Industry Figure Tom Chappell

I went to the retinal surgeon today, and he liked the looks of my eye.  He took me off of the pressure-control drugs that were giving me bronchitis (because my pressure was down from 40 or 27 to a superb “10″).   I can breathe again!  Also, he cut the combination steroid / anti-biotic drops from 4x to 3x per day, so he’s obviously taking moves to wean me off of those.

As for my vision, the gas bubble is still there, but is very small - it now takes up only (the bottom) 10% of my visual field in my bad eye.   The retina seems nice and flat — for example, I have no trouble at all reading the tiny print of (say) the Wall Street Journal   I can do this either with my glasses off or with them on, although it’s much easier with them off.   In fact, my main complaint now is that my prescription for my bad eye (the one recently operated on) does not seem to match my eye very well any more, although it’s still early days to be shopping for new glasses.

Other than that, I notice more glare in the bad eye (mostly due to the gas bubble), and more cloudiness (probably mostly due to some tiny debris still floating in the bad eye).  But these are minor complaints, and should both resolve themselves over time.

The surgeon praised my constancy in keeping my head down over the last two weeks (”I can tell by how clear your lens is that you were very careful about this.”)

But, the big take-home news is:

I can go back to work tomorrow,
I can drive a car,
I can read a book or a CRT screen,
I can put my head in any position I feel like putting it,
and…
I can sleep in a bed like a natural man (albeit with my Alien-like Sleep Apnea machine).

This last is The Big One. After two weeks of sleep deprivation, sleeping sitting up in a chair in the living room, to be finally be back with my beloved sleeping machine.  Ah, bliss.