Postsurgery

Note arrow over eye. Nothing was left to chance!

Last week I mentioned that I would be having eye surgery on May 10 (yesterday). It went well. I'm following advice to limit reading and computer use, so this will be short.

Like most sane people, I was not enthusiastic about having such a contact-averse body part as an eyeball prodded and pierced. For this reason, I'm not assuming that this blog post is of much interest to anyone—except for its possible value as reassurance for someone else facing similar surgery. Of course I can't predict results for you any more than, after just one day, I can be sure about the full outcome of my own surgery. However, I can report that the process was as painless for me, as well as apparently routine for the surgeon and his team, as I had been reassured in advance that it would be.

After the surgery itself, my right eye was covered. When the cover was removed today, looking through my right eye is strange. It's as if I'm looking through a tiny aquarium, through which I am only able to see vague, shimmering shapes. At the top of my right eye's field of vision is a horizontal border between the watery images below and a clearer, dry field above. Every movement of my head causes little waves in the waterline. It's just plain odd. The bubble in my eyeball, designed to help stabilize the retina during healing, will reduce and vanish in a period of days, I'm told. The full extent of recovery may take weeks or even months.

Ahead of my date with the surgeon, to get used to the very idea of retinal surgery, I did something that I don't necessarily recommend to anyone else: I watched a bunch of videos of epiretinal membrane peeling on YouTube. You might find these kinds of videos very unappetizing, but the effect on me of watching them was reassuring: this was nothing terribly exotic.

I cherish the support that I received from everyone who contacted me since last week, or who held me in prayer yesterday. Thank you!

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Also mentioned last week: the controversy around the treatment of Taylor University professor Julie Moore. Here's another commentary: Beth Allison Barr on a failure in due process.

Chronic illness and its spiritual dimensions: the wolf at Tricia Gates Brown's door.

Rich Swingle's new Substack blog. Meanwhile, he continues to perform his one-man play based on the life of John Woolman, I Dreamed I Was Free. I first saw this play 25 years ago, and am impressed but not surprised that it continues to inspire.

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Front-row video of Pieter van der Pluijm (Big Pete) and Rick Holmstrom.