FEELING BLESSED

Two weeks ago I woke up and immediately noticed that my right eye felt weird. It felt different than my left eye and I could see a lot of little "floaties" in my vision. I wondered if it would just correct itself, but it didn't. With my family's history of eye problems, a few days later I decided to mention it to my mom. She said that I should go to her eye doctor and get it checked out. I told her it was probably nothing but she insisted that I should go. My brother, Gordon also encouraged me to go. Not wanting to make a mountain out of a molehill, I asked my mom to call and make an appointment. She was able to get me in yesterday at the same time that she had her appointment.
Well, we went to Dr. Carver. Unfortunately, my mom found out she will probably have to have the same eye surgery that my brother Gordon had last month. The pressure in her eye is not going down. She is feeling discouraged at the continuing progression of her vision loss. I am only now beginning to understand my mom's and brother's frustration with their vision problems.
Then it was my turn to be examined. My vision was good in reading the eye chart (20/20). My eyes were dilated and then the doctor looked inside my eyes. At first he commented on how it was nice to see a healthy eye for a change, then he stopped and said, "Oh. You have a tear in your retina and it has started to detach." "You're kidding." I said in shock. "No, I'm not." he said seriously.
The doctor later said that it was a miracle that I had come in so that they could repair the tear with laser surger in his office. He said that most people don't recognize the symptoms of torn retinas until it is too late and then they have to go through eye surgery and/or suffer from totally detached retinas and permanent vision loss in that eye.
The laser surgery only took about 5 minutes but it felt like an hour. I had to hold my head very still so that he could accurately seal the torn area on my retina with lasers. I didn't have to try to keep my eye open (totally impossible) because the doctor held it open. Because the tear was at the top of the back of my eye, I had to keep looking up during the procedure. The lasering was a serious of very BRIGHT lights going through and into my eye. When it became uncomfortable, he would stop and let my eye rest for about a minute and then continue. There was no sharp pain, but after repeated lasering it felt like my eye was aching. It also gave me a headache for the rest of the night. It took 130 laser shots to seal the tear. Amazing what our medical knowledge and skill can do. Thirty years ago, I probably would have gone blind in that eye.
I am feeling VERY blessed and grateful that I noticed a change in my eye and that my mom and brother insisted that I go get my eye checked out. If I had waited even a week later, I would be having eye surgery instead of going back east to visit family and I could have had some permanent vision loss. Blessings!!!!

FREEDOM

I love our country's birthday. It is a time to get together with family and friends, eat, play games, talk, celebrate and enjoy the bounty of our nation. It is also a time to reflect and be grateful. We have so much. We get to enjoy the fruits of our labor and make choices in so many aspects of our lives. Many people have worked and sacrificed throughout the last 233 years to give us the opportunity to have choices. I am grateful for them. I am also grateful for those who are now serving their country with integrity to help us to maintain the blessings that we have. God bless America.

LIFE STINKS!

We lost our sweet black and white cat Mellow this past week. She just disappeared. Which probably means that she got too close to the fields past our backyard lawn and a fox got her. Hey, it could even have been a cougar since they have been spotted in neighborhoods not a mile from our house. Anyway, I miss her. We have had her for 7 years. She was a good sweet fatty cat. Her sister, Midnight, is meloncholy. Now we are down to one cat and one dog. Life on the gully stinks.
It was only 2 weeks ago that we discovered a baby skunk in one of our window wells. Within a couple of days (and with the help of my daughter and son-in-law) I was able to successfully get it out and back to the gully. Whew! I thought my stinky days were over. Was I wrong. Yesterday I followed my normal routine of taking the dog out early in the morning to do her "business," and she kept trying to go under the deck. She finally succeeded in crawling under her deck and started growling. Oh great. That meant there was probably an animal under our deck. I brought her in the house and dismissed it from my mind thinking that the animal would leave on its own.
Later that evening I went downstairs to get something and I heard Jade whining in one of the downstairs bedrooms. My first thought was, "I hope that there's not an animal hiding in my house." Fortunately, there wasn't, but as I looked through the window into the window well I was shocked to see...yup, you guessed it...another baby skunk. This shouldn't be so bad since I now know a way to get them out, however, this skunk decided to fall into a window well under the deck. There's no way I am crawling under the deck to fish out a skunk and then get sprayed! I don't get it. Is our house a skunk magnet or something?
Bill assures me that there are some trap doors in our deck so that we can get under the deck. We are now trying to figure out how or what to put down there so that it can crawl out by itself so we can avoid the odorifious experience that we had last time. Any suggestions? Like I said before...life on the gully stinks!