Research everywhere I look
I'm looking for bright spots in my most recent adventure, retina surgery. I woke up two weeks ago to a curtain of blood in my right eye.
Oh sh*t, I thought.
This is it. The bad stuff starting. (bad stuff as in, body failing due to age…) But diagnosis and treatment all happened very fast. The surgery was scheduled and took place so quickly and with such practiced ease on the part of the surgeon and his team that I didn’t have any time to stoke my fears. The retina surgery was painless. I didn’t SEE anything either, though I was awake for the entire procedure, which involved a microscopic laser.
Let’s pull the camera back for a moment
and appreciate the fact that my body did a great job of waiting until technology caught up to its needs. My vision has been restored to exactly where it was before any of this happened except that I have this little air bubble in my eye. It’s kind of cute. It was placed there by the surgeon to keep the space open and everything in place while my body does the work of refilling the eye with the fluid that normally is inside it. The air bubble gets smaller every day as the vitreous liquid regenerates. Yes, they removed old fluid because it was filled with blood. But the miracle that is a human body keeps on manufacturing the stuff, and the bubble diminishes quietly throughout the day and the night. Today it looks like a translucent circle with a clearly defined black edge. I see it at the bottom of my field of vision if I’m sitting upright, but if I lean over to face the floor, the bubble comes front and center. It acts a like a magnifying glass if I can just position it correctly. The doctor said, “You’ll just wake up one morning and think Hey, my little friend is gone.” And that’s cute and funny, because I really have become fascinated with watching the air bubble in my eye.
And THAT brings me to the point of this short report…
I would not know or understand much about eye surgery or eye surgeon’s offices if I hadn’t experienced it. Sure, you can read clinical papers, and even first-hand accounts from patients, but it isn’t the same as living an experience.
Why is this important?
Because I have written two of three novels about a detective who has something about eyes come up with every case she works—her own eyes and other people’s eyes too. These novels are unedited and unpublished, but two of them are written. The third is in my head.
I wrote the books in real time, pulling headlines and such from real world events while I was writing. I think of it as a lazy way to do research. And I very much write about things I have experienced, places I actually know. You can be sure, for example, that I’m going to redesign a character or two to resemble the fantastic staff of the eye surgeon… I’ll let you all know when the first book comes out.
An interesting journey you and your bubble are taking together.