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Eye Stuff

My wife had eye surgery this past Wednesday.  She had had some obscuring of her vision in the one eye; her optometrist (and my sister-in-law, who is also an optometrist) listed a bunch of possible causes which either would heal on their own or require retinal surgery. As of Tuesday it became clear (to the optometrist) that she was developing a small tear in her retina. 

This matches the definition of urgent:  something where delay makes things significantly worse. She was immediately sent to an retinal specialist who set her up for surgery the next day to mend the tear while it was minor.

I went with her which involved a lot of waiting with us being in different rooms in the same building. The surgery took about an hour; I still struggle with the idea of eye surgery being routine but they've been doing it for a while. Modern medicine being what it is they gave her an hour to recover from the anesthesia and sent her home with me. The surgeon thought that all went well and concurred with himself the next day when removing her bandages to check out the eye.

Our daughter lives nearby and has been tending to my wife while I started teaching classes Thursday and Friday immediately afterward. She is a big help, always has been. My wife is an avid reader and not being able to read at first was unsettling for her. By today (Saturday) she is reading pretty well with the one eye. The repaired eye should be mostly back to normal in 1-2 weeks.

My vision has degraded with age but leveled off when I turned 50. I've always been keenly aware of how much my life as a math instructor has depended on my eyesight, from the beginning of my career in my 20's. Strangely enough my hearing has stayed quite good; when I start to lose that it will be hard since music (making and listening) has been part of my life since I started playing in my school band in third grade.

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