Not In A Good Place

Greetings good people.

I come to you by way of my speak and spell. I must continue to use my voice recognition speech to text software in order to properly communicate via this medium. It is getting fairly easier to learn the commands and also have the software learn me. The only sticking point is, I still can't properly review what I spoke to type. I am not getting grammatical or spelling errors, I end up getting syntax errors where either my tablet for desktop computer interprets one thing I say but it actually spells out a series of words that sounds like the original words I spoke.

But anyway...

I'm cruising along in my recovery, or so I thought. The one thing that I've noticed since my surgeries in April and June is that my vision came back slowly, and then it was like I was going to regain full vision but I ended up in decline.

While my retina specialist is very impressed and surprised by my progress, I began to develop cataracts in both eyes. On top of that, the right eye is healing and a much slower pace than the left. It seems that when the doctor performed the surgery on the right eye, he didn't get a chance to properly flat iron out the retina to the back wall of the eyes the way he wanted. There are creases in my retina, so there're creases in my vision. Any vsion I see it from my right eye is distorted, dark and warped.

The doctor believes that he can fix that.

So this upcoming Wednesday, I go back in for another surgical procedure on the right. We'll also schedule a similar procedure on the left for 19 September. The doctor chose to inject both eyes this past Wednesday with an anticancer drug called Avastin. It is used in chemotherapy for cancer patients. I've had these injections in both of my eyes in the months prior to my surgeries on each eye.

Please do not think that because the chemotherapy drugs were injected into my eyes that my body had not absorbed them. The sickness, pain, fatigue, sweats and weight loss associated with chemotherapy I am currently experiencing. This is not fun at all. I was told by my medical staff that this is typical for anyone that goes through chemotherapy treatments. Why would I be any different?

I totally hate this space in my life right now. It's full of losses of consciousness, lots of unwarranted and unwanted sleep then sleepless nights, pain, and just overall discomfort. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

Right now, I'm in very bad shape physically. I finally reached my under 200 pound mark, but it's not the way I wanted to reach it. I have no appetite and I probably eat every 18 to 36 hrs. When I do eat, it's normally a non-GMO vegetable-based powder you mix with water. On good days where there is solid food, that means a salad. Being vegan is kind of cool because if I were to place a piece of animal flesh or dairy products or any animal-based product in my system, I would probably wind up violently ill and feel as if I were to die shortly thereafter.

After the procedures on each eye this month, I have two more surgical procedures scheduled for October 16 and then November 3. Wow, four surgeries in two months time. I wasn't certain if my body could take this, but I really have no choice if I want to see beyond this point.

The hardest part for me is this upcoming October when I have the lenses removed from the front of my eyes and replaced with artificial ones.

What a lot of people don't understand about their lenses is that there are no wires to control these things. You are able to focus and bring things closer with the lenses in the front of your eyes just by using your brain power. They are wired to nothing else. When you remove the lenses from the front of your eyes, they can never work again. They can't be placed back into your ocular cavities for they will never work and you lose your ability to focus forever and ever amen.

And you cannot bring things into autofocus with artificial lenses.

Imagine not being able to squint and bring things into focus anymore. Imagine losing that ability. Well, because of the lifestyle I previously led and the lack of control of my diabetes as well as a head injury that I suffered in January of last year, this is my fate. With the vision that I still have remaining, I will no longer be able to bring things into focus anymore.

I have requested nearsighted lenses to be placed in the front of my ocular cavity. This will at least help me to see the things immediately around me with what vision I have left after all of these procedures. In order for me to see beyond 20 or 30 feet, I will use prescription glasses for distance.

The lenses which will be placed behind my cornea once they remove the cataract laden ones and take them out of my body will not have a prescription inside of them. So whatever vision that I have left, what ever visual acuity I have based on the work on my retina would still need to be corrected by glases.

In order to zoom in and out and see any distance of anything beyond 20 feet, I would have to switch glasses. I don't know how I feel about that. To be honest, I haven't given that part very much thought. I'm just thinking about being put under anesthesia four more times in the next two months. It scares the hell out of me.

Being weakend to the point where you can't get out of bed scares the hell out of me. I never actually gave thought about getting old or being in a comatose or vegetative state, but this reality that I exist in right now really puts my mind there.

The specter of death looms over me at all times and that's all I can think about all the time, every day.

It is indeed in evitable that we must die. No one gets an exception from that. I just wish the thoughts of my death wouldn't consume me as much as they have been very recently. I can't shake this feeling, I can't get it out of my mind. I don't want to die like this.

I just hope that The Creator gives me the ability and the opportunity to heal from this crisis in some way shape or form, and give me the opportunity to die on my feet as opposed to succumbing while I'm currently on my knees.