Some people can simply minimize their client or app, walk away and live their life. I could not. Obsession seems to be my middle name. I love my Twitter and IRC friends, but sometimes I just need to be alone; to read a book, or listen to music, or sit in silence, or even get out of the house.

I love Twitter. Usually. I get most of my breaking news from there now, both silly and serious. And it’s wonderful to keep up with my friend’s lives and moods; it gives me a real feeling of community. But sometimes it starts to feel just a bit oppressive to keep up with. Or maybe it was because I kept it open on my desktop and hit refresh every five minutes. Time to log out.

IRC can be great, but after more than a year without a break, I just didn’t want to say ‘hi’ to dozens (or hundreds) of people any more, or answer the same questions over and over. For fifteen hours a day. I also find the multiple tabs for channels (chat rooms) and PMs stressful. Carrying on conversations with more than one person at a time is at best unsatisfying. My preference tends to be either to connect with someone or be left alone. Introvert thy name is Jeannie. And I was so obsessed with keeping up and not missing anything that I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was failing to eat, drink water, take breaks or do any work. Even my sleep was being effected. Time to log out.

I also needed a break from keeping up with so many podcasts. Some people complain that they’ll have nothing to listen to and nothing to do if they “run out of” podcasts. I love the podcasts I listen to and the people who record them, but I also wanted time to hear music I haven’t heard in over a year. I wanted to just sit or lie on my couch without a laptop or netbook. I wanted to watch movies or tv shows without also being on the computer, obsessively checking social sites.

So I took a little holiday. And it was goood.

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Logging Out or: Leave me alooooone!

Flashback

I had moved back in with my parents. They lived in a nowhere suburb. Nothing but single family homes with parents and kids. No single guys or any singles at all. No way to get anywhere except to drive and driving terrified me. Plus I wasn’t someone who would go to a singles group online or off. In desperation, I looked at some singles ads in a small, local paper. It was set up so you could reply to a mailbox number, anonymously. No need to use your name, address or phone number. I replied to five ads. Three of the recipients wrote back. One was barely semi-literate, one had more muscle than brain, and one was way too old.

A week or so later on a friday, I heard back from another one. He was a musician, lived about an hour away, did not sound like a jerk and had provided his phone number so i could call him. His letter said he usually was out performing on weekends, so I waited until the next week to call, figuring I’d just hang up if it was uncomfortable. We talked for a bit and he wanted to meet. That made me uncomfortable and I started to hang up. He said, “wait!” and we talked some more until I was a little less uncomfortable. His idea: the next saturday he had an hour or two before he had to go to a gig. He’d come out to my parent’s house, pick me up and we would go to lunch at a place about five minutes away. I agreed.

I didn’t have an airplane barf bag around, so i made one out of a paper lunch bag. As he walked up to the house, I stuck it out the door in case he needed it when he saw me. The first thing he said was, “put that away”. We went to lunch. he had also been “desperate” and did the singles ad because he got a free listing. His mailbox filled up with replies but mine was the only one he liked. He said my letter actually sounded like someone talking. The others provided complete info (including revealing pictures), but mine had no way of contacting me unless I called him. He was depressed when I didn’t call right away – but his letter had said weeknights were better!

After that, we talked on the phone for hours every night. Each weekend he drove out to my parent’s house and stayed in the spare bedroom. My parents loved him. One of the saddest things about his “desperate” situation was that whenever he’d make a funny comment to a girl, she’d give him a puzzled look and say, “what do you mean by that?”. Pathetic, considering how hysterically funny he is. Every week by the time he left my parent’s house I had pain in my stomach and face from laughing so hard.

We got engaged on Halloween and married February 11. I designed my dress and the wedding invitation. When his family and friends received the invitation, they all thought he had done it. When he informed them that it was all me, they smiled and said, “ahhhhh”.

He’s my best friend. No one is perfect and wonderful 100% of the time, least of all me. But he has more integrity, honesty and loyalty than anyone I’ve ever known. He’s caring and compassionate, outwardly almost pensive and reserved, yet hilariously funny. Plus he has an uncanny ability to understand and tolerate difficult people. Ahem. The biggest laugh during our wedding ceremony was when the pastor referred to us as “two unique people”. And we still are.

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Barf Bag or: How I Met My Husband

I was born with two eye diseases in both eyes. Fuchs Dystrophy, and an optic nerve abnormality that developed into Optic Nerve Head Drusen. Everyone is born with a single layer of cells beneath their cornea. These cells act as pumps to keep the cornea clear. In people with Fuchs Dystrophy, the cells are puny and die off, causing the cornea to fog up. It becomes increasingly opaque until it’s like trying to see through waxed paper. Eventually, the layers of the eye break down causing blisters that then burst. In some people these cells die very slowly as they age and the effect is barely noticeable. Such people may never even know they have the disease. In others the cells die quickly, suddenly, or simply at a much younger age. I am one of second type of person.

The cure for Fuchs Dystrophy is a cornea transplant, first in one eye, then the other. Cornea replacement surgery has been done for about a hundred years. Until the past few years, the entire cornea was removed and replaced with a donor cornea. The new cornea was held in place by stitches. The recovery time was about two years, the risk of rejection was fairly high and severe astigmatism often resulted. Very recently, due to advances in microsurgery, it is now possible to remove only the defective layer of cells through a tiny incision. The donor layer of cells is then inserted and held in place by an air bubble. It is necessary for the patient to lie flat until the cornea adheres. Steroid eye drops are then used indefinitely to avoid rejection.

In December 2007 I had this type of cornea replacement surgery, called a DSAEK, in my right eye, which had the worst vision. Because cataracts form with age and the replacement cell layer would be destroyed during future cataract surgery, my lens was also replaced. All eye surgery is done while you’re awake. The anesthetist apparently thought I was only having cataract surgery – a fifteen minute procedure, rather than a DSAEK plus cataract surgery – which takes at least an hour. The anesthetic wore off fifteen minutes in. The surgery was…about as nightmarish as you can imagine.

The procedure(s) went perfectly, but I reacted badly. I looked and felt as if I had been assaulted. The eye looked like something from a monster movie: all of the white was deep red and the iris totally black. It took months rather than weeks for me and the eye to recover. The stitches, which were not supposed to hurt, felt like chicken wire in my eye. And I still did not see clearly.

There is often a film that develops on the replacement lens after cataract surgery, so surgery with a YAG laser was done to remove that. This procedure was supposed to be painless. In me it felt as if my eye was being shot repeatedly with a machine gun. And that’s what the eye looked like afterward. It finally healed. I still did not see clearly.

The surgery had also left me farsighted. I’ve been nearsighted since birth and wish to remain so, it’s natural to me and everything I do is close up. Lasik surgery cannot be done on someone who has had a cornea transplant, so I had a PRK. This is a refractive procedure that was done before Lasik became common. In a PRK, the top layer of the cornea is scraped off with a scalpel, then the cornea is shaped by a laser. The pain was unbearable. It felt like I had a large blister on my foot, the blister skin was removed, then the shoe put back on. Only it was in my eye. After the recovery I could see close but still not well.

If you Google Fuchs Dystrophy and Optic Nerve Head Drusen you will find a lot of sites with short, inaccurate information about how they only effect people in the sixth or seventh decade of life. You will also read that these diseases rarely result in serious vision loss. Neither is true. I know teens who have needed cornea replacement surgery for Fuchs and children who have completely lost sight from Optic Nerve Head Drusen. I suppose it can be more prevalent in older people because everything deteriorates with age. The other patients at my cornea surgeon’s office are older than my parents, and the employees at the eye surgery center knows me as, “the young patient”.

The true reason my vision was so poor only became apparent after the cornea was clear. The Optic Nerve Head Drusen had thinned and damaged the optic nerve fibers. This damage is worse in my right eye. In both eyes, my vision is dimmed and there are parts of it missing – sort of like missing pixels on a monitor – especially around the edges. The damage is progressive. I have put off having the DSAEK in my left eye for as long as possible. In spite of the Fuchs fog, the left is still my better eye and the procedure does not always go so perfectly. Complications could develop. I may be able to avoid surgery for a year or two.

There’s nothing wrong with my macula and with Optic Nerve Head Drusen, center vision lasts the longest. I’m hoping I won’t be blind until I’m too senile to notice. I see better on a monitor than I can on paper or in the ‘real world’. I’m legally blind and cannot drive. I’m also unable to cross traffic alone as I won’t necessarily see a car heading toward me. I’m blind if light is facing me. I also have chronic stress fractures of my metatarsals and cannot walk much without causing fractures, so staying put is not much of a problem.

This is not an incredibly contrived excuse for spending so much time online. I’d probably be here anyway.

Eye Bank

Post from: Jeannie's Brain

Eyes