I can see!!!

well.... not 20/20 yet. It's supposed to take a while. but I see well enough to drive! and read! and write emails! and blog! **happy dance**

am happy enough to take back all the stuff I said about Joe. I'm sure he's.. um... doing the best he can.

Last night was pretty bad. I woke up after a nap and it felt like multiple sharp objects were lodged in my eyes. Was tearing like crazy, couldn't open eyes, couldn't look into the light... *panic* Am really thankful that Lisa n Shaowei were there for me.

But when I woke up in the morning it felt great!

1) the multiple sharp objects had disappeared
2) I could SEE!!
3) I could SEE!!

Things still look a little fuzzy, bright lights hurt, and when I try to roll my eyes to the extreme left or right there's a little twinge of discomfort. The sunglasses/goggles they gave me to protect my eyes frm dust are Massive. They take up half my face. I look like those Jap anime characters. Went to Safeway to get milk just now and kept my sunglasses on the whole time because the lights there were incredibly bright. Felt like a failed movie star wannabe. Am convinced that the cashier was trying not to laugh.

Yesterday I was in the lunch rm, reading the Arthitis medical report. It's something doctors give to patients.. There was this article in there that touched on Assisted Pain Alteration. or something like that. Basically the idea is this: patients listened to a tape of someone asking them to visualise their pain, and to describe it: what does it look like? what color is it? Then patients were told to imagine their pain changing, becoming less... um.. evil/painful.

Amazingly, the grp of patients that listened to the tape described their pain as less severe afterwards, and by the end of the study (a couple weeks) described their pain as manageable. The control grp of patients were given the same medications etc without the assisted pain visualization thing and just told to record their medications. Their pain remained the same.

So last night after I took some medications/eye drops etc and was trying to sleep, I tried to visualise my pain. Immediately I thought of it as a black devil-like creature with a very sharp staff/triton thing which it was poking into my eyes. So I thought of it putting down the stupid triton, and sitting down to meditate. Like the chinese saying: Fang(4) xia(4) tu(2) dao(1), li(4) di(4) cheng(2) fuo(2) [loosely translated as: put down your sabre and become a buddha]. It was actually quite an amusing exercise and I think helped me to some extent. Highly recommended for people trying to deal with pain.