Strawberry Daikon

We're currently "boxsitting"; our friends who have a subscription to a weekly organic produce box are away, and so we offered to prevent the veggies from going to waste. The contents are unknown to us prior to pickup, so it's a bit of organic russian roulette. (We lost the bet last week and cooked with some form of ___nip to disastrous results, but have since found some happy freecycling south Palo Alto people who are wiling to take surplus turnips and fennel.)

According to the description accompanying this week's box, we inherited several strawberry daikon. We weren't quite sure why these green and white things were called strawberry daikon, since I've only seen long white daikon before. I figured it was simply the shape. But as I decided to make a daikon slaw with the slice-twelve-fingers-mandolin tonight, it immediately became clear: they're a beautiful bright pink hue inside. And no, any pinkness you see on the unopened daikon to the right is simply the light reflecting in the photograph.

So, perhaps this blog entry will float to the top of Google Image results for the next hapless strawberry daikon soul...

Yo ho ho...

Supposedly I'm making a lot of progress. Until today I'm not sure I would have agreed.

Saturday (procedure +1): Recall in above post - it was really rough being outside. Even with my eyes closed and sunglasses on, the daylight felt way too bright. My eyes were dry, and it was a bit tough to read. As expected, it was an ordeal to have Marah add the cocktail of drops to my eyes.

Sunday (procedure +2): We generally took it easy here, and it was kind of a repeat of Saturday for me. While I could certainly "see", my vision was getting blurrier - it was uncomfortable to watch TV, impossible to read, and generally pretty frustrating. I'd even say boring. In the late morning, one of my eyes was in significant pain. The cocktail certainly helped, and eventually we figured out the appropriate "comfort" order to insert the drops into my eyes. To get out of the house mid-afternoon, we made some returns at the local bevy of home improvement stores.

Anyway, I think we went to bed around eight o'clock, which wasn't such a good move. I wasn't tired, and tried to read, but my vision was really bad. Substantially worse than my eyesight prior to surgery. I couldn't figure out what the right level of light was to read printed material, nor could I figure out the appropriate distance. And, since I went to sleep so early, I was up for several hours in the middle of the night, panicking over my eyesight ... wondering if I was going to be in the minority of people who end up with poor results in this non-guaranteed process.

Monday (procedure +3):

After the regimen of drops upon waking, we headed over for a checkup with the doctor. My epithelial cells are healing well and making good progress. Epithelial cells in my left eye have basically healed over and it looks like a "zipper" as they try to reconnect in-line. My right eye is healing a little more slowly, and there is still a central area without the cells. This at least explains my blurry vision. The plan is to go back first thing on Wednesday morning to have the contact lenses taken out, since my eyes will have sufficiently healed. The word from the doctor is "it will get better every day", so presumably my anxiety is unfounded, and my hopes were a bit unrealistic.

I decided to work from home on Monday rather than sit and sleep the day away ... a mix of being on the phone with colleagues, and occaisionally trying to read the computer screen for email. Concentrating on text on the computer was really tough. My eyes seem to be doing better overall - I was able to skip the optional "comfort" (pain-killing) drops today. By bedtime, I was able to read under the right lighting conditions, but opted for a large-print [it's all relative] book of Roz Chast cartoons.

Tuesday (procedure +4):
I forget if it was this morning or just before bed realized that the blurriness and frustration was likely due to the asymmetrical healing of my eyes. If I closed my right eye, I could see small text at a distance quite well. I guess my brain is trying to interpret the good-left eye along with the bad-right eye data, which is causing some of the mental focus and straining that I'm doing. Anyway, this was a great confidence booster this morning, and I hope augurs well for recovery post-contacts tomorrow. Meantime, I've considered fashioning an eye patch and finding a parrot to sit on my shoulder as I rule the high seas...

When it rains it pours...

OK, so Friday was the scary day. Yes, I've been preparing for the eye "procedure" for a bit - 1000mg of Vitiman C since January 1st, and started my six-day regiment of Methylprednisolone on Thursday. I was preparing for it to be simply a day of working in the morning, the "procedure", and then recovery. However, when it rains it pours.

You see, on Wednesday, the *counter people* called - they decided to come between 8 and 10 on Friday to install the new countertops, backsplash, sink, and bar. Of course, they arrived closer to ten and well, they just finished up around 3:15! Ugh. Well, fortunately, "Phase One" of the kitchen is almost complete.

But throughout this I was pretty anxious. The eye appointment was for 4:00, with a 3:30 arrival and prep. I took a valium at 2pm per instructions, which was probably good for the guys installing the counters :) I would claim the drug didn't do too much for me, but Marah said it appeared to loosen me up - as if I'd had a glass (or three) of wine.

Dr Volpicelli came in shortly before four to recheck my eyes, and then we were ready to go. We paraded out of the office, and I followed him into what I thought was the laser room. Not quite. He was stopping briefly for a drink in the coffee room. :) In my defense, I didn't have glasses on, and it seemed at the time it "could" have been the procedure room.

Anyway, the procedure was pretty quick, though I was quite anxious to steadily focus on on the eye-tracking blinking light. The anesthetics took care of numbing me to pain and pressure, but they don't really cover temperature receptors. There were a few times a cold liquid was used - I was staring at a few bright lights, and then this really cold liquid was squirted all over my eyes. Pretty bad "cold headache" - as if I ate too much ice cream or had a really cold drink quickly. Anyway, afterwards clear "bandage" contact lenses were inserted into my eyes. The original plan was for "LASEK" - doing treatment on the surface of the eye. Very similar to PRK, except in PRK the topmost epithelial cells are pushed back into place after the procedure and in LASEK they are discarded. During treatment Dr Volpicelli decided to discard the cells, so I had PRK after all.

After the procedure, we went back to the examination room, and there was a poster on the wall with graphical portions that previously had appeared to be a yellow blob when my glasses were off. Literally right after surgery, I could easily recognize that they were a face with two eyes and a nose. Marah commented that I was actually looking at her in the eye when talking to her (as opposed to generically at her face). So vision clearly had improved...though reading was a bit of a strain.

We headed home afterwards, and I curled up on the couch, had some food and fell asleep listening to NPR for almost two hours. After that, while my eyes were a bit dry, I wasn't in too much pain, and listened to some news on the TV until about nine o'clock. We went upstairs, I preemptively took a vicodin and had plastic goggles taped onto my face such that my eyes wouldn't be too disturbed while I slept. Silly photo:

I slept pretty well - I remember waking up a bit and my eyes felt dry, but I was too tired to deal with removing the goggle things to put in drops. Today I've been taking it easy. I had a follow up appointment with Dr Vopicelli in the morning. I can see reasonably well, but I wouldn't want to drive for a
few days. I can read but often there's haze and double vision -- the eye chart often had a few letter Os and Vs but they looked like an infinity and a W. But I certainly have functional vision and feel comfortable reading.

My eyes are still very dry- it's "hard" to keep my eyelids completely open. Though some of the four types of drops (painkillers, antibiotic, anti inflammitory, ...) sting a bit I'm not really in much discomfort. I am quite sensitive to light - as if my pupils have been dilated, but a bit
worse. Even if I close my eyes and wear the sunglasses I was given, being outside hurts a bit. And so there are some negatives to our house being filled with natural light.

Anyway, back to taking it easy. Today Marah will try to install the plumbing for the new sink , reinstall the garbage disposal, etc, such that we have a functional kitchen again.

Oh, finally for those who want the really gory details ... here are two cell phone videos Marah took of the procedure. Evidently they had a closed-circuit TV in the waiting room. I love the juxtaposition with the toys to the left of the TV. I'm sure young children would love to watch these procedures live. Note that there's no sound from the procedure itself; merely Marah wincing in the waiting room.

Right Eye (done first):



Left Eye (done second):

The Template Man Cometh

He came, he saw, he templated.

Jorge the template guy showed up around 830 this morning and quickly got to work. We were expecting him to bring sheets of balsa wood to make full-sized templates, but instead he brought strips that he uses to essentially outline the counters, the bar, the backsplash, etc. On the whole everything is sufficiently level -- more or less -- and plumb, except for the area behind the sink. There, I may have been a bit overzealous with the joint compound... and now there's a charming bulge... I knew it was there, I was just hopeful it'd go on a diet and disappear before this morning. I wasn't so lucky, so I'll be sanding a bit tonight and over the weekend to thin it down.

Jorge said it'd probably be about 2 weeks until installation, which would take about 3 hours given the size of our kitchen. (I'm glad we have a small kitchen!) I'm hopeful it can happen while Jonathan's home next week... but we'll see.