GRRRRRRR ATTITUDE

Argggh! And that's not a pirate you're listening to, it's me, peeved. (and then grateful)

Here's the deal. I have had cataract surgery scheduled for August 25 for months, with a pre-op appointment for today at noonish.

Sunday night my only up to date pair of specs fell apart, with the temple piece falling off the main body of the glasses. No big deal, I thought, I'll just get them put back together at the local optical place. I'm wearing my contacts all day long now, it's no biggie.

But the optical place said no, they couldn't do it. Not their kind of repair, try the local jewelers. It was going to require something besides a new screw---it needed welding.

So I took it off to the local jewelers, left it overnight, not knowing whether they'd be able to fix it or not but happy that I had a very old spare pair of specs to wear while reading in bed at night.

Today at noon, I met with the doc for the cataract pre-op and asked if it would be problematic that I was wearing my contact lenses. She looked like I'd kicked her in the patootie and said YES, IT WOULD BE A VERY BIG PROBLEM! DIDN'T THEY TELL YOU NOT TO WEAR YOUR CONTACTS FOR TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE PRE-OP?

Well, no, they hadn't. Nowhere in the literature is it mentioned that a contact lens wearer (at least a gas-perm lens wearer) was not supposed to wear her/his contacts for two weeks preceding the pre-op appointment. Apparently, the eye needs to regain its natural shape so that the measurement for the implantable lens is accurate and it takes two weeks of not being shaped by a hard lens to resume its natural shape.

So we're rescheduling and the doc is bawling out (very politely) the clerks who should have told me this and it strikes me that I don't know if I even have glasses I can wear. My only decent pair of specs is at the jewelers where they are not sure they will be able to fix them.

Talk about mixed emotions, almost none of them good: anger about the failure to tell me something important, embarrassment for the clerks who probably thought I knew this or didn't know I was wearing contacts, irritation at the doc for her annoyance at me (even though she said it wasn't at me---it felt like I was included), relief at being able to postpone the surgery for two weeks (I wasn't exactly looking forward to it), and fear that I would not have a wearable, see-throughable pair of specs to get me through the next two weeks. Oh, and the fact that I had to drive 40 miles to Coupeville and back to find this out!

All the way home I was going over in my mind how I would cope if the only pair of specs I had to count on were the red-framed horrors that are now at least 20 years old. I called the jewelers as soon as I got home, the repair lady said she'd call me back, and within an hour I was able to go pick them up. In fact, I left this post hanging at about paragraph two to rush over to the store and pick them up.

So GRRRRRR has turned into GRRattitude. Thanks to Kari at Lind's for working a miracle and to my friend Carol who can take me up there for the surgery on the new date. And you'll see me in specs for the next two weeks, but they won't be the red ones from the 80's!