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Thanks for visiting my diary. I've been journaling since 1984 and have chosen to share some of my entries online. They are not all positive thoughts, but I hope that reading them might be a blessing to someone who needs encouragement.
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I'm having another cornea transplant on Tuesday. Am I doing the wrong thing? I don't know. It seemed so clear a few weeks ago. But that was when the vision was gone. Now the vision is back, and I am afraid to risk it. And if I lost the eye, how would I feel? I don't know how to make these decisions, and I don't want to do the wrong thing. I want a parent to decide for me. Not so that I can blame You, but because I don't want to do what isn't best for me. I don't want to do something out of pure greed. I'm just confused.
I'm sort of floundering today. I think it's a combination of too much of life's fun and perfectly normal roller coaster, being sick, and steroids playing games with me. I've been saying that for a few days now, haven't I? I'm thinking about trying to get the psychiatrist involved at this point. I'll get more steroids after surgery, and I'll have them for at least a year. Time to figure out some means of dealing with this. Mom's trying awfully hard to help me figure out natural ways to control the asthma problem--everything from daily housecleaning to losing weight to whatever else she can think of. None of those things are bad ideas, but they don't give very quick relief. Nancy called to see if we wanted to play Take One at herhouse. I asked if she could come here so I could stick close to the machine. I feel like a party pooper.
And it's beautiful outside, and I would love to take a walk with Dori. (I'm sure she'd love to take a walk, too.) Instead, I've been sitting here paying bills... I'm just having a lot of various anxieties, especially about surgery.
It was easy to say, "Go on with it already!" when I had nothing much to lose. I've had improvements since then--big improvements, like the kind that let you find baby socks on the floor after little babies kick them off--and I am now feeling the struggle, asking if I really want to do this and risk my only eye. A 90 percent success rate means little when you've already been part of the other 10 percent. But on the other hand, I think this doctor cares a lot more about the success of my transplant than the last one did; and I think he would do anything he could (even bring in other doctors to work on my immune system stuff) to help me make it. The fact that I have this much to lose is supposed to be a good thing, a sign that the transplant might benefit me.
I wonder if I felt all these things somehow when I had my first surgery. Mom says I cried one afternoon after it was over and told her I hadn't wanted to have it done. My eye was patched still at that point, and I was probably in a lot of pain (like last time). I wonder if I felt like I did last time, wondering if it was the right thing but (being eight years old) not being able to even think the thoughts. Mom also says that when I finally was able to open my eye and saw my favorite stuffed animal, I said, "I understand now."
I remember that moment. It was like a huge weight came off me. But I'm an adult now, and I understand what's to lose, probably much more than I did when I was a child. And that makes me FEEL more childish. I want someone to decide for me--not so I can blame them if it doesn't work but because I want someone who knows how it's all going to turn out to not let me do it if it's the wrong thing. Maybe that's crazy.
This has all been building for a few days, and I have no doubt that it's as much of a contributing factor to my crying spells as the grief stuff. Of course, the other weird factor in this is that grief stuff and surgery always go hand in hand for me--I had just had eye surgery the very month before Vicki died, almost to the day. March through July is a hard time for me--a lot of hard memories come up around this time of year.
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