Hi, everybody! I haven't checked in for a long time; thought I'd drop by and say howdy. As my thread title says, I've had a pretty rough time of it these last few months:

October 5, 2003 -- I had to let my vet put my 15-year-old kitty, Artie, to sleep after several months of his declining health. I had adopted him when he was a little fluffball of a kitten, and I still miss him.

During the following week, I noticed some changes to the vision in my right eye: lots more floaters than usual and some pinpoint flashes. Had I known what was going on I would have rushed to my eye doctor, but I was busy arranging for Artie's burial in the pet cemetery (and grieving) so I foolishly put it off until...

October 15, 2003 -- I noticed a dark spot in the corner of my vision in my right eye. Finally went to the eye doctor next morning and found out that my retina was detaching. The symptoms I'd noticed previously were signs that the retina had torn! So...

October 17, 2003 -- I had emergency surgery to reattach the retina. Here, at least, my story takes a positive turn since the surgery was successful. Nothing they could do about the floaters, though, so I do my best to ignore them. I had a "scleral buckle" procedure, where a plastic band is implanted under the surface of the eyeball, about a quarter of the way around it, in order to make the eye form scar tissue taht's supposed to help keep the reattached retina in place. The actual reattachment involved freezing the surface of the retina and the surface of the back of the eye so they'd stick to one another, and then injecting a gas bubble into the eyeball to press against the retina and basically burnish it onto the back of the eye for the 6 hours that I had to keep my head positioned face-down (so the bubble would rise to the back of the eye!)

Then I had to sleep on an incline and only on my side for some weeks, after which I was allowed on my back but still on an incline for a couple of months. It took about that long for the bubble to be absorbed by my body; in the meantime I was a human level -- whenever I repositioned my head the bubble would move! Had a regimen of 4 different kinds of medicated eyedrops, too. Finally, in mid-December things seemed to be back to some semblance of normalcy, but not for long...

December 27, 2003 -- My father passed away after going into the hospital on Christmas Day. He was 90, so it wasn't entirely unexpected, but he had not been ill at all aside from a couple of episodes of lapsing into momentary unconsciousness for no medically apparent reason during the previous 2 weeks. He was in and out of consciousness for the last couple of days, then just remained unconscious and finally slipped away to wherever my mother went 6 years ago. Not a bad way to go, all things considered, but of course I grieve for him too now.

These kinds of things come in threes, they say, and I guess that was "my" 3 for last year (cat, eye, Dad), but it seems that I've started collecting a new set for this year...

February 27, 2004 -- I got laid off from my job! (If I'd known that was coming, I might not have gotten myself another cat to feed!) (Oh, yes, by the way, the new cat has some sort of autoimmune disease -- a "plasmacytic infiltration" -- and her gums are inflamed and she's being treated with cortisone shots every three week$.)

So right about now, I'm feeling like that guy from the old Li'l Abner comic strip who walked around with a raincloud over his head all the time (Joe Btfsplk, or something similar, was his name -- I remember that his last name had no vowels).

...which is not to say that NO good things have happened to me! After all, I have my eyesight back, I have a new appreciation for my brother who very kindly let me stay at his place to keep an eye on me (so to speak) while I recuperated from the surgery AND scooped my new cat's litterbox for me until the doctor allowed me to bend over again (I couldn't, for a while, because of the increased blood pressure to the eye when bending over) AND is now letting me use his computer. Also, I'm now a great-aunt with a new great-niece as of January. In the music realm, I became co-chair of a local songwriters' organization last fall and I'm helping schedule events and such (and writing quite a bit of new material!). So, overall, life is good. I'm just negotiating the curves it's thrown at me right now, is all.

Anyway, I've got a bit of time right now to visit Mudcat more often, at least until I'm working again, so I'll see you all around the 'Cat. Take care!

Sharon