Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Some 30 years ago I lived in Canada for a year. One weekend a group of us went to some fresh produce markets in Ottawa (I think) where cut flowers were also sold. We were gobsmacked to see some plants we Australians considered to be noxious weeds or fodder plants being sold as ornamental flowers! Flowers such as lupins and arum lillies. In Australia, lupins are grown as a fallow crop to put nitrogen back into the soil, and as fodder for livestock. Arum lillies (known as calla lillies in North America) are a declared weed pest in Western Australia — all parts of the plant are dangerous to livestock.

So every spring when I walk past the arum lillies on my walk around the neighbourhood, I’m reminded of Canada and the $5 a stem they were charging for these noxious weeds!! (remember, this was 30 years ago, so who knows what a single stem sells for there now)

We moved to our current house 5.5+ years ago, and prior to that we had a BIG move from a house we lived in for 16 years in Perth. At the time of the big move, I culled a lot of paperwork from my personal files. And did the same again, though on a smaller scale, when we moved here. I had some time so decided to tackle my personal file drawer.

The piles of paper below are what I removed from the drawer! The left pile will be shredded and given to friend for her compost, while the right pile goes into the recycling bin (it’s shiny paper mostly, and doesn’t do well in compost).

The drawer STILL looks full, even after removing all that paperwork! I guess I should do this sort of cull more often than every 5 or so years…

Warning! The photos in this post may be disturbing to some people. If you don’t like photos of post-operative wounds and healing, look away now.

With that warning, you might be wondering why I’m even posting about the eyelid surgery I had last week, and posting photos of the healing process. Well, it’s because SO many people have told me in the past week or so that they are either considering this surgery, know someone who’s considering it, or know someone who’s had it done. Far more than I expected… and several people working in my local shops wanted me to remove my sunglasses to see what the results were.

I wanted to document the process I went through for anyone considering this surgery — with photos to show you what my first week post-surgery was like. And to document the pros and cons as I’ve experienced them. Over the next few weeks I’ll add more photos to show you how my eyes look after all the bruising and swelling has gone down.

Remember, this is MY story — if you’ve had this operation or are intending to have this operation, your experience may be different.

What surgery I had and why

I had surgery to remove drooping eyelid tissue that was starting to obscure my vision. The surgery is called a blepharoplasty and involves removing excess tissue (skin, fat, muscle) from the eyelids. I had this surgery on the advice of my ophthalmologist after I asked him about my drooping right eyelid when I visited him earlier this year. He confirmed that ultimately the eyelid would obscure my vision and that although the left eyelid wasn’t as droopy, he’d do both at once so that I didn’t look lopsided.

Here’s a photo of my eyes the day before the operation (absolutely no make-up) — my right eye is on the left in the photo:

You can see how the eyelid has folded over and how my eyelashes are almost totally hidden by the fold. The cause is likely a combination of genetics, weight gain, and aging.

There’s no eyelid definition, either. This lack of eyelid definition is often the reason some women have this surgery, and why this surgery is classed as ‘cosmetic’ by the health insurance companies, and therefore attracts only a small rebate. In my case, the surgery was recommended by an ophthalmologist for vision reasons, but the health insurance companies still treat it as ‘cosmetic’ (don’t get me started on that…).

If you look closely at my right eye and compare it to the left, you can see that the eyelid is well on the way to blocking light (at least) from that eye. This photo was taken in the morning — by evening, my right eyelid droops even more, to the point of closing totally (and involuntarily) by about 8:30 or so every night (when watching TV).

For comparison, the photo below is of my eyes taken July 2004, some 11 years ago, when I was not only younger, but thinner, not as grey, and wearing a little eye make-up on the day:

Pre-op

Although the ophthalmologist told me he could do this surgery under local anaesthetic in his rooms, I opted for ‘twilight’ anaesthetic in the day-surgery unit at a private hospital. Why? Because I had a major eye operation when I was a child and even today I get traumatised if a doctor of any sort puts an instrument anywhere near my eyes. I wanted to feel nothing — and I wanted to know nothing!

When I was waiting in a bed to be taken to surgery, the anaesthetist came to insert the cannula and discussed the anaesthetic procedure with me. It didn’t sound like what I’d been told and I told him so, as well as told him I’d freak out if I was awake and saw an instrument near my eyes. He suggested for everyone’s sake that he put me under a general anaesthetic, even though the ophthalmologist would prefer me to be awake so he could tell me when to open and close my eyelids. I was very grateful to the anaesthetist, and eagerly agreed to a general!

I was told the procedure would take somewhere around 45 to 60 minutes (that’s for both eyes).

(Aside: Waiting is traumatic — I arrived at Admissions just before 9:30, went through another 4 waiting rooms/stages, etc. before being wheeled to surgery at noon. That was some 2.5 hours of being alone with my thoughts and trying to fight off thoughts about what was to happen to me and whether I should go through with it or not. Fortunately, I took my tablet device with me so I distracted myself by playing Scrabble against the computer. Oh, it was a cold day and despite the air conditioning in the hospital, it was bloody freezing in the light cotton gown I had on — my bare feet [yes, I had to remove my shoes] were like blocks of ice.)

Post-op

After being brought around in the recovery ward, I got dressed and took a couple of photos with my tablet of my immediate post-op eyes. The bruising and obvious stitches were a bit scary, but already I could see eyelid definition and my eyelashes!

The next series of photos were taken at approximately the same time each morning for the next seven days. Excuse the quality of these photos — I had to take them with the camera pointed upside down at me! Selfies with a camera aren’t so easy…

10 July 2015, approx 18 hours after surgery

11 July 2015

12 July 2015

13 July 2015

14 July 2015

15 July 2015 – the stitches come out today!

16 July 2015, after the stitches were removed

As you can see from these photos, the bruising and swelling gradually faded over the first week. I still have some residual bruising (16 July), but now that the stitches are out, my eyes are feeling much better. By the way, despite the horrific images above, the view from inside was fine and I felt very little pain — it looks far worse than it feels!

Pros and cons

The obvious positives are that my vision will be better in the long term as I won’t have to deal with drooping eyelids. And I can see my eyelashes and eyelids, so I should be able to wear eye make-up again, if I choose to (I haven’t worn eye make-up in years as there was no point as it couldn’t be seen, or it smudged all over the upper eyelids).

The list of cons looks long, but most of these are very temporary and will go with the passage of time:

• Bruising and swelling — Expect some bruising and swelling for at least a week. Ice packs help with both, and sleeping half sitting up helps a bit with the swelling.
• Wear sunglasses inside and out if you have to go out and about — Unfortunately, in this day and age, others may think you’ve been abused as versus had an operation or been in an accident of some sort. You WILL have some serious black eyes — wearing sunglasses is preferable to having a well-meaning person call the police to question you or your partner about abuse!
• Tightness — Even a week later, my eyelid area feels a little tight. This is normal and will fade over time. It felt even tighter when the stitches were in, but now that they’re out, the tight feeling above my eyes has gone. However, there’s still quite a bit of tightness on the inner and outer parts of the eyes.
• Tenderness — For the first few days, everything close to and around my eyes was quite tender (not especially sore — just tender), fading off over time. A week on and I’m still a bit tender in the outer and inner corners where the incision occurred, but not along the incision lines across the eyelids. Again, this will fade.
• Showering — I didn’t realise how much I splashed my face when taking a shower! Until I couldn’t do it. Now that the stitches are out, I’m very gently splashing my face with water (no soaps, cleansers, or gels yet) in the shower. Splashing my face is part of my routine for waking up and feeling refreshed, so not being able to do it each day made me feel like I hadn’t ‘properly’ woken up. It’s a little thing…
• Rubbing and scratching — Like the splashing, I didn’t realise how much I rubbed or scratched my eyes each day — until I couldn’t! This was probably the hardest thing to live with. There’s nothing worse than having an itch you can’t scratch — whether it’s because of tenderness, fear of infecting the area, or fear of pulling on stitches. It was agonising at times. However, now that the stitches have been removed and the area is healing well, I’m starting to rub and scratch a little. Ah, the relief 😉
• Blinking — I blinked a lot more the first few days. I think that was for two reasons — one, my eyes felt a little dry; and two, I wanted to check that the eyelid muscles were still working as they should.
• Follow instructions — I was given ointment to put onto the incisions for the first few days, and was told to use the ice packs the hospital gave me. I was religious about the ointment; not so much the ice packs, unless I noticed the swelling. I should have been more diligent with that. When I had the stitches out yesterday (a painless procedure, by the way), I asked about when I could start using my cosmetic eye cream again and was told about another two weeks. However, the person who removed my sutures said it was OK to stop the ointment and to use something like a drop of Bio-Oil in the interim.
• Cost — This isn’t a cheap operation. The quote I was given by the eye surgery people was AU$1800 for both eyes, of which I had to pay $600 after Medicare and Medibank Private rebates were taken into account. I haven’t yet received the anaesthetist’s bill, which no doubt will be several hundred dollars (I don’t know how much will be covered by government and private health insurance). I shouldn’t have any hospital charges as my Medibank Private top hospital private health insurance covers that, and I had already paid the annual $150 excess for an operation I had in April this year at the same hospital.

I’ll update this post with photos of my progress over the next few weeks. I won’t be taking photos every day now — perhaps once a week for a few weeks until it’s all settled down.

Two weeks after surgery

Two weeks after surgery I still have some residual swelling and bruising, but it’s going fast. I’ve now had my post-op appointment with the ophthalmologist and he’s pleased with how they look. He reckons I look a lot younger! (BONUS!!) I still have’t received a bill from the anaesthetist, so maybe that’s still to come, or perhaps it was covered as part of the hospital/surgical coverage. I guess I’ll find out within a month… My eyelids are still a little tight, but I’m sure that will settle with time too. I can now wear eye cream again, too. And I can splash my face and rub my eyes (gently!) if they are itchy.

The photo with my eyes closed shows the scars — they are quite fine and unless you knew to look you wouldn’t notice them.

Four weeks after surgery

One month on and all the obvious signs of surgery are gone — no more black eyes and minimal puffiness. The scars are fading. However, there’s still a bit of tenderness and dryness, especially around/in the right eye. And the scar above the right eye feels a little lumpier too. I’m sure this too will fade. I’ll post more pics in a couple more months’ time.

Three months after surgery

These will probably be the last photos I post, as everything has settled down into the ‘new normal’. As with the other photos, taken without makeup.

10 October 2015

10 October 2015

A week or so ago I bought some open and covered tubs from Bunnings, with the aim of sorting out the gardening stuff in the shed.

It wasn’t TOO bad — almost everything was in the one place, on an old bookshelf just inside the shed door. But the herbicides were mixed in with the insecticides, and the stuff I bought recently for my casual yard guy to use was all on the floor making it difficult for him to get on with his job.

 After a few hours, my garden area in the shed was all nicely sorted and all tubs were labelled. I even sorted out the sprinkler, hose, and irrigation fittings into tubs of like stuff, and then into ziplock bags of the same thing (e.g. separate labelled ziplocks for 360 degree MP Rotator heads and for 90 to 210 degree MP Rotator heads). This makes it easier for me (or anyone who works in my garden) to find what they need without scratching through a big tub of bits.

And I put my tub of PPE right near the door (personal insecticide, gardening footware, fly net, cap, gloves, safety glasses, etc.) ready for me to grab it and put it on when I next venture into the garden. (PPE = personal protective equipment)

Achievement unlocked!

Did you know that if you don’t use your grill tray and put it (or anything else) on the base of your electric oven, small amounts of condensation get under it and rust out the enamelled bottom of your oven?? Nope. Me neither.

But that’s what’s happened, as I discovered when I cleaned the oven last week then spoke to the manufacturers about the rough stuff on the base of the oven that I couldn’t remove.

It’s not rusted all the way through yet. I could wait until it got worse, but decided to bite the bullet and get a new oven now.

So, if you never use your grill tray, either store it on the lowest level of the oven, or in a cupboard. NEVER store anything on the bottom of the oven. Even if your oven doesn’t have a heating element in the base (mine doesn’t), the ‘metal on metal’ thing isn’t good in the long term.

Lesson learned and reinforced by various people in the appliance stores I visited.

(Aside: When we moved into this house, the previous owners didn’t leave the manuals for the oven, the hotplates, or the dishwasher. I’d downloaded those manuals a while back and printed them off, but only ‘cos I needed to know how the controls worked (back in the day, you used to turn on an oven by turning one knob… now you have to turn at least two!). But I either hadn’t read the entire thing or had totally forgotten about not putting anything on the bottom of the oven. My bad. But in my defence, this was my first electric oven in DECADES — I’ve only used gas in the past 25+ years.

I’ve had a chap (Simon) come out and advise me on some treatments for our lawn, which is a bit patchy and never really seems green. He was here earlier this week applying the chicken poo pellets (yes, there’s a distinct odour….), and the lawn feeding solutions (Power Feed and SeaSol). He advised me to NOT get the lawn mowed for a couple of months, and reckoned that after another application of the Power Feed and SeaSol in 2 weeks, and perhaps one more application, the lawn should be looking much healthier.

He also suggested I take a photo of the lawn ‘before’, so I did. However, I forgot to take the photo before he came, so this photo is of the back lawn about 3 days after the application of the goodies, and so there’s a slight brown tinge on the lawn from the chook pellets.

Let’s see how it looks in a few weeks…

Update 14 June 2015

This is how the lawn looks 3 weeks after the initial application of the goodies. Some of the dead patches are starting to show signs of life and the weeds are loving the fertiliser… (click the photo to view it larger)

Late October 2015

Wow! Look at it now. He said it would take several months, but promised that it WOULD come back. And come back it has!

Early December 2015

A week ago, Simon partially top dressed the back lawn with an organic soil improver/mulch. I took these photos one week later — the difference is dramatic! Even though you can still see the dark brown of the organic material, the new growth is a much richer, darker green than previously. I’m very pleased, especially as we’re coming into summer when the heat and relentless sun takes its toll on gardens. When I compare these photos to those I took back in May when we started the treatments, it’s hard to believe it’s the same lawn. In addition to the healthy colour, the lawn is now spongy, not crackling, underfoot and there are very few spots for the weeds to take hold.

My Twitter feed has Tweets from our State’s roads people, and I have it filtered to get just the Tweets relating to the south-west of Western Australia. Here are a couple that came through a week or two ago – read up from the bottom:

What I want to know is how did the kangaroo get ‘cleared’ from the road? Did it just hop away? Did someone get out of their vehicle and chase it into the bush or farmland surrounding the road? Was some sort of ‘kangaroo clearing’ equipment brought in to clear the kangaroo? Curious minds want to know 😉

(I suspect it just hopped away.)

As an aside, I think Mandjoogoordap Drive — at 14 letters — must be the longest single road name in Western Australia!

My parents are currently in New Orleans. Here’s an excerpt from an email Mum sent me yesterday:

“We are really enjoying being in the French Quarter as it is very vibrant. Today is the end of the jazz festival so it may quieten down a bit tomorrow. Still trying out different food and venues but it’s fun. Not much coffee to my liking and it’s always in takeaway  cups!! [Note: Mum rarely drinks coffee…]

Tried McDonalds this morning for breakfast and WiFi but it was gross [the breakfast!].

The [hotel] here has WiFi but don’t promote it, but am now connected.”

What I love about this email is that she sent it from her tablet, after finding and connecting to free WiFi. BTW, Mum isn’t a geek by any stretch of the imagination. And she’s 84 this year! 😉

Tablets have changed how older people communicate with the world, and my Mum is living proof of that. As are these people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htLswR9BUD4

There’s quite a movement at the moment for colouring books for adults and the meditative benefits of colouring in. I’m sure it springs from the Zentangle and mandela movements.

Anyhow, I found some line drawings on the internet (as you do…) and decided to spend a gorgeous spring day off work sitting outside just colouring in.

I used Copic markers — they have great colour and coverage, but they do bleed a bit. I was really pleased with both pieces I did, especially the owl 😉

For those who’ve been following along, I went on my first-ever cruise last month — 7 nights in the Caribbean aboard the Oceania Riviera. TripAdvisor doesn’t seem to take reviews for cruise ships, and I don’t want to join cruisecritic.com, so I’ll post my review here.

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This was my first-time cruise. My friend and I shared a Penthouse stateroom, which was a great size (420 sq ft) for two people. They split the Queen bed into two singles.

Positives:

• Fantastic food in all restaurants, every time. My favourite specialty restaurants were Jacques and Toscana
• Impeccable service in the stateroom and restaurants; not as good around the pool
• Gorgeous spacious Penthouse stateroom (Deck 10, midship location)
• Luxurious bed linen and beds — slept the best I’ve slept in a long time
• No activities for children or teens, so there weren’t many of either on board. Those that were on board were well-behaved.
• Small number of people on board (1250 max), so easy to get to and from things and no long lines for anything
• Embarkation and disembarkation processes were smooth and practiced, as was tendering people to shore in Cozumel, Trujillo, and Belize City
• HEAPS of storage in the Penthouse stateroom — we were still finding storage hidey-holes 2 days into the cruise
• Veranda is great for just observing, relaxing, etc. Plenty of room.
• Afternoon canapes were a delight, even if we didn’t always get exactly what we’d requested. In fact, we usually got more.
• Our butler, Jemeesh, was a delight and nothing was too hard for him.
• Culinary Center was great.

Negatives:

• Internet access was spotty, but usually worked enough for checking emails. Forget about uploading photos!
• Internet access was expensive at US$30 per day
• Internet access was for ONE device in a room at ONE time. There were two of us, and we had to coordinate who was on and when — we could use multiple devices (phones, tablets, laptops), but only ONE could be logged in at any time. For $30/day, I thought that was an unnecessary restriction.
• A small percentage of passengers on board were quite rude, pushing into line/elevators etc. in front of others. However, most people seemed lovely.
• Artists Loft — nothing advertised prior to the cruise about who the artist was or what he would teach/demonstrate. It was all very confusing, even after I spoke to his wife in the artists loft one day. I was interested in this, but never attended as I got the impression he was only demonstrating oil and palette knife techniques, neither of which interested me.
• Pool is VERY small. You can’t swim in it, only immerse your body. The pool on the Spa Terrace is only a HOT jacuzzi-style therapeutic pool, also not for swimming, and too hot to stay in on a Caribbean cruise. Not enough space/lounges on the Spa Terrace for all those wanting access.