Industry Figure Tom Chappell

My right eye still has a big gas bubble in it, which plays hell with focus. I was thinking at first that this was tears (as in ‘crying’, not the other word which means ‘rips’) in front of the eye, but now I’m pretty sure that it’s the gas bubble. I can tell you, though, that I have exactly four fingers and a thumb on each hand, and that they can wiggle, which is much more than I could have told you on, say, Thursday.

The Big Deal will be:

(1) Did I have much retinal death from the detachment, or nerve death (glaucoma) from the increased post-operative pressure? The answer in both cases is “Probably not.”  The detachment was small and for a short duration, and the increased post-operative pressure was only 40 at its worst, and fell rapidly with medication and as the swelling in the eye abated.

(2) Is my retina now tacked down nice and flat, so that I have a good flat projection screen? Here, I just have no idea what the answer is — we’ll just have to wait for the gas bubble to go away so that I can focus and try to read.  When the surgeon looked at the retina (sneaking looks with lenses and mirrors or something to avoid the gas bubble) it looked good to him.

The eyedrops that were prescribed to lower post-operative inter-ocular pressure are giving me bronchitis, which I despise. Great gluey coughs, and when you finish one your feel like you have to start another right away. The manufacturers actually killed some asthmatics with their eyedrops, according to their product literature (although applied topically, the medicine disperses systemically). Also, the darn eyedrops slow production of new vitreous humour, meaning that they slow the elimination of the gas bubble.

In the meantime, I’m keeping my head down for the next 9 days to avoid cataracts, and as I may have already mentioned, you can’t keep your head downcast, and walk with your feet shuffling along, for very long, without it affecting your soul.  People ask me how I will spend my time, sitting in my chair with my head down, and I reply, in my best Jose Jimenez voice, “Well, I plan to cry a lot.”