The "you have GOT to be kidding me" post

 Firstly, I apologise for going on at length about my woes, but (a) technically, you are all figments of my imagination and, even if I say so myself, dang I'm good at that - and (b) it has now entered the realm of "if you didn't laugh, you'd cry" territory.

I have a bank of toiled hours that I have been steadily chewing through in the last few years, and my balance will be fully masticated by the New Year.

Today, I went for a skin check.

I go every year for my skin check. I am white. I live in Queensland. I grew up outdoors and even though my mother thrust sun cream at me all through the 1970s ( and yes, while I could reach for the cop out of "we didn't know any better", my mother was a pharmacist so she knew about stuff way back then and she tried very hard to implement it)  I was that kid: half-defiant, half-space-cadet.

(From the archives - skin checks)

I have a bit on my back and a scar on one arm and a circle on my driving arm (treatment was during COVID, so just the cream and instructions) - and last skin check I had, the young Dr was concerned about a spot on my chest - so concerned that he booked me in for his last appointment before paternity leave to check - but the baby had different ideas and so it was some weeks before he saw me.

When he looked - there was nothing there.

October last I arrived home from work and we had something yummy in the oven, so I bent down to check and the heat from the oven sort of superheated my workshirt buttons and I got two small burn marks from the buttoned shirts.

One never quite healed.

Many times I have been to the Dr (several different ones at the same practice) for one ailment or other and the "you should also look at this" item regarding the burn was often raised. But we all agreed that it was in a tender spot, I just needed to protect it and keep an eye.

Finally I made an appointment just for it alone about a month ago. I rushed back from my parents to get a scrape done one Thursday.

I had my skin check booked for two weeks hence.

A week later I got an appointment with the nurse to check the wound and my dressing it, and Dr popped her head in to advise pathology had returned and it WAS a BCC so she would have to go a little further at 3pm (medical terminology I now unfortunately understand) and so my skin check appointment became my re-excision appointment and my new skin check appointment was today.

Still didn't get margin.

Needs more from 12.

Because I "am still relatively young" and therefore my decolletage may have cause to be displayed, I am getting my own plastic surgeon. 

But don't worry. It's one of the good ones.

It's all relative.

The f eye thing.

 So part 2...

(& while we are on the topic of "my hasn't this year flown by too fast", hasn't it?)

After my "here is another thing that 2023 has handed me" in this showcase of middle-aged white woman August trophy attempt, (and September was one of those unblogged BCC dramas that are years in the production), October arrived and with it, my date with the Ophthalmologist.

I have often wondered at the extra "hthalmolog" at the expense of the "tometr". Is it a specific set of subjects required to elevate themselves?

You KNOW that you have entered a different realm.

No more sweet offerings of quality eyewear at eyewatering prices with pretty women of indeterminate age ranges a soft barrier between world and charts on walls and "is this clearer" CLICK "or this" instructions.

You get VERY clear instructions on what is expected of you for WEEKS out - apparently.

I would have known if I had opened the attachment when they sent me the appointment notification by email.

I blame the link that I clicked and the form that I filled and the sense of satisfaction that I had been soooo efficient as to be ready seven weeks in advance.

Go me. High Five!!!

And that is why, when I got my reminder the Friday prior, and the telephonist enquired about the eyedrops I was using, I was confused.

Hadn't I done the high five on how organised I was?

Unfortunately just prior to that happy dance, I should have heard ominous music playing and seen the long shot of the attachment...

She said with concern "the eyedrops that you are meant to have put in your eyes FOUR times a day for the fortnight prior".

Still a bit behind the eight-ball, I said "but I didn't get any eyedrops".

She then kindly advised on the attachment like this was the first time anyone had ever made this particular blunder, even though I had failed to SEE the attachment and they are APPARENTLY the Rolls Royce of eye specialists.

But we agreed that it might be possible to still attend the long awaited clinic appointment on Tuesday to get the right measurements and advice, and just come back for a remeasure if necessary rather than reschedule the whole thing.

Tuesday rolled around and through the generosity of my colleague I arrived there on time and without the encumbrance of a car.

I was directed to wait in the first waiting room. 

Their Tuesday clinic ran like a well-oiled operation.

Three small antechambers operated efficiently, with clinicians doing the basic checks. Boom. Boom. Boom.

I was spat out into the back waiting room. No pretence of opulence here. The rows of chairs had a screen as a focal point, and those who did not have the foresight to bring a book or perhaps some crochet had no choice as there was no internet connection.

The screen showed documentary after documentary of eye deficiencies and diseases with what appeared to be a family of attractive ophthalmologists.

I got to wait there a LONG time because I was the lucky last one of the day but eventually (about three and a half documentaries down) the girl who took me through my preliminaries also took me through the next round - a room with about eight stations of weird and wonderful machines that all measured things to do with eyes slightly different ways.

Guess what I then got to do?

If you guessed "get to sit in that scintillating second waiting room again" then ding ding ding - you are tonight's lucky winner 🏆

Finally (and yes, one of the technicians who had been in one of the antechambers - not mine - was mopping the floor and thinking of switching off the lights) I got to wait in one of the consulting rooms for the Dr.

I did get slightly better entertainment for this bit as there was an iPad given to me to watch the Dr going through lens options and the risks of surgery.

When the Dr comes in we exchange pleasantries. I mentioned that she had performed the same operation on both of my parents.

I asked how come they got into their 70s without yet I am only in my 50s.

"Welcome to Sunny Queensland with a side-serve of never having sunglasses as my eyesight is so f-ed" is my theory.

She checked in their files and looked into my eyes and said "hmm".

"Well" she said "you've definitely got cataracts"

"But" she said "you've also got" and then she said an f-word.

Fuchs’ Endothelial Dystrophy

So it is official.

My eyes are fuch'd!!

"Which means that it takes options off the table. I am sorry to say you may still need to wear glasses". Said the Dr.

"Lady" I thought "only people who have never REALLY had such bad eyesight would ever really dream of that mythical land ".

So there may be a blurry few weeks in January next year as she has to take extra care and attention with such a potentially volatile situation.

I did google and regretted it, choosing instead to go with the "it is just as likely to go well" Pollyanna about it all.

And it's a good thing she will be using extra care and attention. I mean, that's how I want EVERY dr who operates on me to approach things.

And it's a fairly regular and recovery time for these ops are short - just that the extra care and attention required equals more time between eyes which means more time that my eyes will be in disaccord.

But what is new?

Orb it!

 I have always had shocking eyesight.

I mean, I didn't have glasses for a good part of my childhood as I didn't realise that the world didn't look so fuzzy to the rest of you.

It was only because my baby brother blinked enough that my parents (mother) thought it warranted a trip to the big smoke that I ever stumbled upon the fact that I was severely short sighted.

(The big smoke in this instance being the nearby bigger town of my present. It's all relative.)

One of the "upsides" of myopia, I have been told by a reliable source on the internet, is that you can theoretically "improve" your eyesight with aging.

And in a way "they" are right, as I am currently doing this on my phone sans spectacles.

However the bar on non-blur options is non-existent currently. I blame it on the optometrist.

(This was from my last time)

If I hadn't belatedly made an appointment with him, I would not have had an appointment with him where he would rouse on me for not seeing him sooner.

I should have noticed, he said, of how much my eyesight had deteriorated and come sooner.

But how can you see how bad it's getting when it's always been crap?

I have mulifocals because I am blessed with both requiring assistance in making out the horizon (let alone individual facial features) AND the newer best feature of age-induced requirement for reading glasses - and I had attributed any blurriness to them being FILTHY or maybe me using them wrong (imposter syndrome on an ocular level).

I thought it very funny how I could see double when covering one eye.

Apparently, that Super-Power is called "cataracts".

It was then decreed that my eyesight needs to level up, and thus to another eye quack with an extra syllable.

(Part 2 to come..)

Is history rewritten better than no history at all...

 It's been a year, hasn't it?

It's been pretty much a year in a series of years, to be frank.

And it certainly isn't offering any signs of change for a bit.

Mind you, it's all perspective, isn't it?

I have just finished an audiobook "Three Sheets to the Wind" by Adam Courtenay

I think that William Clark would never have considered school holidays, care logistics for young and old, mobile phone curfews, hysterectomies, cataracts, dementia or curries much at all. 

And we have never had to consider how many people to leave behind as we headed across unknown territory- heck, we can order lunch on the way!

Indeed, making toss or keep decisions with Dad on the weekend don't seem to be of such import in the rest of society and timeline of world events, but it is a bit of a butterfly's flap.

We found a box of diaries. Dad has been a diary writer since he was 13. From 1951 to 2019 there is a record of days as it happened to Dad - and they have them most of them stored two drawers in their house - but not all, as some boxes remain from their last two shifts - and these are people who have only shifted twice in their 58 year marriage.

One of the boxes that we went through also had diaries. Many diaries. Some were missing diaries. We will have to check through them again but we are getting closer to the full set.

Some were diaries - with absolutely nothing in them.

There was a spate of some years where multiple people thought "I know the perfect present for old Bruiser" and felt so pleased with their purchase that old Bruiser didn't have the heart to advise of the duplication - nor the ability to regift through a combination of not wanting to hurt the feelings of others and guilt over the economic distress caused by frittering away all of someone's hard work.

Thus the subsequent festive season, multiple people thought "I bought  the perfect present for old Bruiser last year " and felt so pleased with their purchase...

And so they remained and have been packed and moved TWICE (although possibly never unpacked in the interim).

I talked Dad into doing the UNTHINKABLE and put some of them into the "get rid of" pile.

I even suggested - and got resigned agreement - that they be discarded completely.

And don't think for a moment that I didn't contemplate throwing in an environmental aspect, however that can lead towards more hoarding than reduction of clutter as you never know when something might come in handy.

He mused once we had finished drafting the box contents for the morning "you know, I think that I might go and fish those empty diaries out and get the same year and copy them neater. And maybe I can improve on the days a bit."

And that is why I have several empty diaries in one of the "give it to Jeanie to hoard at her house" pile.

The first one will be good for next year after 29 Feb.