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CataractApril 17, 2008 My first awareness of cataracts had to do with the ones in the Nile, which I've still never seen. Those cataracts are downpourings of water, water falling in steep rapids. What they have to do with the cataracts you get in your eyes I don't know, even after looking it up in the dictionary: "From Latin cataracta waterfall, portcullis, from Greek kataraktes, from katarassein to dash down . . ." Portcullis, huh? That reminds me of Shannon's wall in The Mud of the Place. If only I'd known this sooner; I could have worked a cataract joke into the novel. Thank heaven for small favors: I just learned it today. The cataract in my right eye is now officially gone. Cris picked me up before 7:30 this morning; we made the 8:15 boat with time to spare; my appointment was for 10:30, and though I wasn't taken till somewhat later I was still out of there by 12:30 or so. Minus cataract. Amazing. The prep takes longer than the procedure, which took about 10 minutes max and if I hadn't known the surgeon was there I would have sworn he hadn't started yet. They sent me on my way with a patch on my eye, three kinds of eyedrops, instructions for use, a post-op appointment with my optometrist for tomorrow morning, a plastic shield to tape over my eye so I don't poke it in my sleep -- and a cute little potted plant whose name I don't know yet. Everybody gets a plant. For morning surgeries, you're not supposed to eat or drink from midnight onward, so Cris made meatloaf sandwiches and bought a couple cans of soda. The nursing staff served apple juice, peanut butter crackers, and Tylenol. As directed, I took the patch off my eye at about 3 p.m. and started dosing with eyedrops. The really bizarre thing is that now my right eye can read the spines of my cookbooks without my glasses on. Last night my right eye could only dimly perceive that there were cookbooks on the bottom shelf, and that was mostly because left eye was feeding right eye the information. Right eye hasn't been able to read unaided at that distance since I was a teenager. True, the letters are a little blurry and my eye isn't ready to open wide, but still -- this is major. Setting off this morning, I wasn't worried about the surgery itself, but I knew I'd for sure be disappointed if my right eye's vision didn't substantially improve. Right eye has been pretty useless ever since the retina surgeries, but I've never known how much was due to the cataract and how much to the reattachment. Now, finally, three and a half years after retina reattachment #2, I know for sure that the reattachment worked. The funny thing was that while I was sitting around the reception area, after I'd checked in but before I'd been called in for prep, someone called out, "Cynthia Riggs." I looked up sharply. On the other side of the room someone I couldn't see called out, "Cynthia!" Cynthia said, "Shirley!" I waved and said, "Cynthia!" She said, "Susanna!" You get on the boat and drive all the way to Sandwich, and who do you see? People you run into regularly at the post office.
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