Exhausting Day

Walt and i settled in to watch Jeopardy after the show I was reviewing at around 11 p.m.  I fell asleep before the show ended and really didn't wake up until 7.  A good night sleep, for sure.

The morning started with a trip to Kaiser.  My long-awaited appointment with the ophthalmologist was finally here.  I wanted two months for it.  No emergency, but I figured it was finally time to talk with her about removing  the cataract in my "bad" eye.  We have been discussing this for several years now.  My right eye is the eye I am conscious of never having used for vision.  When I was a kid I was diagnosed with lazy eye blindness but I was a little too old to do much about it.  I have mentioned here before that I never mentioned it to my parents because I just assumed that everybody had one good eye and one bad eye.

Several years ago I had the cataract in the other eye removed, a nearly effortless surgery which was actually kind of fun.  But the doctor then warned that removing the other cataract might be more problematic because there was a congenital defect in the eye that might make it a 2-3 surgery process.  Since I have never used the eye for vision, I decided to just let it go for awhile, which I have been doing for the past several years.  I have an annual eye exam and we discuss it every time, but the doctor hasn't pressured me to have it done.

However, in the past year the cataract has become much worse to the point where I am aware of this white cloud over the eye and it's been bothering me so I decided it was time to get it done.  The wait was forever.  I arrived early, so it was 15 minutes before I was seen by the nurse who did the initial exam and dilated my pupils.  

Then another 15-20 minutes in the exam room waiting for the doctor, whom I love.  She's obviously very popular, since I took her ONLY appointment slot when I called two months ago! We agreed that it's time to remove it and she again warned that it might take several surgeries to get it done, but, as I said, it's time.  I won't have it done until we return from Europe in November, since they don't want you to travel very far for a month after the surgery.  But I've made the first step and hopefully it will all get done, maybe by my next birthday!  It will be weird to have vision in that eye, perhaps for the first time ever.

Kaiser Sacramento is very close to the Red Lobster restaurant, which has been tantalizing me for weeks with ads for their "Crabfest."  Walt and I have talked about going, so I did feel a bit guilty about going without him, but we tend to do a lot of talking about this stuff and never actually doing it, so I decided to splurge.

I order the "crab lovers' dream" which was a plate of king crab legs, combined with some other crab I had not heard of before, but which is bigger and sweeter than snow crab and finally crab fetuccini.  I knew that was way more than I could eat, so I decided to get it and take the fetuccini home for Walt's dinner, thus easing my guilt.  (I almost regretted decision, since the fetuccini was so delicious!)

My plan was to stop by Atria and bring my mother her meds on the way home, but it was so late when I left the restaurant (3:30) and I was so sated with crab that all I wanted to do we sleep, so I did.  Shortly after I woke up, I turned on Rachel Maddow and, to my surprise, discovered that it was, instead, a one hour special called Jon Stewart has Left the Building, which was a great review of the phenomenon that was The Daily Show.  I wonder how many people did not see the show because it wasn't even listed by that name.

I skipped dinner because I was still full of crab and Walt loved the fetuccini, then we went off to Woodland to see an excellent production of Mary Poppins, which I will be reviewing for both The Davis Enterprise and Sacramento News and Review.  It was really a special way to end the day.