Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby rosemary johnson » Mon 22 Sep 2008 6:27 pm

Hi H! - good to hear from you again.
SOrry about the headless-chicken stuff - but at least I suppose it means anothe ryear of work with said new students?
- even it that does include having to explain what a hot water bottle is......!
Rung today and spoke to new consultant's medical secretary, and am awaiting a call-back.
My theory is that latest was (yet another) steroid reaction and if so, fixing it means changing the steroid...... though will also ask about possibility that high eye pressure, or eye pain in general, may sometimes be a trigger.
Await callback with interest......
Meanwhile, have heard no more from my nice anaesthetist (about, inter alia, why he is so keen on the idea) so will have to email and "remind" him.....
AM also about to have some news for him - I hope! Still playing telephone tag with Ruth from the GP's about test results.
Telephone salesperson......... well!
WOuld you believe this??? - I'm a member of the Country Gentleman's Association!!!!
Being a female townie, I was extremely surprised to be offered 18 months free membership of this august organisation! - but there were sponsoring a day's racing and gave out complementary memberships to all the member at the races at the time. SO there arrived this welcome pack....
They have seminars from time to time, in a posh venue in central London, with a talk about financial planning advice, a bit about the CGA, free lunch (!), chance to meet other members in the area and nose round a posh venue one would never otherwise get to see. And the latest letter about one of these coming up it was for once a date I could make, so I went along.
I suppose the follow-up call is part of the package along with the lunch and admiring the paintings and the silver horse statues.
What really surprised me was that when one of the speakers asked if there was anyone there interested in horse racing, I was the only one who put a hand up. Yet I was on a table at lunchtime with several people who regularly go to the CGA-sponsored race day and someone who is involved with the group who own the Champion Hurdle winner. Is this just shyness, or what?!
Rosemary

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Hilary Johnson
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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby Hilary Johnson » Tue 23 Sep 2008 12:23 pm

Explaining hot-water bottles is nothing - I've also been asked "What's lager?" and "How do you make a snowman?"
(Students from Malaysia just don't know these things...).
H

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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby rosemary johnson » Tue 23 Sep 2008 5:56 pm

Explaining lager should be easy ("blond beer") - how do they get onwith the concept of "pint of bitter"?
Instructionso n how to make a snowman: 1. wait till it snows....
Heard nothing from the eye hospital today.......
Di dhave phone call from Ruth (of the sasthma clinic) - she hasn't got the paper report onthe test results yet but will chase again; and she doesn't think that dry powder inhalers would affect the eye pressure, even if the older "spray paint your tonsils" variety might, but will look it up.
NO more of the bad trips, I'm very relieved to say!! - but both eyes look very red and sore and veiny.
Pretty irrelevant that person in hosp said not to put new lens in again - wouldn't want to try anyway.
HOpe this is not now permanent state...... but ruth agrees not many options left to control the asthma - and bottom line is, or may be: got to deal witht he asthma and then sort out the eye. One can live with eye problems a lot longer than one can live without breathing!
Rosemary

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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby Andrew MacLean » Thu 25 Sep 2008 8:08 am

Rosemary

Is there a proper form of address that we ought to use in discourse with a member of the Country Gentleman's Association? Do I have to start addressing you as 'my lord'? :D

And, can you define for me 'light ale'? :roll:

Andrew
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Hilary Johnson
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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby Hilary Johnson » Thu 25 Sep 2008 4:21 pm

But it WAS snowing, that's why they asked. It's great to watch 21 year-olds seeing snow for the first time in their lives.... I had to exlain about snowballs getting bigger when you roll them along. I told them about snowball fights and someone asked "Does it hurt?"

Re bitter - most prefer lager, though one lass a couple of years ago was very taken with Cameron's Stongarm at the end of the brewery tour - but then, so was I. Would be nice after a few hours heavy physical labour.

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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby rosemary johnson » Thu 25 Sep 2008 11:04 pm

As I understand it.......
Light or Pale Ale is a light-coloured beer brewed in much the same way as bitter (notably at room temperature and using what's essentially bitter yeast) and just less.... malt extract, IIRR.
It tends to be a "minority interest" these days in most parts.
Note: there are brews with names like "India Pale Ale" or "IPA" which are bitters and not particularly pale at all - except compared to stouts!
The difference between light/pale ale and lager (or Pilsner) beer is that the latter is brewed at low temperatures and using yeast that operates at low temperatures.
This is why home made lagers, made from home-brew lager kits, tend to taste more like pale ales than lager - they are made in cool cellars or sculleries and not under refrisgeration.
Incidentally, this is also why the Marmite you get in, for example, South Africa tastes just that bit different from the UK variety - Marmite is made from yeast left over from beer brewing, which in the UK is mostly bitter yeast, and in SA is mainly lager yeast, as SAB (South African Breweries) make mainly lager and a bit of milk stout.
A further distinction is the difference between "ale" and "beer" - beer is made using hops, to give it the bitter part of the taste. Traditionally, "ale" was flavoured with herbs, not hops. These days, the terms are used interchangeably - but my one-time landlord had a cellar full of home-brew, most of it traditional herb-flavoured ales.
There! You're so glad you asked that, aren't you, Andrew?!
I've encountered teenagers who've just met snow for the first time (they'd just moved from Jo'burg to Suffolk.... long story) so can imagine students....
Today's news:
My new consultant's PA, sorry medical secretary, rang this afternoon, just as I was standing in Duke's stable mid-way throgh putting his bridle on. Fortunately I'd got hte bit in his mouth and the headpiece over his ears, and just had to straighten out and buckle the nose band. Great timing - thirty seconds earlier and I'd have needed five hands, and five minutes later we'd have been helf way up the road. (Getting a bridle on is a job that would always be easier with three hands - or is it just me who thinks that's what would held to negotiate bit between teeth without dropping the top piece on the floor - or to get the top piece over the ears without bloody-minded horse spitting bit out again hurriedly. Or of course simply walking around from you round and round the box.....
Anyway, verdict is that as I have an appointmnet next Wednesday anyway, we don't think anything will be urgent before then - I said I was feeling better back onthe old steroids, though obviously I can't measure my own IOP.
She said I was a "difficult case" - !!!! - but declined to elaborate when I asked her what they'd been telling her about me.
Still waking up at about 6am with the right eye feeling dry as the Sahara and nearly as sandy and all my face feeling dehydrated. Oh well.
Hard to think it is not so long since I was actually putting a contact lens in this eye.....
Put a soft lens under the scleral - piggybacking - again this morning and it has been doing far better than for ages - been getting a lot of tolerance problems with it recently. Will ahve to dig out the box with more of the soft lenses (intended for piggybacking in right eye, when it still was my right eye).
Oh, here's something odd: I'd been riding Duke for two and a half years and not once had he stopped for a pee with me on board. Now he's done it 3 times inthe last four times I've ridden him.
I've never heard of male horses getting prostate problems; has anyone?? - and he's been castrated, too.
Rosemary

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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby rosemary johnson » Sat 27 Sep 2008 9:55 pm

EEEEEEEK!!!!!!!
When out to the field to see Duke and his mates today, and get some fresh air, sunshine, exercise, etc and hope to feel less rotten.
Moderately successful in that....
Was walking back from the tube station onthe way home, and realised that the op that had the op was seeing big rings round all the street lights and ncoming car headlights.
Rainbow rings inthe case of the white ones.
Just like a couple of months ago, when I'd had the lens in it "too long".
just like the rainbow rings that spurred me to go to A&E in mid-August when they first found the high pressure.
Eeeeeeeeeek!
Haven't had a contact lens in since that day.
SO why the rainbows????
Never seen the rainbow rings except when I'd had the lens in.
So - what's going on??...... is the pressure getting higher and higher?????
Or what.
Put another drop in when I got indoors, and an hour and a half later went out to put rubbish inthe bins, and no rinabow rings then (phew) so am hoping for the best.
Still pretty worried and rather fed up.
Eyebeen feeling sore, dry, sandy, itchy eyelids, and looks like Mars.
That's the red planet, not the chocolate bar.
Ouldn't mind a supply of chocolate bars now......
The first guy in A&E thought the rainbows were fluid being forced through from the inner eye into the cornea by the high pressure. And Muggins Here thought it was the contact lens showing it up because it couldn't evaporate with the lens in the way, and wore off once the lens was out.
So now what ? - ever higher pressure and ore enforced seeping though intot he cornea????????
ANyone any ideas?
Really don't want to spend most of tomorrow in A&E...... and do have an appointment on Wednesday inthe normal clinic. But if seeing more of these rainbows......
Eeeek again.
Rosemary

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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby Andrew MacLean » Mon 29 Sep 2008 9:15 am

Pale Ale: Yes, I am glad I asked, because now I know! :D

Rings round street lights: I got that in the weeks after my grafts. I don't egt that effect any more; either my brain has started to compensate or my eyes have healed, or both! I guess this is the first time you are out and about in artificial street light since your surgery?

If you are worried ... well you know the advice I am about to give. :shock: Seriously, if you are worried, do go back to ophthalmology and let them take a look.

Andrew
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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby rosemary johnson » Mon 29 Sep 2008 6:56 pm

Hey, Andrew - go back and look at the first message inthis thread again!
The misty haloes with rainbow edges were the reason I first went to A&E, about 6 weeks ago, and they decided they were caused by high IOP.
Except at the time, the rainbows only became apparent when I'd been wearing the new contact lens.
Haven't worn it since that day - and this is the first time I've had the rainbows without having had the lens in.
Hence the worry.
Op was in January - wouldn't have been a bit hard not to go out in the dark at all since then! - and even if I didn't go out, I live in the corner house of crossroads, so only have to look out of my window from twilight onwards to see oncoming headlamps and loadsa street lights along the rod up the side.
Haven't seen any more rainbow haloes since Saturday evening, I'm glad to say.
I've got an appointment at the hospital on Wednesday, so will see what new consultant (or whoever....) says then.
Previous person I saw seemed to think that being pushed out and mis-shapen from the high internal pressure was a bigger danger to the graft than imminent rejection. But opinions about that have seemed to vary....... also the role of the anti-rejection drops in pushing the pressure up.
Obe piece of good news is: with not putting in a steroid drop for a couple of days, I have my nose back!!! It has been blocked solid for the last several months - indeed, in Feb/March I needed a Channel TUnnel boring machine to get through the blockages in the morning ! - and it bled t the drop of a hat. It's now come unblocked and it is needs blowing, it's wet and watery not solidified..... hooray!
Rosemary

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Re: Rainbows Revisited - OH NO!!!!!!

Postby rosemary johnson » Wed 01 Oct 2008 11:06 pm

Today's update:
Got home from the hospital just after 8pm. had appointment at 2pm.
NOm I wasn't in the pub all that time!
But it is a long story I am cutting short.
I am now on the books of the Glaucoma Clinic and about to be a regular there.
Met a nice bloke there - called "Mr"; does that mean he's a surgeon? - who hears where I'm coming from on disastrousness of op. I hope he will now go and have a read through the notes of this person wished on him at short notice.
Eye pressure is still up - at 25 today (normal is up to 21. Or possibly 23 is OK)
graft apparently is "very clear" (ie not rejecting) and "very quiet" meaning not inflamed. Seein ghow it feels like the Sahara and looks (to me, looking in the mirror) like Mars, I'm surprised anyone thinks the latter!
New (cornea) consultant says that much and passes me on to Glaucoma people. Including to sort out eye drops.
Slightly alarmed (!!) at apparent suggestion that anyone might have been prescribing eye drops to someone with my recent history without knowing if they had any possinble psychoactive effects.
Hope I misunderstood that........
New consultant very brisk and efficient. I suppose in my "right" frame of mind I'd appreciate that. Right now, feel the briskness can fell brusque and would appreciate a tad more humanity. World of difference from A Certain Person, anyway!!!!!
Keep taking the drops and come back next time.......
Gf. guy reckons to stay on the deca. despite it being stronger, but go down to half dose, rather than try the weaker one that was giving bad trips again, or try any other new one. He doesn't think it looks like rejecting - but if I do get a rejection episode, I'm really up the proverbial shit creek without a paddle if "they" try to treat the rejection with hefty steroid doses and I can't take them without going crazy.
Also got prescription for "soothing" drops to treat the dry, sandy, red, itchiness - "It's called Celluvisc" he says, and is rather taken aback when I say I've got loads of that cos I was using it as a contact lens fluid when piggybacking in that eye pre-graft! But this one is a thinner less sticky version. At least it comes in different colour boxes, but this is going to be very confusing!!
COnfirmed at least that the main risk if of the high pressure damaging retina and optic nerve - person I saw last time was giving impression of being more worried it would push graft out of shape. Seems it isn't.
Optic nerve and retina look fine and strong, apparently - however much the bright light from him looking at it felt like it was buring my head open miffle-out.
He's not too worried about 25 in light (!) of this but says it needs monitoring.
Yet more hours in yet more waiting rooms ..... and Glaucoma clinic is evening session.
technical details should I suppose be reassuring but overall feel it's depressing. ANd still get feeling sometimes of being an eye condition walking round on legs while the person the eye is attached to is painted pink and surrounded with SOmeone Else's Problem field.
Oh well, have to see what happens next time. At least it's some time yet before I have to be sitting waiting in that dratted place again....... well, it isn't, but for those clinics.......
Back next week to see the eye-neurologists. Oh well.....
NO more chocolate in flat so about to go to bed with large brandy.
Rosemary


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