Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 6:13PM I tried this same vlog three times, each time it ended up about 5 minutes and 40 seconds. So finally, I got it under 5:30 and then said “SCREW THIS” and kept talking to 6:10. You’re welcome.
I don’t call this “Hush, Amanda” for nothin’.
Sunday, April 25, 2010 at 9:58PM Can I do a summary post for Monday? WHY YES I CAN BECAUSE THIS IS MY BLOG AND I’M PAYING THE BILL! Well, kinda.
Let’s see, where do I start? (ANYWHERE I WANT TO *muahahaha*)
—1—
Friday was my check-up for Lasik. No, this won’t be a Lasik post, so stop considering leaving (thank you). My vision is still a little wonky, especially at night (halos) (don’t know what that is, try Mr. Wiki) (Do not confuse ‘Mr. Wiki’ with ‘Mr. Winky’).
The most awesome part of that follow-up is that I’ve been relinquished of the horrid eye drop schedule and now I only need the Restatsis and the rewetting drops. The “bad” news is that my eyes are very dry, so I’ll need to put those drops in pretty much ever half hour (it’s “as needed” and I “need” them every 10 minutes…so…).
I’ll do a vlog about it some time this week since I can finally wear eye makeup and there’s pretty much zero chance of me ever doing a vlog without at least a little mascara. Go ahead and call me vain.
—2—
I got my Nikon back (*happy tears*), so you can all rest assured that the parade of crappy iphone picks can now stop. Except for twitpics, so… don’t set those standards too high.
Since I never told you that my Nikon was broke, the Nikon broke. Well, “broke”. The flash stopped working, so I shipped it to NY for repair, which was under warranty (yay). And they cleaned it (kudos to Nikon).
—3—
Bret Michaels is in the ICU. That’s not random if you understand my love for trashy shows and VH1 (did I just repeat myself?). Hope he gets better soon and then needs a sexy nurse (Rock of Love: Live-in Nurse)
—4—
Speaking of shows that I should probably be ashamed of, Army Wives is back on! Actually, you shouldn’t be embarrassed of watching it, and I’m not. Maybe I’m just embarrassed that I love it so much even when the storyline gets a little predictable.
I’m watching it now, since I finished my B-Metro post and the boys have semi-calmed down. (The post isn’t up yet, just so you know)
—5—
Speaking of, THANK GOD THEY CALMED DOWN. Well, by “they”, I mostly mean Conner because he hasn’t stopped talking except to eat and sleep since Friday. Not quite sure what’s going on, but save me?
—6—
I went to CVS earlier. I checked the weather before I left and it said we were under a “strong wind advisory”, but that didn’t factor into my outfit choice for the errand. I walk into the store, get my items, and walk out just as a strong gust meets me.
I was wearing a skirt.
A thin, cotton, tiered (thus “flowy”) skirt.
I caught the majority of my skirt with my elbow when it met my belly button.
Yay for clean panties!
Ok. Picture time… this skirt —>
So in the future:
And yes, those are my boobs are my default pic for twitter. Which is more or less why you should follow me on twitter. After about a week I threw a pink breast cancer awareness twibbon on it to make it look less like a social media ploy - it’s actually a social media ploy.
OH! And btw, there’s some sort of boobie earthquake going on on Twitter (hash tag #boobquake), but I have no idea what it’s really about. Except that it’s about boobies, I got that part.
Annnd 3 seconds later, I’ve learned from The Bloggess that BoobQuake is an … acknowledgement? Of slutty outfits that encourage cleavage? Something like that. Although I have gained a little more than a full cup size over the last 6 months, I’m going to guess that I can’t truly celebrate this occasion with a full B?
—7—
Even though this isn’t a 7 Quick Takes, I feel bad without a #7. This week I’m going to try to schedule posts because I’m sick of saying “zomg! i want to blog that!” and then not doing it and then something else comes up and I blog that but never blog about the other thing… so… this is a really long sentence and I’m gong to end it by saying that I’m going to attempt to schedules posts (title: this, date: that” and maybe even categorize them but that might be me getting ahead of myself) AND BREATH!
7 Quick Takes, Boobquake, Bret Michaels, LASIK, VH1, Vlog, hush amanda, the mom job, themomjob, twitter Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 9:54AM I’m going to try and answer a few questions I’ve received here, on FB, in real life, etc about the Lasik procedure. For those of you who are able to stomach “eye stuff”, I’d suggest checking out the video of my surgery below. it’s really not “gross”.
How “blind” was I?
Hahahahhaa. BLIND. I started wearing glasses around 3rd or 4th grade because the board became a little blurry in class. At first, the eye doctor told my mom that I’d likely wear glasses as a form of “correction” for a few months to a year.
HE WAS WRONG.
My eyes progressively became worse, eventually leading to a pretty bad astigmatism in my left eye (and only a slight one in my right that didn’t develop until after my first pregnancy). Apparently, it’s rare to have an astigmatism in one eye as bad as mine was - you either have that same intensity of an astigmatism in both, a trauma in the eye, or you have only a slight astigmatism in one or both eyes.
I had no trauma, well - does all of high school count?
My perscription: Left eye — (-)3.25 (cyl/axis 2.25 <- I think this is the astigmatism “number”)
Right Eye — (-)4.50
I qualified for both standard Lasik and Custom View (a more expensive version of Lasik that also corrects the part of the eye that has “indentions” like a golf ball, and causes halos around lights and glare. They evaluate this number during your pre-op and if the number is above 5, you are encouraged to do the CustomView procedure. My number was low, less than 3, so I chose to do the standard Lasik)
Prepping for Lasik
As I stated in the vlog, you have to wear your glasses (out of contacts completely) for a week, or more if you can. This is for many reasons, one being that your contacts change the shape/thickness of your cornea and they measure the thickness of this area to qualify you for surgery. Too thin? No surgery.
Two days before your surgery date, you begin a drop regiment. My drops:
Day Of Surgery
You don’t drive (duh) and take your Valium (*angels singing*) 30 minutes prior to your arrival time. You come in, set-up your next day follow-up appointment (so you are able to leave directly after your sugery w/o making appointments), and the doctor takes you to an office to go over MORE instructions.
Basically, it’s all common sense - no makeup for a week, advil/tylenol for pain or discomfort, after the surgery, go home to rest and take another Valium, etc.
Then, I was given two advil. My eye area was prepped with betadine and my hair was pulled back into a sugerical cap. Obviously, they stole my glasses (later, suckas!).
The ACTUAL Surgery
I was brought into a dark room with a long bed/table and told to lay down. I was given a snuggly teddy bear (no lie) and a blanket because I was just about to freeze my nipples off. He explained (again) that I was to stay perfectly still and stare directly into the red light I’d see once under the machine.
He then rotated the bed to position me under the laser. I was given numbing drops - as in… he POURED a whole bottle of them into my eyes (they stuff gauze under your surgical cap on both sides to catch all the excess fluid). I was SUFFICIENTLY numb (“I’ve become… comfortably numb...”).
Here’s the fun part….
He then taped back my eyelashes/lids, during which time, I was thinking “I JUST grew those back! Be! CAREFUL!”, but only on one side. The surgeon placed a metal … brace (?) very similar to the clear plastic ring that holds open your mouth when you get impressions made at the dentist - this held open my eyes SUPER WIDE and prevented me from doing… well.. anything with that eye.
The other eye was cover with a patch. Arg.
The uncomfortable description part - he took something to suction my eye upwards, which felt way more than weird. More drops were placed and then a white cylinder (about 2 inches long, it appeared) was placed directly on my eye and it made a “buzzzzz” noise - this cut the flap in the top part of my eye.
Let me know when you are done half-vomiting.
Grayness - and white - I could see nothing. Actual blindness for the next 5-10 seconds. Must say, that was scary.
He did something with a brush and some more drops, I think, and then pushed back the flap with a metal stick (yay for my medical terms, seriously). The machine came closer and I stared into a tunnel with a red light at the end. Then clicking started and I couldn’t feel the laser, but I could smell a slight tinge of burning flesh.
Yummy.
This lasted about 20 seconds, during which time the surgical tech counts down.
Once the laser is done, the machine moves away and the metal stick flips the flap back onto your eye, which gives you the ability TO. SEE.
Yup. I was totally freaked out by that thing touching my eye. He used a brush to smooth out the flap and put some more drops in (enough. with. the. drops. already).
Repeat time! Next eye!
A minute later, I was done and taken to an exam room. The doctor checked my eyes with a special light and sent me home.
After Surgery
Was it like the movies and shows you’ve seen where people break down in tears, thanking their doctor for this amazing gift? Absolutely not. I left very blurry, like I was living in a fish tank full of murky water.
Outside, the sun was intense and I held me eyes closed with Mike guiding me to the car. It was difficult to close my eyes for a long period of time as it burned to do so.
Within 10 minutes, I could read billboards and street signs. It was easier to see far away than close-up (and I had nearsightedness - the inability to see FAR AWAY before surgery, so that part felt odd).
I came home, took my Valium *angels sing again* and tried to nap. It just stung too dang much to truly nap though, and I had to put drops in every 15 minutes if I was awake. 
Drop Schedule Post Surgery:
= annoying
1st day:
Now think about this: You can’t put all those drops in your eyes at once, or it’s just one clustercrap of nonsense and it’ll all wash out. You have to space them apart 10 minutes or so. So, let’s say it’s 1:00 and you put in the first drop. It’s 1:10 by the time you put in the next, 1:20 for the next, 1:30 for the next and then for every 15 minutes for the next hour, you have to do the artificial tears.
IN SHORT, YOU ARE PUTTING CRAP IN YOUR EYES ALL THE DAMN TIME.
Just be glad I uploaded this.That night, I put on my special night guards (that you wear for a week) and went to sleep. Yuummmm, Valium sleep.
The Next Day
I could see! It was still a little blurry and my eyes were pretty sore (from the clamps, actually), but dudes - I could FREAKING SEE.
My follow-up at 9:00 went well and was quite fast. The drops schedule got a little better as well, and it is what I’m on now. Drops schedule from 1st full day post-op for a full week:
The two “ah ha!” moments for me have been:
1) During driving I can see street signs at what I would consider the distance I would NEED to see a street sign without ending up with the car behind me in my back seat.
And at night - waking up and seeing is awesome, but I haven’t really been able to completely enjoy it yet as I am wearing the “clear” guards.
BUT -
2) When I go to wash my face and brush my teeth at night, even with the 30 minutes of drops I’m doing, I still feel like I’m cheating! I leave the bathroom WITHOUT RUNNING INTO A WALL! I can SEE as I apply lotion and I can actually find my phone and chapstick before bed WITHOUT USING MY CELL PHONE AS A NIGHTLIGHT TO LOCATE ANYTHING I NEED AFTER I FIND MY PHONE. I can watch tv before bed - shocker!
Was it worth it? No question - yes.
I’m very pleased with it and my vision is better than it was with contacts. I’ll post another vlog about it after I’m allowed to wear eye makeup. That’s right - call me vain.
Monday, April 19, 2010 at 1:45PM Not feeling very bloggie or tweetie or facebookie today, so I’m just going to hang with my little men. I’ll be back tomorrow, and hopefully I can update you on the LASIK as well as an update on an old issue from last summer. (LOL @ me making at least four people “oh. crap.” only to click the link and become more comfortable)
Stop being so darn excited and contain yourself. :) Hope you are having a great Monday!
LASIK, hush amanda, the mom job, themomjob Friday, April 16, 2010 at 6:41PM I’m home and I can ALMOST see. It’ll be a full 4-6 hours before everything won’t appear as if I’m living underwater. It’s very blurry, but I can see far away better than up close! It’s really amazing to read street signs, billboards, and to wake up from my first pseudo-nap and LOOK AT THE CLOCK ACROSS THE ROOM! I’m also still rather drugged up and my eyes are very sore, swollen and watery.
With that in mind, I’m going to keep this short and have another Valium Nap.
BUT! You can watch my LASIK procedure. It’s really not that gory. I’ll explain more about it tomorrow or Sunday, so just watch this for now:
