I patch, and you patch, and they patch, so darling . . .

Matt cleaning the grill Down East mid July (left) -- prolly the first time any of our nuclear family grills was ever cleaned -- and his and Regan's new little love --  the yet-to-be-named flying bat girl --  sister to the best little girl in the world, Stella, who is about to be dethroned.

"You're a blogger?  What's that?" asked Jan, one of the wonderful nurses who prepped us for cataract surgery this morning at Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary. We tried to explain but suspect it went in one ear and out the other of a woman who acknowledged "I don't even own a computer." But no matter. Her bedside mannner -- plus a good shot in the arm from an anesthesiologist of a "cocktail" mixture of feel-good drugs including some unnamed narcotics  -- put us in the perfect mood for cheerful banter:

Nurse Jan [with a gleem in her eye]: Are you afraid of us?
We: Oh . . . Are you Nurse Ratched in disguise?

A host of nurses and doctors made us feel like the most important person in the world for a few hours this morning as they prepped us for surgery, dropping various solutions in our bad eye -- the right one -- marking the brow above that eye with a grease pencil "R" to make sure the doc got the right one, and checking out our vital signs. At one point Nurse Jan asked whether we had someone who was standing by to take us home after surgery:

We: Yes, my husband, Tuck. He brought a good book along.

The way she phrased her question made us think of the classic wedding phrase, "And who gives this woman to be married to this man":

Nurse Jan: And will you say "I do" again?
We: I do, I do.

Once our eye was numb and incapable of movement, they wheeled us into the operating room, where the awesome young Dr. Matthew F. Gardiner -- pretty in blue -- performed the magic trick that is now considered routine in the ophthalmological world. From our point of view on the table it was no pain and all gain. We were conscious throughout, hearing the soothingly casual conversation of the medical team. All we could see was a beauty-in-unexpected-places light show of pinks and blues and purples as they removed -- under the microscope -- our old, cloudy lens through a tiny hole and replaced it with a shiny new articifical lens. Thank God -- and we do mean God, the Judeo-Christian one -- those British-born jihadis didn't get to perpetrate their nefarious plot of blowing up all those UK-to-US planes over the Atlantic on this, their appointed day. The horror of being under the knife while under enemy attack is beyond imagining.

Back home, we immediately resumed surfing the internet for blog material . . . Several thousand things in the works, but we wanted to get this one out first -- to reassure our treasured readers who have expressed concern -- that things are looking good. Happy as a clam at highwater but can't wait to be able to remove this annoying thing -- a combination of patch and shield -- from our right eye. Just want to tear it off our face, to be perfectly frank. A follow-up meeting with the doc tomorrow will provide more guidance. When we arrrived at MEEI mid morning, the place was filled with folks in full-eyepatch mode. It reminded us of some New Yorker cartoon from the old days of a subspecies of humanoids marching to a different drummer.

Comments

[Tara]

Bravo Sissy !

And on a clear day, you'll see forever !

I am so pleased you had the surgery.

[Teresa]

Can't wait for the great "unpatching" now to see what you think of the results. *grin*

[Laura Lee Donoho]

Get well soon....I think you're well on your way. That was a fantastic account. Be a good girl and keep the patch on. When my daughter was two they had to patch her eye for a time (can't quite remember for how long) and it was frustrating for her.

[pam]

After reading what all is involved, I don't think I'd be over fearful of having the procedure done. :)

Hope you get the patch off soon!!