More Bitter Medicine

Close followers of this blog (which I number in the low single digits) may remember my post on February 25, four days after cataract surgery, in which I bemoaned Doctor's orders that I could not run for many days; the layoff turned out to be ten days, but I managed to walk nearly every day and went to the gym frequently, so that I did not lost much fitness.  In fact, it might have been a good thing for this aging body to rest from the strain on joints and ligaments for a few days.

That's how I will look at it, anyway, following cataract surgery this morning on my right eye - oculus dexter.   Dr. Secosan pleaded with me not to use any Latin, but I really wanted to find out what O.D. and O.S. (oculus sinister) meant on those arcane-looking eyeglass prescription forms.  Surgery went well, and I only pray that this eye will recover as well as the left eye did - 20/25 vision and (more importantly for this glaucoma patient) pressure of 10 or 12.  There is a chance that the filter created by my 1997 trabeculectomy surgery, which has kept that pressure so enviously low with no medication whatsoever, could close up as the eye over-reaches in its effort to heal the small incision made for the cataract removal and lens implant.

There is a greater lesson in that - can we heal too much, I wonder? - but I'm not going to try to unravel it now.  Now I only want to do what the post op instructions instructed me to do:  "Spend your first day relaxing at home:  Watch TV, read, or talk to a friend."

Tomorrow I will start walking miles and miles and miles.