A different perspective.

So today was the first time that I have been properly alone since the op. 5 days post ‘eye removal’ and Mr me-myself-and-eye returned to work, the kids are at school and it is just me, trying to manage my jumbled up feelings and emotions. I knew that my gorgeous friend Hels Bells was coming over with Krispy Kreame donuts at some point, but I had the morning to navigate through first.

I know that I have mentioned it before but the strange perspective that only having one eye brings is really disconcerting. I will get used to it and my brain will adapt, but at the moment my brain is still in the ‘what the f**k is going on!’ phase. This morning i walked. It felt a bit more monumental than yesterdays as I walked down to my office in Chapel Town (approx. 2.5 miles away…. shhhh don’t tell Mr me-myself-and-eye) This walk meant navigating quite a few road crossings, pavements and the well known ‘Chapel Town gauntlet’ where you never quite know where the cars are going as ALL indicators in ALL cars seem not to work here. I kept doing that thing that babies do when they are learning to walk and pick their legs up a bit to high when they are walking up steps, or misjudging the down step and their feet hit the floor before they are prepared which leads to an off balanced stumble… there was a fair bit of stumbling and laughing at myself. The flag stones on most of the pavements are unequal (I may write to the council about that) and so I had to look down pretty much all of the way to make sure that I didn’t trip over any corners, but by doing that I almost walked into several people…. I think that having my patch on excused me a bit….people looked at me in that odd ‘I wonder what she has done’ kind of way…..I had started to walk with my headphones on, thinking that listening to a nice podcast on a glorious sunny day may brighten my spirits, but soon had to stop as it was really disorientating having two of my senses not at 100%. Each time I had to cross a road, I stopped and checked every single way about 50 times, just to make sure that I hadn’t missed a rogue cyclist, mobility scooter or a grey car (I don’t know why, but the grey ones are always the hardest to see) I did make it to my office…. went inside…. listened to ‘woman’s hour’ and then caught the bus home…. not a huge achievement for some, but it made me feel like Dicky Rock, it was something that I had done on my own!

It’s not just the walking that has a different perspective but also how I see myself. Sounds strange, but at the moment when I look in the mirror, what I see is very distorted…. it’s like I am looking in one of those funny fair ground mirrors… the top half of my body looks long and thin and my bottom half looks…. well….. short and like my arse has exploded on each side…. again I know that this isn’t the reality but it isn’t the best thought in the world and it is making putting on bottoms quite tricky as I have no concept of what they really look like…. I mean it’s not as if this is a major tragedy in the grand scheme of things, but it is going to make shopping for trousers very annoying…. When I looked at my jeans this morning, I got really frustrated and wanted desperately to rip the eye patch off and to be able to see myself properly! I think that I may have to audition my friends to see who can be my ‘jean buying’ friend who can be responsible for me buying a flattering pair of jeans… (cripes, if Mr me-myself-and-eye reads this, he will probably choke on his coffee as he thinks about the 50 billion pairs of jeans that I own and how I definitely DO NOT need to buy any more…. EVER.)

I also found the application of makeup a tricky experience this morning… again, not life threatening and to be honest I barely wear the stuff but this morning I wanted my remaining eye to look a little bit less like it had shrunk into the mashoosive bag that is a permeant fixture underneath it. So I got out my mascara and eye liner and tried to apply…. mascara, tricky but manageable (after applying it to my nose at the first attempt) eyeliner, bloody impossible…. I needed to close my eye to apply it to the top lid…. errrr how the heck is that meant to work then? They don’t tell you these things BEFORE extraction do they?! (yes I appreciate that Dr Salvi had more important things to think about) I did attempt to apply the eyeliner but then gave up as I was starting to resemble Alice Cooper…. I stuck with the mascara and I think I may have to You Tube eyeliner application….. oh dear lord, wtf…. please can someone come and slap me in the face if I every actually do that…

In other news, I now understand what the hospital meant when they said do not make any important decisions for 24 hours after surgery….. I somehow ordered 100 or so toilet rolls which were delivered yesterday…. I must have been panicking about Brexit post op… and I had 10 pairs of ‘fashion’ glasses delivered today from Claire’s Accessories…. two reasons why these are useless… 1. Because they are children’s sizes and 2. I actually wear glasses and have a very nice pair that allow my to see properly out of my right eye which I will start wearing again once my patch comes off…. and so there is absolutely no point in me owning 10 pairs of glasses that I can’t see out of…and don’t fit. The irony of my new earrings does not escape me either….

Can someone remove my credit card from me please!

Captain Corne x