One look and you’re hypnotized!
Got a ton to blog about, but I guess I’ll pick up with the eye stuff.
So, the first cataract surgery, three weeks ago now, went just fine and so did the recovery. Since my glasses were immediately obsolete, my vision correction solution for the interim period before the second surgery was simply to wear a contact lens in my left eye. I had plenty from the batch ordered last year for my I’m Gonna Be An Actor Onstage! Zoo experience – but I was worried that we’d have to push the left eye surgery back far enough that I’d run out. No fear, turned out that the first one went so well we were scheduling the second one two weeks later.
Funny thing about the contacts – this happened a couple of times actually. I’d get up, put in the (disposable) left-eye contact and then spend quite a while thinking, ‘hmm, left eye is blurry, why is that?”. And then realize that I’d never taken yesterday’s contact out before I went to bed, and now had two contacts on my eye. Oh. So remove both, wait a bit, put another one in and we’re good to go. Back in the day, when I wore contacts in college, the sort you had to take out and wash rather than just throw away, that would have never happened. If you’d gone to bed with your contacts in, you would know it by about 2:00 am. I read online that someone had actually gone to the eye doctor about that problem, “my vision is still blurry with the contact lens in” with the same cause and the same solution. Apparently there was one patient who had like six contacts in their eye. Can you imagine?
I did also have a situation more than once where I was not 100% sure that I’d removed the contact, and this was true even when I went for surgery #2 – had to ask the nurse to look at my eye. I was irrationally terrified that they’d put me in the ‘break up the lens machine’ and awful things would happen because I’d actually have a contact lens in the eye. But, seriously, they look at your eyeball (and give you drops) about a hundred times before anything actually is done, they would have caught it.
Oh, yeah, another interim-period thing was that for the first surgery, I’d been asked to get clearance from both my GP and my cardiologist. And for some reason, the cardio approval hadn’t happened, but they went ahead anyway. Well, the week before surgery #2, I started getting calls from my optho about that and we went into this whole loop again. We eventually got it resolved, but it turns out that one of the problems was that the heart doctor I see every six months for my checkup doesn’t think of herself as ‘my cardiologist’, more like my ‘pacemaker technician’ or such. And I’m like WTF. You are the heart doctor I see, I’ve never seen another one in the two-and-a-half years since the Heartquake, why wouldn’t I think that you’re my effing cardiologist? So that will be an interesting conversation to have with her when I have my six-month checkup a couple of weeks from now.
Such BS. I sent the forms through the patient portal and if I was sending to them to the wrong doctor, why didn’t they effing send them to the right doctor? Anyway that all got solved on Friday before the Monday surgery.
It’s entirely possible that this resulted in a different (better) surgery experience. The whole approval thing was about the anesthesia part of the surgery. And during the first surgery, for the lens implantation part, I was definitely awake (though woozy) and quite tense. The second time, I don’t remember a thing between them wheeling me into the room and the recovery afterward. Which is as it should be.
My buddy Josh picked me up after the surgery and shepherded me home, but couldn’t hang around for me to buy him lunch or anything. I was absolutely fine, took myself out for lunch. Susan came over later to monitor me and I took her out to dinner. Then we watched this:
It was hilarious. Stupid, but campy and quite funny. Susan said it was like watching an extended Batman episode, and she was quite right. There’s quite a lot of meta-backstory to this movie, with crossover from both the Edgar Allan Poe and beach party universes (who knew?). And there are two sequels! Anyway, worth your time!.
Digression – another movie I watched during the interim period was one I’d had on my list for a long time and had never seen, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
I really liked it! Turns out Susan’s a big fan, and when she picked me up this weekend to go to a craft fair in Tarrytown (to be discussed later, but we had a good time), she was playing the album on the car stereo. I jokingly called the movie “The Umbrellas of Parapluie” and Susan pointed out that that would probably be the title of the Carol Burnett version.
Anyway, she didn’t spend the night this time, there was no need. I think my left eye might have been ouchier (more bruised than in pain) than the right eye had been, the first hours after the surgery, but that went away PDQ. Since then, it’s been all about the eyedrops – now having two eyedrop schedules out of sync with each other.
“No screens for three days” again meant I was off until Thursday. (I took ‘no screens’ to mean no computers or phone or Kindle or Ipad and also no knitting. TV didn’t count, and I still did some phone stuff with my left eye closed. And read the NY times by using the ‘listen’ feature, mostly.) So Tuesday I hung around the house and got non-screeny things done and then on Wednesday did a reprise of two weeks before – first went to the doctor for my post-surgery checkup (all fine) then to the TKTS booth for a Wednesday matinee ticket. I saw Hadestown, which I had been letting go by for the seven (?) years it’s been playing. I’ll review it in full later, but I’d never thought I’d like it and I loved it.
I’d seen that Christine Pedi was doing a 54 Below show, and thought that might be fun, and then when I looked at TDF offers the previous weekend, that was on it, so got a ticket to that. She’s hilarious and I’d never been to a 54 below show before. I got out of Hadestown about 430, and 54 Below doors didn’t open until 530, so I walked around and went to a drugstore and bought reading glasses, which I now need. (and sunglasses too) Then went and got seated at a shared table, but never actually had to share it, which was awesome. I had a cosmo and a glass of wine, and a couple of really nice appetizers – a tuna poke and a mac’n’cheese. It was pricey, but really good. I also chatted flirtingly with the handsome gentleman at the next table, but the show started before I could slip him my number.
The show wasn’t what I expected, but it was good. CP was more of a host, she only did a couple of numbers. She had four guests who each did a couple of numbers, all on the theme of show business. Great guests: Robert Cuccioli, Christine Andreas, and two names I was unfamiliar with – Kate Rockwell and Thom Sesma. Cuccioli did a song from the Kopit/Yeston “Phantom” and “Goodbye, Norma Jean”. Kate Rockwell did “Show Off”. Thom Sesma did his song from Dead Outlaw. And honestly, I can’t remember the others.
But it was a delightful experience and definitely was an item to check off on the ‘Sophisticated New Yorker’ checklist I keep in my head, I’ll go back soonest, it was very easy and fun.
Lots of blogging to catch up on for later – four theater reviews, a lot of book and TV stuff, and general life. I’m going to visit my Dad next week, and there’s Baltiqwert (G&S singing party – I’m doing a role in The Contrabandista that I sang in a concert many years ago and remember almost none of, and the Zoo role I did last summer) and then opera rehearsals start as soon as I get back.
More soon!
The Toast Point Page 