One Month After Surgery

Yesterday marked a month since my most recent surgery. It is somewhat ironic that over the past few days my vision hasn’t been great, with today being the worst of the last few. I was told by my cornea doc at my post op check up two weeks ago that things looked good. When I told him of my continuing sight issues, he told me he could run a test. The only problem with this would be he wouldn’t know how to correct any issues that the test might show. I just keep telling myself to deal with it and move on.

For the most part, I’ve remained focused on moving on. I double and triple check purchase orders before hitting the send button. I don’t want to send four Belvedere 8600 shampoo bowls to a customer that ordered a shear bracelet… When my sight is better, I try to get more done. There are days when I don’t want to go to bed since I’m not sure what my sight will be like the next day.

Of course, it doesn’t take much to knock me off track. If someone makes a comment or I run into someone or something, my focus is gone. Sometimes I simply miss a field in a form that cost time or money, like I did last week when I added some inventory to ForYourSalon.com and missed the weight field for a Jeffco 316t Ionic Dryer. When there is no weight, the item ships for free. That cost us between $25 and $30 on the one we sold over the weekend.

I’m trying to work around the issue. Currently, we ship more than half of the items we sell at ForYourSalon.com and our storefront on Amazon.com. I can’t pull or ship the orders that we ship (I can’t read the labels,) that is something that Eliz has to do. I do handle all the drop ship orders, which are usually shampoo bowls, shampoo bowl parts, hooded dryers, barber chairs, etc. We are trying to find additional beauty items to drop ship. We are also doing more in affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is where we promote a product that is sold by someone else. If it sells, we get a commission. It is like when I mention the EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scale in White that helped me to lose 80 pounds and keep it off. If you were to click that link and purchase it (or anything else from amazon.com) by using that link, we make a commission. We currently have several sites in various stages of development: a web hosting review site, a car insurance information site with quotes, a payday loan site, and several beauty related sites. The nice thing about affiliate marketing is that once a site is setup, the only thing left to do is market it. There are no customer inquiries, no ordering inventory, etc., unlike an ecommerce site. One of the best ways to market these days is from articles. So I’ll be writing, which is something I can do with or without sight.

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Sometimes Things Look Different to Me

Every morning I weigh myself twice, once before I get in the shower and once after I dry off after the shower. Getting on the scale is also an eye test of sorts. Our scale’s readout is an LCD with two inch tall numbers. The weight only displays for five to ten seconds after it is calculated, so I have to be fast when trying to read it. Today, I was able to read it the first time before the shower. I was 154.8 pounds. Some days it takes me two or three times if my eye is dry or has a bunch of stuff in it. After the shower, and after a moisturizing eye drop, it took me two times to read it. I was 154.6, by the way. (It’s funny how most days I weigh less after the shower…) My goal is to stay around 155, which I’ve been since last summer. As previously mentioned, that is about 80 pounds less than I weighed when I changed my eating habits ever so slightly.

I get frustrated when I have to get on the scale multiple times. What is worse is when I think I see one number, then the next day the number is two pounds higher and I wonder if I actually read the number correctly the day before. Similar things happen when I read things on my computer screen. The word email looks an awful lot like small to me when both are all lower case. Lower case t’s and f’s, v’s and y’s, i’s and l’s are the worst. Sometimes it’s letter combinations that throw me, like rn looking like an m or ri looking like an n.

Today, when I was reading some tweets, I read down to one I posted last night. I tweeted: Tired of Safari quitting on me multiple times per day. Well, 10 minutes ago when I read it, it said this: Tired of Satan quitting on me multiple times per day. Hmm… Don’t give up on me Lu! (Of course I’m kidding, I don’t believe in satan like I don’t believe in god…) I did have to zoom in on the the word to make sure I typed Safari. Once I verified that I did, I smiled at what It looked like I had typed.

The same sort of things happen when watching TV or simply looking at objects. More times than not it is frustrating to me. (Last week, I left one Bang-Bang Shrimp on my plate at Bonefish Grill that Eliz had to tell me was there.) Today though, I smiled at what I thought I saw.

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Sweet Sixteen Tomorrow

Let’s hope it is sweet, or at least it doesn’t make things worse. Tomorrow at 12.30 I’m having what is called YAG laser capsulotomy, a minor surgical procedure (my sixteenth) to get rid of some clouding that has developed since the cataract extraction last April. I’ve been told that it is very quick procedure. In fact, the women from the office who phoned me today with the time of the surgery told me there were no restrictions (as far as eating or meds go,) and, get this, I could drive myself to and from the procedure. Uh, if I tried to drive myself to the procedure, I’d never get there. If I tried to drive after the procedure, Action News and NBC10 News have a 50-50 shot at being the news since the surgery center is about a block away from them.

I won’t get into what I hope I can do after the surgery, because even the doctors I’ve talked with about it tell me that I will probably only pick up a very slight increase in vision. Risks associated with this surgery are also pretty small, with retina detachment the primary complication. While I am hopeful of getting back to the sight I had for the 10 day period following my cataract extraction, and staying there, this surgery will not get me there. My sight has been so poor as of late that any positive outcome will be greatly appreciated. The dream of significantly better sight will have to wait for modern medicine.

So, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow. At 8.30, we’re touring the high school at Friends Central where Jane would move on to next year (she’s currently in eighth grade there now.) After that, we’re heading down Lancaster Avenue to make a delivery. Then on to the Main Line Surgery Center for the surgery. (I’m hoping we can fit a Starbucks stop either before or after the delivery — though maybe I should wait until after the surgery so the caffeine from the Apple Chai Infusion doesn’t make me too jittery… After the surgery, a delivery or two over in Ridley, and, if it’s in, a trip to Newark to pick up our Clairol order. Wow, I’m tired already.

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