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Maybe having appointments at the VA Hospital is the only way I can get outta town. I have one this afternoon to see my regular doctor for the first time in over a year. Then, I have another tomorrow to get a post-op exam at the ophthalmology department for the eye surgeon to look at my right eye, and another two appointments early in August for both the arthritis clinic and another post-op eye exam.
The nurse associated with my first cataract operation told me that the second operation for the cataract in my left eye usually happens most people around six weeks after the first one. That means I'll start the pre-op phase again, then the operation, followed by all the post-op examinations, hopefully without incident. I get paid travel money for all these appointments, and that's the only way I can afford to travel.
In the last couple of days I've been thinking about hitch-hiking out to California again just to make myself familiar with a world I used to know again. The cataract procedure in my right eye has really changed the way I see the world around me. For one thing, nothing is the same color. I don't mean that I see a slightly different shade of color. I see a different color.
Not only different colors, but I see details I haven't seen in a long time or maybe never. Not even while I'm wearing glasses. It's like I wrote before the procedure was done, I didn't know what to expect from listening to what other people experienced when they received the procedure.
Both my mother and father had their cataracts removed, and they told me lots about the difference it made for them, but as usual, I couldn't know what they experienced until I received the procedure myself.
If I do hitch-hike to California after the left eye is done, much of what I'm familiar with between here and there will be very different, and that's the reason I'm thinking about doing it. I guess it depends on how successful the second operation is. In my left eye I have some fairly serious astigmatism that the surgeon said he could compensate for in some way. Either by removing it or using a designed lens that does the trick.
Maybe I'll go back to Abilene, Texas where I lost a pair of glasses during a very serious storm that I saw coming from over a hundred miles away. I couldn't see well enough to find them after the storm has passed over. They're probably right where I lost them. Why would they not be? Nobody I know of just walks out on to the great plains without a good reason.
If by some extremely lucky break I were to come into a windfall of a bunch of money that's all I would do with it. I'd never leave the country. I'd travel all over it as I've done many times, again and again, but instead of sleeping on the ground and under overpass bridges, I'd stay in motels and hotels and eat all I wanted in choice restaurants.
That last statement might have to be altered a little, I'd probably arrange to have kefir with me on a regular basis. It's not that hard to keep the kefir grains alive in order to have a fresh supply. I drank a smoothie this morning that I let sit in the blender all night long. I added some frozen mango chips and put another packet of Splenda in it to compensate for the additional sourness, and it tasted terrific.
The water kefir tastes good. Maybe even better than the milk kefir, but I feel like I have to be careful with it in a way I don't have to with the milk kefir. The water kefir grains convert the sugar water into alcohol, but then it changes to lactic acid. It's the lactic acid that stops the unfriendly bacteria in my GI tract from developing, but too much of it causes me problems. I think that if I cut down on the amount it may be okay.
In my research on kefir a lotta people claim they've lost considerable weight, but that hasn't been my experience. In fact, I've gained weight. As much as ten pounds. Granted, that's not very unusual for me. I guess it's my body type. Its not unusual for me to gain and lose twenty pounds over a couple of months. It's been that way since I became an adult.
Presently, I weigh about twenty pounds more than I did when I joined the Navy at eighteen years old. I weighed about two hundred and ten pounds back then, and had a thirty-two inch (81.28 cm) waist. The weight may not have changed too much (I've weighed forty pounds more), but the waist line will never be the same.
Yesterday, when I got some gas for my car to make the same trip two days in a row, I was a little shocked that I spent $30 on gas and it didn't even fill my tank up. That's very different from when I was eighteen too. The gas only cost seventeen cents a gallon back then. Shit happens. Things change. No blame.
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