Retina update holla.

So, my surgery was good and really, quite painless. (It was my first surgery, so I didn't know what to expect from the whole procedure.)
It's the recovery that's being a pain.
Not even the pain, so much, as the inconvenience of a large gas bubble floating about my eye, the pain of the swollen eye-lid, and the bright-red blood-shot eye that oozes grossness.
I also get these wicked headaches in class: it starts as mere confusion, in my first class. Then, after my second, the headache begins in my front right cortex, pain being send directly from the eye that pissed at having to focus on white boards coated in light. Eventually, it begins to feel as though someone has hit me with a brick. I'd like to look away, buuut I can't be rude and stop paying attention, especially with the chem professor who already hates me. Next, the headache progresses down into my jaw, driven by the Tylonol-Ibepropheun combo I've downed, and will linger there until bedtime. By evening, even a dose of hated Percoset doesn't cut the pain in my jaw.

But, on the upside, I can see the board. We started electricity, which I'm finding surprising interesting, as well as the new-fangled integral in calculus class. Chemistry will never not suck, but I'm determined to get my C without letting another professor who hates me give me another head trip. If it were really that hard, it wouldn't be a 100-level class.
Necessary as all those might be, none of them are as interesting as the GSA bookstore magazine. I'm REALLY excited to buy "Kinematics and Dynamics of Lava Flows." How awesome is that?

Best laid plans of mice & men

There were a number of things I was planning on doing over spring break, including a massive spring cleaning, studying chemistry, reading a Pacific Northwest Geology textbook, going on a hike, and generally laying about in bed.
However, two days into spring break, my retina detached.
How awesome is that?!
It's fairly amusing actually - the timing is perfect (three days after my last final, and probably completely recovered from surgery by the first day), and the location is perfect (at my parent's house, with people to drive me about), I have insurance (we had thought it ended at 23, but it goes until 25!), and the only downside (other than, um, surgery and a possible permanent decrease in vision) is that I already used up my correction coverage getting glasses, so I'll have to get new lenses after the surgery. Luckily, my optometrist mentioned the risk of this at my appointment last year, so, when I saw flashes, I knew what was what, and got to the doctor 16 days sooner than the average American.
Booyah, average American!
The reason this happened to me is because I'm horribly, horribly near-sighted in one eye, and, while they're a bit unsure of this, it stretches the retina, which causes tears (I have 5 - jackpot!) Eye fluid then creeps behind the retina, and pushes it away from the back of the eye. It's a bit odd for a 23-year-old to have this happen, as it usually happens to old people.
Frankly, I'm going to blame last week's study marathon.
So, they're going to fix the holes, and then attach my retina to a piece of flexible plastic called a scleral band (a lot bigger than you'd think!) placed behind my eye. (Or above. Not entirely sure. Don't really care, as long as it works.) Which is some crazy, vaguely repulsive medicine.
I'm going to ask them to take pictures.
Speaking of pictures, this is a picture of my retina, before it went AWOL:

(This is a picture of what my retina looks like now:

Picture from here, as I neglected to get my doctor to email me a copy of yesterday's picture.)
That whole missing section on the left is where the retina has detached - just like mine. You can't see out of that portion of your eye - meaning that 1/4 of my vision has gone blind.

I'm just hoping that, afterward, I get to wear an eye-patch to class.
Might buy a pirate hat, too.