1. It's routine to see the surgeon the day after cataract surgery to make sure the procedure was successful. I had a 9:30 appointment with Dr. Dance this morning and couldn't drive myself to Coeur d'Alene. Christy volunteered to take me.
We woke up this morning to a mild blizzard. The wind blew hard. The snow was feathery, but the wind was moving the snow into drifts. We both checked reports at the Facebook page dedicated to travel conditions on the Fourth of July Pass. Independent of each other, we both concluded that if we left plenty early and if Christy could take it easy on the freeway, we'd be all right.
So, we left Kellogg at 8:15.
The roads had snow on them, but we could also see the asphalt and traction was decent. One car had spun off the road on the east side of the pass, but, as far as we could tell, no one was hurt and the car was stuck in the snow on the side of the road. As we summited the Fourth of July Pass, the weather on the west side seemed slightly warmer and the roads improved. Christy took nothing for granted, drove with care, and we arrived at the North Idaho Eye Institute without incident.
2. Once called at the Eye Institute, one of Dr. Dance's assistants gave me a routine eye examination and then I went to a second room where Dr. Dance had me sit in front of a contraption with bright lights and he peered deep into my eyes and rattled off what he observed to a record keeping assistant at a computer. Dr. Dance is amiable and laconic: "Everything looks great. Unless you have pain, redness, or impaired vision, we are done."
That was it.
Surgery number two was, like number one, a success.
With the shield I'd been wearing gone and with my eye no longer dilated, I left the North Eye Institute and a world with more vivid color and a purer light was coming into focus and this continued throughout the day, not only on our safe ride home, but as I went about things for the rest of the day.
Is there a downside to this renewed vision and sight?
Kind of.
I see more clearly than ever that as I've worked to keep the house clean, I've missed a lot. I've got some more cleaning to do.
3. The surgery and the travel fatigued me and I spent much of the afternoon in and out of sleep. I roused myself late in the afternoon and, following a recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook, I made a mushroom and barley soup. The recipe is not a creamy soup, but I added milk and pureed some of it to make it more creamy and it came out not only tasting very good, but providing me with warming comfort.
With both eyes corrected, with no cataracts clouding my vision, the television is a technicolor wonder and I enjoyed the gold of Marquette and blue of Villanova battle each other in a thrilling basketball game in Philadelphia, won by Villanova, 67-61. Villanova snapped a three game losing streak, thanks in large part to Jermaine Samuels relieving Phil Booth and Eric Paschall of the team's scoring duties and pouring in 29 very unexpected points -- he had been scoreless in Villanova's last three games. On the Marquette side, the Golden Eagles fought and fought their way from behind and took the lead in the second half. But, Markus Howard, their best player, was called for his third offensive foul, his fourth overall, with 9:28 to go and, during his time on the bench, Villanova eventually fought back into the lead, held off Marquette's valiant efforts to retake the lead, and won a thrilling, even epic, game between the Big East Conference's two best teams.
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