So that was anticlimactic

I actually went to bed on time, woke up from the alarm and did my complete morning routine.

I knitted a bit while my husband told me stories from the Rolling Stones book he is reading at the moment and then it was already time to get ready. I did the dishes and took a shower and my husband kindly served me lunch an hour earlier than usual. Mind you, that was only what he cooked for me, he then went on to make a completely different lunch for the rest of the family.

The ball of yarn I had been waiting for arrived just before I had to leave.

For once everything went well with the trains and in the end I was at the eye clinic forty minutes early.

That thing is huge. There are three whole buildings on a big lot. There were more than a dozen patients sitting in the waiting area and several assistants walking here and there. First I had to fill out the usual forms and then I got a bunch of tests including one where the assistant said, „You’ll get this test now, it is necessary for cataract surgery but insurance doesn’t pay for it, it costs 200 euros, please sign here.“ I demanded to at least get my glasses back. I can’t see without them, and so no signing.

There were bright lights shining in my eyes and I was led from one machine to the next. Then I got to get back to filling ou t forms, and a different assistant gave me dilating eye drops.

Then I went to see a doctor. Not the one I had the appointment with, though. She shone more very bright lights into my eyes and asked me a few questions. I have to say I’m often somewhat unsure about what to answer. Are these lines crooked or straight? I don’t know, they are kind of bent a little? I think? Maybe a little crooked? Could we try this again without the fluorescent lighting, please? With those lamps overhead everything kind of flickers?

What do you mean, what bugs me about my eyes? That I can’t see properly? There is a part in my right eye, right there in the middle where everything is a bit blurry? I can’t read signposts properly and reading sheet music is more strenuous, and also I constantly need to change between my „computer“ and my „regular“ glasses and I can’t see properly with any of them.

So, she was really nice, I was just in a slight panic. With all that hullabaloo regarding my eyes I’m starting to get a bit skittish about eye tests. There are extra wiggly lines in the middle of the letters they show you. I mean, there aren’t really, I just see them and so I can’t really tell you what letter that is because it looks like there are criss-crossing, vibrating gray-ish line where there shouldn’t be any.

Interestingly, that is never a problem when I’m reading in real life. Reading just words, both on screens and on paper is not a problem at all. I can still understand everything even when things are a little blurry. Now sheet music is harder. Because sometimes small, squiggly lines in sheet music are actually meaningful. And you need to skip around the page much more. And often I have to read the sheet music from a side angle while being too far away from the page.

Anyways, she was nice and patient and wrote everything down, then sent me to get yet another test because of that membrane on my retina, then back to her and there she told me I’d see the professor next but that the membrane thing was not bad enough yet to warrant surgery and that while they could, of course, give me cataract surgery it was actually a little too early for that.

And also that at my age the risk of retina detachment after surgery was higher than if I had it done later in life.

The professor was very quiet, very calm and also very nice and said the same. None of them thought I needed surgery yet.

Duh.

So. I was told to come back in the spring for a check-up and then I went back home. Relieved.

I took the train back home, bought all the sweets and cookies, went back home, ate the cookies, taught three students, ate the stuffed zucchini my husband made (I forgot to take a photo) and all the sweets, sat around dreading doing the dishes for an hour, decided I was definitely too tired and exhausted for it, started writing this post, did Duolingo, re-arranged the dishes so that breakfast could happen this morning, watched an episode of C-drama while knitting and went to bed.

Today will be cleaning and teaching and bodyweight training.