Well, it's February 2018 and the decision (back in September) about what surgery to have went in favour of the simpler eye removal op. The technical term is "evisceration" which means removing the innards, e.g. when gutting a fish. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?
I had the eye op in November, stayed overnight and was pleased to be back to relatively normal within a week. They gave me a temporary eye disk but it wouldn't stay in because of the bulginess of the whole area around the eye. I gave up trying to keep it in and, even now, 10 weeks later, I prefer to simply let the eyelids close. It's so much more comfortable. I have the left lens of my glasses blacked out so the eye isn't visible anyway.
In terms of getting used to the loss of the eye, I really haven't found that at all difficult. For ten months prior to the op I have had the left lens of my glasses opaqued because the left eye was simply not of any use (double vision and blurry), so when it was removed there was no need to adjust to single eye vision. I was out on my motorcycle 4 days after the op, with careful application of plaster bandage to keep the eye closed and comfy :-)
I saw my oncologist 2 weeks ago, for the first time in 6 months. He's arranged for me to have an MRI scan (orbits, head and neck) as a baseline for future reference now that the eye has settled down after the surgery. There's been quite a bit of visible swelling on the left side of my face during those 6 months, so I am interested to see what the MRI scan reveals internally... is "interested" the right word there? Perhaps not. Expecting the worst but hoping it won't be that bad.
Meanwhile, spring isn't far away now. February is probably my least favourite month and I am really looking forward to lighter evenings and warmer days. There's a choir weekend (2 nights) I'm going to at the end of March which is something really nice to think of and keep my spirits up. I'll be singing something (with my ukulele) on the Saturday evening "open mic" session and I'm enjoying practising that now. Looking back just 2 years, my ukulele and singing have come quite a long way. I'm glad I put the effort in, thanks in large part to some good friends at choir who encouraged me.
That's all for now.
