Suddenly See more

For the past few days I keep getting the song Suddenly Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors stuck in my head. Not because of the content of the song, but because of the title-- on Tuesday evening, seemingly out of nowhere, my double vision started to improve, and I could suddenly see more. Funny how semantic networks work.

So ever since surgery I've been trying to find ways to cope with severe double vision, and I was really worried that it might never go away, because even as other symptoms improved, my vision did not. When you look at the wikipedia page about double vision, they give a picture as an example of what having double vision looks like:

This is extremely mild compared to what I have experienced over the past 4 months. Imagine instead seeing two equally vivid images, displaced from each other by several feet horizontally, about a foot vertically, and rotated from one another by about 30 degrees. To be fair, this did change slightly just as I was at the end of my hospital stay, such that from certain distances and angles, the images were only a foot or two apart horizontally, and the image on the right was sometimes a little ghost-y like in the picture above. But nothing else changed, and from some angles, things looked just as bad as they did initially. I coped mostly by blocking input from my left eye (with an eye patch or by putting tape over one lens of my glasses), but this has the effect of messing with depth perception, and making it hard to see what's happening on the left side. I got used to this but it was still annoying.

Then really all of a sudden on Tuesday evening, I looked down at my hand with both eyes and only saw one hand. And it was in 3D! So I looked up and found that other objects within a 3 foot radius or so were also no longer double. Over the next 48 hours, my range for seeing things not-double increased, and on Friday it was good enough that I went all day without blocking my left eye. I still see double from certain angles, but mostly the double vision is gone. I can't get over how fast it happened.

But, my left eye still doesn't seem to move as quickly and as smoothly as normal, and I'm having to adjust to having normal depth perception, so my vertigo has been much worse these past few days. Vertigo is uncomfortable, but I'll take it in exchange for seeing a vivid 3D world again. Here is a picture of me just taken by Jeff, looking at the camera with two eyes:

Bureaucracy is everywhere

One of the biggest challenges so far related to moving to Saskatchewan has been getting used to a new set of rules and new terminology related to the many bureaucratic tasks of daily life. The most annoying part is that across the board, it seems that American bureaucracies and Canadian bureaucracies cannot talk to each other.

This means that because I have never lived in Canada, despite a perfect credit history in the U.S., I cannot get a credit card. Jeff had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get a low-limit card, which he just got yesterday, about a month after applying. At first we thought this couldn't possibly be correct, but after speaking to multiple people and agencies, it seems that this is how things work. I am still unclear on this, but I may not be eligible to hold a Canadian credit card until I obtain permanent resident status, which may take a year or two. We are not sure what all this will mean for us if we apply for a mortgage loan, but we may be denied due to lack of credit history in Canada. This is not something we had thought about at all before moving here.

Similarly, we have run into roadblocks related to registering our car and getting driver's licenses (not that I am driving currently, but I need a local form of ID). Our car had to go through inspections to be imported into Canada, and another set of inspections to be registered in SK. This resulted in us having to put about $2500 of work into a car that is only worth about $3000, none of it related to critical safety issues or impending mechanical failure. We would have sold the car before we moved, had we known this would happen, and had we had the time to do it.

But, we finally got all that taken care of, and yesterday went to try to get driver's licenses and register the car (you have to have a SK license to register your vehicle here, as is true most places). Unfortunately, we failed-- due to a combination of a lack of understanding of terminology on our part, and the inability of Canadian and American systems to communicate, we were unable to produce adequate documentation that we had been driving for at least two years (despite the fact of having licenses issued more than two years ago, and having brought evidence of having been licensed for a full 16 years). We have since obtained copies of our driving records (thank goodness WA allows you to access this online), and should be able to take care of this on Saturday. However, in the mean time, our Washington vehicle registration expired, so we had to renew for a full year in order to have everything in place to register in SK tomorrow (again, thank goodness we were able to do this online). A lot of time and energy and money spent because someone somewhere has made rules that seem to me to defy common sense.

Otherwise, things are pretty good. We had a very nice Thanksgiving, and just finished the last of the pie last night. Here we are getting ready to eat:

And here are our friends Brandon and Krista, who visited from Lethbridge:

A good time was had by all :)

Food

Ever since surgery, food and eating have occupied a huge part of my attention and thoughts. Maybe it was because I couldn't swallow for a week, and wasn't allowed to eat. Maybe it was the steroids they had me on. Or possibly something changed in the part of my brain that regulates appetite. Perhaps it's a combination of all three. But lately I seem to want to eat all the time.

Unfortunately, eating all the time is not sustainable. I lost 8 lbs or so in the week that I wasn't allowed to eat (they were giving me my nutririon through a kind of IV line called a central line, and that just isn't as good as regular food). In the weeks following, I gained back all that weight and then some. In the hospital I was wearing only pajamas and sweatpants, and they were supposed to be taking my weight regularly but the scale in my bed wasn't working properly, so I didn't realize I was gaining weight. That is, until I got out of the hospital, and none of my pants fit me. I have since lost a couple of those pounds, and probably converted a few more back into muscle, so I can squeeze into my pants again. But normally I'm a very active person, and right now my physical limitations make it so that I'm pretty sedentary. So I have to eat fewer calories to maintain my weight, but I'm thinking about and wanting food all the time. It's not so fun, and I now have much, much more sympathy for people who are obese-- I get it now, whereas I never really understood before.

So, I've been carefully counting my calories, and maintaining my weight-- a few pounds heavier than I would like to be, but as long as I can still wear my clothes, it's okay for now. But this weekend I'm letting that all go out the window-- it's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and we're going all out. Friends are coming to visit us from Lethbridge, Alberta, and the only plans we have for their visit involve eating. We have already started a bit of the cooking. I plan to eat my weight in pie this weekend-- wish me luck :)

The new normal

We are settling into a routine here, and have begun to adjust to the many changes we have been through. Every weekday morning Jeff gets up around 7am and goes for either a walk or a jog. I wake up at 8:30, and it takes me until about 10am to get dressed and eat breakfast and get ready to go (I shower in the evenings; otherwise we wouldn't get to work until noon). Then we go to the University, and work until about 4pm, when we go to the gym. We get home around 5:30 or 6pm, and make dinner (mostly Jeff does this, though I'm beginning to be able to help more). We eat, then I shower while Jeff does housework, then we either run errands together, or work on unpacking, or I watch TV while Jeff works on writing lectures. Around 10pm we start getting ready for bed, and it's lights out by11pm. Then we sleep, and the routine starts again.

Hopefully sometime soon I will start to be able to do things faster, and will be able to help Jeff out more-- he is doing a lot right now, and it's wearing on him. One thing I am able to do reasonably well right now is my job, in it's reduced-capacity form. There is no better type of job to be in when recovering from a major medical issue than a job in academia. There is so much flexibility, it allows me to focus on tasks I can do right now, and save other things for later. In almost any other type of job, I would have to be out on leave right now because I wouldn't be able to guarantee that I could show up on time, or keep up with the pace. I have said in the past that academia is stressful, but right now it's anything but stressful for me-- this job is my lifeline, my connection to feeling normal, and a heck of a lot better than sitting at home watching TV all day, which is probably what I would be doing if I didn't have a job to go to. And so far things are going well job-wise, for both me and Jeff. We like our department, like our colleagues, and are starting to get into the swing of things.

Also, our stuff finally arrived with the movers just under two weeks ago. It finally is starting to feel like we live in this house, instead of feeling like we are camping here. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to help as much as I would like to with unpacking, putting one more huge task on Jeff's shoulders. As soon as I'm physically able to do so, I'm going to take Jeff on a vacation wherever he wants to go, and make sure he has no responsibilities at all. He deserves it.


And finally, my progress: My standing is getting a lot better-- I can now stand for brief periods without holding on to anything. My walking also gets better and better-- yesterday I walked 5 laps at the track with my walker in 42 minutes. That is a distance of 1km! My ability to walk at the track does not mean I can go that distance or go that fast in real-life situations-- on Sunday I went for a walk on one of the paved paths near our house, and it took me a full hour to walk 600m and I thought I might not make it back to the car I was so tired. But still, even a few weeks ago I couldn't have done that at all, so a huge improvement. My typing is also getting better. I typed this whole post, and it took about an hour and a half. Still have slow typing speed, and am typing with two fingers and have to look at the keyboard, but much improved. The one thing that still hasn't improved is my double vision. But I'm hopeful, given the slow, steady progress I have had in the 3+ months since surgery!

Life goes on

For the past 2 1/2 months, Jeff has been keeping a blog with updates about my progress post surgery. At this point, blog posts are no longer only about my progress, they are more about life in general. So, I decided to move the blog back here.

Hopefully soon I will be able to post some photos, but so far I really haven't taken many since we moved. We still have no word on when our belongings will arrive, and so our house is still very unsettled. Right now I'm sitting in an empty room with papers scattered on the floor and two suitcases in the corner. This room will eventually be our office where we will have our desks and computers. But for now, the room is empty and sound echoes off the walls, interfering with my speech recognition software.

My progress toward recovery continues, and on Sunday I walked two laps around the track with the  walker without taking a break. This means I can now walk a quarter of a mile. It only took me about 20 min., which is about five times longer than it would normally take me to walk the same distance. For  perspective, about two weeks before leaving the hospital it took me that long to walk 200 feet. This is definitely measurable progress.

Yesterday Jeff took me on a walk in my wheelchair along what is called the south storm channel pathway, and it reminded me of the Amazon park pathway in Eugene. I hope that next summer I will be able to jog and bike along the many pathways here!