Lisa Lopes

Just as quickly as I set out to make a blog post the other day, I feel like at this particular point, I've already run out of things to say. I mean, I'm doing well… Well, well enough to be doing this, I feel like I could be doing more. As a matter of fact I want to do more but I just can't to be honest. It feels like its been a long process even though I had a hemorrhage in my left eye on December 28. It feels like it's been a year for that matter, but I maintain.

Yeah, on the last week of last year I had what's considered an 'eye stroke'. I  had a massive hemorrhage - A blood vessel burst in my left eye. Now I have tiny hemorrhages in my right eye and I can halfway see out of my right but most of the vision is gone out of my left. It actually happened when I was sleep. I was preparing to make a drive to North Carolina to spend the new year with special people and special friends. When I woke up, I felt like I had some sort of epiphany or some real deep, meaningful dream that I just couldn't remember. I brushed it off, and got myself to get ready to go.

I drove all the way to North Carolina with a white film type substance over my left eye. I just couldn't shake that filminess. I was able to safely navigate the road, but it bothered me that I couldn't shake this film. Now I do have a pair of Blue Blocker type glasses that I bought a truck stop some years ago that wrap around my current prescription lenses and when I put that on during the daytime,  everything turned out fine. It really didn't hit me that something was wrong to a point where particular points of damage was done until I just couldn't see anything right around the second week of January.

So of course I ended up at an ophthalmologist's office. They did digital imaging, scanned my eyes and went deep inside and took a lot of pictures. What we saw was very very discouraging to me. There is about 75% of my left eye basically soaking in blood. The hemorrhage broke and over the period of a couple weeks the eye pretty much filled up with blood. As far as the right is concerned, basically there are tiny hemorrhages and a little blood there, so they do have to go in to remove blood from the right eye as well. It looks like I'm going to need laser surgery to close up the hemorrhaging bleeding points. I'm not happy about this, but it needs to be done.

It looks like it's going to take a series of surgeries to correct all of my problems in both eyes. The part that really messes me up isn't the fact that it'll take eight months to a year to recover fully from all of these surgeries. It looks like I have to get over the fact that they're going to take instruments and put them into the eyeball itself to vacuum out the bad blood and then insert another smaller instrument with the laser beam thingee to close up the hemorrhage points. That's a lot for man to take to know that they're going to stick instruments his eyeballs. And did I mention that people don't know what to do with themselves around me? I am NOT an invalid. I don't need 'help', but I digress...

I got to do what I got to do.

Oh and I'm headed back to Chicago this weekend to set up shop, get a new place and to be centrally located close to my surgeons, support system and the VA hospital so that should be fun. Another road trip but this time I'm not driving.

ROAD TRIP!!!

I will be filming this... Hell, I can't see much, but I can aim and shoot. Gotta chronicle all of this stuff for future review. Plus, my life is a mess right now, might as well share it with the world.