Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The eye surgeries happened over the space of 2 years and we did a little more traveling in between. Then the economy happened. We went fro our dream home to a 2 bedroom rented townhouse. We coped with that well enough, I thought. I started noticing my husband got confused about where we were. Like what street we were on. Since I do all the driving now, he said it was because he didn't pay attention since he doesn't drive. Then I noticed the memory problems, and a few other things and I took him to see a neurologist. He had a brain scan and it was clear and the diagnosis was mild dementia . Down sizing was a lot harder on my husband than on me. I found that getting rid of a lot of "stuff" was actually liberating. Then last summer, he had a colonoscopy and they found a tumor. His doc sent him to get a CT scan to check it out further before surgery and the scan detected an abdominal aorta aneurysm. In June he had a colon resection. The cancer was contained. In August he had a stent graft on his aneurysm. Physically, he is doing great. Mentally not so much.

Which is why I decided to start this blog. I am amazed at how much he has changed in the last year. He still has pretty good long term memory, but short term is really bad. I try to have a sense of humor about how our life is changing, it's one of my coping things.

One day I went to the door to let the dog out and I thought I saw this huge black bug. I started to wave it off with my hand, but it wouldn't go away. If you had seen me it was a sight, there I was trying to bat away something that wasn't there. Then I realized this was not a bug but a black spot on my eye, that obscured my vision. I was frightened and thought to myself the last thing we need is 2 blind people in the house and I went to see the eye doctor. The doc said it was a floater, a large one and explained what was happening. Then he told me "it's age related". That was the first time I'd heard that about myself, but not the last. That's how I named this blog.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Welcome to my world! In 2004 my husband and I bought our dream home. Life was good. For our first real vacation in 14 years we sailed for England on the QM2. Five days over, 12 days in London with some day trips and five days back to NYC. What a difference 22 days can make. My husband was blind and it took 18 surgeries to give him back sight in one eye. He finally lost one eye, but was grateful to have be able to see well enough to read and drive, and I was too. But the excitement wasn't over yet.