Progress report: Day 2

It's been some sort of year already, and we're still only in July. I got so burnt out mentally and spiritually, that blogging - even thinking about blogging - became irrelevant to me. After all, what was left to be said? The same jaded observations about the same tiresome situation. More on all that some other time.

And then my eyesight started getting even worse. It was never crash-hot to begin with. I've been blind in my left eye due to a retinal detachment for a very long time. I've been myopic since I was a little kid. The vision in my right eye started getting a little blurrier about a year and half ago. That seemed to be corrected with a new prescription in April last year, but within a few weeks further deterioration was obvious. Getting another new prescription so soon after the last would be a waste of time and money. So I pushed through with already routine optometrist and ophthalmologist visits; the consensus there being that we would have to wait until things got worse. When the exact moment of worse enough would be, I didn't know.

But there was always something to do. There was work, which brought some money, yes, but also joy, because I actually like the environment I work in. And I could still watch South and the Pies, and different kinds of joy came out of that. South gave my social side joy even if the playing style and end result left a bit to be desired; the Pies gave me joy not just for winning, but for the joyful spirit of the enterprise.

But my eyesight kept getting worse, slowly, and then faster. I spent less and less time at my laptop in the evenings and weekends, so that every Monday when I jumped on a work computer, what I could see was a little bit less, a bit blurrier, more of a strain - and I already had some insane prescription like minus 12. I came out of retirement to do four weeks of fill-in tertiary teaching as a "break glass in case of emergency" option, and apart from the ethical and workload demands of that stint, by the end I was hoping just to make it to the end with whatever useful vision I had left.

I haven't gone to a footy match all year, because that'd have been pointless, and while the social element of going to South games has always a huge part of the appeal for me, understanding what was happening on the field - regardless of however obvious and knowable Esteball is - was also getting more difficult. The Lakeside grandstand's distance to the field didn't help, but I was also missing more away games - driving became more precarious, middle-age has made me softer, and there are streams for most games now.

But even that has its limits. So after booking it in a few weeks ago, yesterday I got lens replacement surgery. Multi-focal artificial lens implants being deemed unsuitable me, I was given the option of having either a longer distance, a computer distance, or a book distance lens as the replacement for natural lens; I chose computer distance, for work purposes. An unexpected temporary side effect of having lens replacement surgery on my one working eye was having my vision look like the cover of The Cure's Faith album for part of my ride home - apparently that was the effect of the anaesthetic wearing off.

Even before I got dropped off at home by a mate, I was able to read some street signs, the odd number plate, shop name. But stumbling around at home, it became quite clear that I'm a long way off getting back out there to some semblance of normality. The surgery appears to have gone well, with no further complications to my pre-existing/ongoing conditions. Unfortunately, it appears my estimate of needing a week and a half off was far too ambitious. It could be as many as eight weeks, unless I somehow get approved by my optometrist for some cheap temporary lenses for use in between now and my official prescription booking in six weeks time - which would still leave me out of action for at least two weeks in addition to next week. Since I only have one working eye anyway, and all my old prescription lenses are now too strong for my new and still settling prescription, I have to wait a few weeks until I can get new glasses. So no in person appearances at South games for me for a few weeks.

I can see and type on my laptop, and I can navigate familiar local streets as a pedestrian mostly safely. But there's no driving until I get the new prescription, and I'm now scrambling to get a work from home setup going. Still, the surgery had to be done, and at least I am able to use a computer with much more ease than I have been recently even with glasses. It's going to be strange being without glasses for a few weeks - I've been wearing specs since I was five, and they're part of my identity, something more a part of me than my withering cynicism, or my penchant for wearing hats and beanies everywhere. It's hard to imagine myself without them, and yet here I am. Once this ordeal is over, I can go back to being fully me, just with some thinner lenses.