we need for reading, driving, and seeing fine detail. A macular pucker can cause blurred and distorted central vision.

Here is an animated video of the procedure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQDQ-SiXg7I&feature=youtu.be

Mark took a picture the morning of my surgery: 

We left the house at 11:00 a.m. to arrive at the surgery center in San Antonio by 1:00 p.m.  With very little traffic on the road we arrived at 12:30.

We had our temperature taken at the door and were told to go upstairs.  After handing over my credit card and filling out a little paperwork, we settled in to await my turn.  About 2:15 an aid came to get me but told Mark he had to wait upstairs.

I was taken down to the same area we had entered the building and was told a nurse would be coming to get me.  About 40 minutes later I recognized my doctors nurse and asked her how much long it would be.  I was told it would be a while because I was the 4th surgery and they had just finished the first surgery. 

Apparently, surgeries 2 and 3 went a lot faster than expected and I was called into pre-op about 3:15 p.m. The pre-op nurse was very nice and told me pre-op would take longer than the surgery.  After many eye drops, vitals, more eye drops, IV, and more eye drops I was wheeled into surgery about 4:00 p.m.

I had the fun experience of watching the nurses set up many syringes that I was told would be put in my eye.

Surgery finally started at 5:00 p.m. and I will say it wasn’t fun.  I was awake.  The pain of having needles stuck in my eye was unbelievable.  I was told they had to keep me awake so that I could move my eye when needed.  The anesthesiologist finally gave me something to make me more comfortable and then the real surgery started. 

It was pretty interesting that I could see the instruments inside my eye pulling out the floaters and scraping the macular off.  This part of the surgery took about 30 minutes. 

After the surgery I was given some apple juice and instructions for the night.  Since I had only had to take off my t-shirt (I even kept my tennis shoes on!) it didn’t take any time before they were wheeling me out to the front door.  I think everyone was ready to go home.

We got home about 7:00 p.m. My first night wasn’t too bad.  A couple of Tylenol every 4 hours took care of any pain.

 

Thursday morning I had a doctor appointment in Kerrville.  The patch was taken off, my eyes dilated. The only letter I could see on the eye chart was a big fuzzy E.  It was discovered I had a little leakage in my eye.  

After some very painful pushing on my eye to close the hole, I was told to come back the next day.

I have a clear plastic eyepatch that I have to sleep with for the next few weeks.  I had a very comfortable night and woke up feeling great. 

On Friday morning I went back to the eye doctor.  Not only was I able to read the great big fuzzy E on the eye chart but I could also read about 3 lines under it.  My eye wasn’t leaking any more and I was told to come back next week.  By the time I left the doctor office my eye was hurting pretty bad!

I look horrible!  It will be several weeks before I’ll know how clear my eyesight will be. 

Once in a Century?

One of the plants that grows well in our resort is the Century Plant, Agave americana. 

The name comes from the long-lived nature of the plant, though they really only live 20 - 30 years.  The plant's last act of life is to send up a spectacular flowering stalk, reaching as high as 30 feet.

We have a very large Century Plant at the gate of the resort, and it has sent up its flowering stalk. The plant itself is about 6 feet in diameter, and the stalk is 25 feet tall. Another resident took this picture and I've borrowed it to show the overall plant.

I had noticed as many as four hummingbirds feeding on the flowers, and this morning Teri texted me that she was seeing up to six!  So I headed out to the gate with the camera to see what I could capture. 

Here is a picture of the blooming part of the stalk.  Click on the picture to get a better view.  The hummingbirds were busy chasing each other away, but you can see one here just to the left of the main stalk, about halfway up. They look tiny!

And to get an idea of just how big these flower heads are, and how many blossoms are in each, here is a picture of one "clump".  This little Black-chinned Hummingbird has plenty of blossoms to choose from.

In addition to hummingbirds the various bees, wasps and other insects are enjoying the blooms as well. The individual flowers open over several weeks. In the picture above you can see the still-closed buds in the lower part of this clump, with recently opened flowers near the top. 

Sadly, the entire plant will die this summer, but they send out plenty of "suckers" from the base so there will be several smaller plants to take its place.  Life goes on... 

How Fast Did Your Year Go By?

Even though our day to day activities never seem to change, the days go by very fast.  

I am Facebook friends with a couple of the staff from Green Lake NFH, where we volunteered the last two summers.  They are talking about things going on at the hatchery and I was thinking it seems like we were just there a couple of months ago!  I can’t believe how fast a year has gone by.

I looked at my pictures from June of 2019 and was amazed at how busy we were.

June 1st - We were building bluebird houses:

 June 3rd - We went on a Puffin boat trip: 

June 4th - Playing disc golf.

June 5th - Disc golf and lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant.

June 6th - You remember fish wrangling? 

June 7th - We were getting ready to start our next 2nd set of pollinator gardens: 

 June 8th - Started mowing around the hatchery:

June 10th - We went on a wonderful hike at Orono Bog: 

June 12th - We took a beautiful hike at Ship Harbor:

June 13th - We had some outside tanks to clean:

 June 14th - We were playing with puppies: 

June 15th - We had a messy job cleaning heat-exchanger filters: 

June 16th - Disc golf. 

June 17th  - Was an awesome kayak morning: 

After kayaking we stopped by Havens Candies: 

 June 18th - A chocolate factory tour was a lot of fun: 

June 19th - Disc golf.

June 20th - Mowing, weeding, getting raceway #4 ready for skimcoat: 

June 21st - Skim coat on raceway #4: 

June 22nd - Patching #88 drain: 

June 23rd - It rained all day. I actually wrote on my calendar that we didn’t do anything all day!

June 24th - 39 holes of disc golf.

 June 25th - Another beautiful hike at Mariaville Falls: 

 

June 27th - More work on bluebird houses and mowing: 

June 28th - More patches on outside tanks: 

June 29th - The ground is finally dry enough to start pollinator gardens #3 & 4: 

 What a difference a year makes.

It is hard to stay home knowing there are so many wonderful things to do and see in the world.

Teri

Wha-cha-doing?

Our days are pretty much the same.  We spend a lot of time on our computers.

We’ve been working on a few blogs.  I've been looking for new recipes to try, and looking for new crochet patterns.

I’ve been copying all our posted blogs into Word documents.  It’s a slow process but we’ll be glad to have copies if anything ever happens to Blogger.  I’ve already found that some of our earlier posts have pictures missing. 

I have a large stack of old photos that I’ve been scanning.  This is also a slow process and takes quite a bit of time.

 

Mark and I both spend quite a bit of time on a language learning website called Duolingo.  We’re studying Spanish.  I’ve been studying almost 2 years and Mark is going on 3 years.  There is so much to learn.  

You have probably heard the advice that when you get older you should learn a foreign language to keep your mind sharp.  It sounds easy right?  It’s not!  It is hard work.

 I’m still crocheting and have already made 20 afghans this year.

 

I also enjoy sitting out on the deck and reading (when it’s not 100 degrees).

We have this wonderful electronic picture frame that displays hundreds of photos.  I’ve been going through years of pictures to add to it. 

We don’t have a lot of wall space in our house (we have a lot of windows) but we have been doing a little decorating.  You can probably tell we really like to display our photographs.

I like to have a picture to go with the souvenir.

The middle picture shows me with the young lady

that made the blue parrot mask.  (Panama)

Panama and Costa Rica souvenirs. 

Louisville slugger museum.

Back in March we were supposed to travel to Colombia on a birding trip.  That trip has been rescheduled for October.  We study the birds for our trip using the flashcard method.  For our Colombia trip we’ll be learning 400 birds. 

400 Flashcards.

Booted Racket-Tail 

Staying home with a lot of time on our hands has got us thinking of future trips.  I gave these books to Mark for his birthday.  Can you guess where we’re going?

 

We have scheduled a 3 week trip to Brazil for next June.  We’ll have over 600 birds to learn for this trip! 

Mark also spends quite a bit of time on his computer.  In fact, he recently treated himself to a custom built computer.

They thoughtfully included instructions on how to take the computer out of the box.

The instruction manual will probably come in handy.

Do you know what you get when you order a custom-built computer?  

Well, you get an awesome computer that runs high-powered programs like Photoshop in a fraction of the time of even a good laptop. For you techies out there, the computer has the latest Intel i9 processor, 64 GB Ram, a 1TB solid state drive and an 8TB hard drive. Finally, a very high performance video card that is used by Photoshop and its accessories to speed things up even more. (This paragraph was written by Mark, in case you couldn't tell.  The paragraph I wrote said "Well, you get a computer").

Do you know what you don't get? Anything else.  No keyboard, monitor, not even a free mouse. I guess they expect you to use accessories of your liking. 

He has been spending a lot of time printing out the flashcards for our Brazil trip.  It’s going to take a lot of time to develop and print out 400-500 flashcards.  Some of the birds we already have flashcards from past trips.

He also got a new Canon "Supertank" style printer that uses ink tanks and ink refills instead of replacement inkjet cartridges. We have spent a ridiculous amount of money on expensive inkjet cartridges over the years and hope that this is a smarter answer. We'll see. 

 

He’s been doing some maintenance jobs like cleaning out the rain gutters and installing new rubber seals on the outside storage areas in the RV. 

He’s been very busy with consulting work and has spent a few early mornings flying his model airplanes and taking critter pictures around our place.  He hasn’t gotten back into disc golf since his back surgery.

After waiting (and waiting) for information about our summer volunteer assignment, we decided to go ahead and cancel.  

I’ve gotten my vitrectomy eye surgery rescheduled for June 24th.  Between having the number one surgeon in this area and our travel schedule, I was having a hard time trying to get a surgery date.  

We decided that staying home and getting this taken care of is the best thing to do.

Our days are pretty much the same over and over again.  We’re busy and the days go by very fast.

So, what are ya'll doing with your days?

Teri

Do Not Forget the Camera!!

I heard a lot of bird song this morning and stepped out onto the back deck to listen and watch. As I was standing there I thought, "I'll bet something good is going to fly in, and here I stand without the camera".

Sure enough, within seconds a beautiful Yellow-throated Warbler flew down to the bird bath and began to bath.  I watched it for a bit, kicking myself for not being able to take a picture.  Once the bird flew up into the tree I slid back inside and quietly returned with the camera. After about ten minutes the warbler returned and I got some nice shots.  Lesson learned, maybe...

Yellow-throated Warbler

Yellow-throated Warbler

Mark