Anyway, now I can see that the level od the fluid is going down. Last night, I re-read all the information about that surgery, which I read before, and I realized that I saw it all, I just didn’t understand what they meant. They talked a lot about “a gas bubble, ” but I didn’t understand what it means. I could not imagine that it was like having this ish tank in your eye :). And I imagined a very different picture when they would say, “your vision will be blurry at first, but it will go away in several days.”
Now I understand that I won’t be able to drive or bike until this bubble would go away entirely because while even a part of it is there, I still have blind spots.
It’s hard to say, with what speed it will progress, but I hope it will be gone within a week.
As for the travel ban, the only thing we can do is wait and see. Boris still does not believe me about “next year,” he still thinks that the ban is political and that something will happen by August. As of today, there are only these many hours-long connections in London, which I do not want him to experience. Especially when Finland is effectively virus-free. So no changes in the observable future.
As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t go to the postgraduate school for my Ph.D. First, I could not afford to go for several years on the postgrad stipend instead of salary, and second, it wasn’t easy to get in. I do not even remember whether it was Boris or I who first came up with the idea that I should go for a Ph.D., in some sense, both wanted it to happen.
I registered with the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics and became “an aspirant.” For the benefit of the Russian-speakers, the Russian word aspirant means “a postgraduate student,” and a Russian word “soiskatel” means “an aspirant.” Super-confusing, I know 🙂
So, I became an aspirant, and then my timeline was entirely up to me. I didn’t have to attend any classes, except for if I felt I need it to pass the qualification exams. I had to pass four of them: English, Philosophy, Speciality One (which was Computer Science for me), and Speciality Two (which was Data Management).
I registered in 1989, and the only exam I passed before Vlad and Anna were born was English. For our English exam, we had to “submit thousands.” If you do not know what it is about, you will never guess. We had to take any book, or books, or journal articles related to our specialty, computer science, in my case. There was an official estimate of how many characters are there on each page, and we had to be ready with something like fifty pages. The examiner could open the book on any page and ask us to read a paragraph and to translate it. Also, we had to prepare several newspaper pages, and they had to be actual US or British newspapers, not Moscow News. Only the Communist Party newspapers were available, so in my case, usually, it would be “The Morning Star.”
I am back home from the surgery; they said it went well, but I can’t tell until later, because I have a patch on the operated eye and will be blurry for a while in any case. Although it was local anesthesia with sedation, it feels more serious than with the cataract surgery, I am still dizzy, and I still feel like half of my head is numb. So most likely, that’s all for today, and I will post an update tomorrow after my post-surgical.
Today, it was Boris’s 70th birthday. Needless to say, we had very different plans for that day than how it turned out. I would be OK if Boris would say he does not even want to mention it and would rather have a day as usual. But when we talked at the beginning of the week, I felt that he would not mind if I would make it special.Â
We have a very long lasting tradition of dark red roses, which he said, “would not be possible that time.” Granted, I got out of my way to find a flower delivery in Helsinki:). The most difficult was to find a vendor who would allow to pick the flowers I needed, instead of suggesting one of the existing arrangements. And another challenge was to switch between translating into English and not because the actual ordering and payment pages had to be displayed in Finnish when I was filling them in.
I took a day off today. Since we have “summer Fridays,” I only had to take a half-day. I used it to run most of my errands (shopping is great on Friday morning, the stores are almost empty). And also, that way we could talk during the day. We decided to have a meal together; it was an early lunch for me, and a dinner for him. I bought a rose of the same color so that our roses could talk to each other.
Also, I baked a rhubarb and strawberry pie. Same as with quiche, that’s something we both like, but since my unsuccessful experiments over thirty years ago, I thought that I would never master that skill. But then I saw that recipe, looked up a couple of other suggestions on how to make a rhubarb filling, used pre-made crust, and gave it a try.Â
It didn’t turn out exactly as I wanted, I should not have reduced the amount of sweetener in the filling, but I will know next time. Adding some corn starch was a great idea, though.Â
I have to add that rhubarb is very popular in Estonia, contributing to our love of that treat. And next time, it will be perfect 🙂
Yesterday, I went to the eye clinic for the second implant film removing (for the right eye). As with everything else, the right eye feels tons better than the left one. I feel like the procedure took less time, and less film was removed, and there are less floaters. Â
Also, this time I asked whether I can wear contacts in between drops. Last time I agreed with the doctor that I do not want to take in and out my contacts four times a day, and I didn’t think it will be that restrictive to go for a total of two weeks with glasses only. But it turned out that in this case, I need to use two glasses at the same time way too often. Also, I realized that since one drop is in the morning, and one before bed, I only need to take the contact out twice, not four times:). So I switched back to contacts, and now I can tell that, indeed, I can see better after the film removal!Â
What’s next. I am going to the retina doctor on Wednesday. Presumably, he will set up a date for surgery, which likely, will be soon. I asked for more details about that surgery. The nurse told me that in terms of restrictions, it will be similar to the cataract surgery, the same no bending-no lifting for a week, which, as I already know, is translated into two.Â
Then, it will be the day after surgery follow up, and the second follow-up in a week. At some point, I need to finally get the right prescription for my glasses, but my regular eye doctor is still out.Â
I hope it will all be over in a month because I am so tired of being in this or that surgery all the time! Theoretically, I still need to decide whether I want to do Lasic to correct residual near-sightedness, but I was on and off on whether I want to go for it. Also, this whole thing started when I tried to fix my double-vision, so I should return to where I’ve started :), because the double-vision is still there. And if I will go for all of the above, it might be not over until the end of the year!
Once again, there is a gap of several months when I have no pictures of the kids. The daycare picture was taken at the end of September, and the one below – on January 1, 1995.
During fall 1994, I was still working at the Operations Research Lab of the University. That job still paid close to nothing, and I was still in constant search of gigs. Also, I resumed my postgraduate studies and was slowly but surely getting through all of the required exams.
That fall, Anna first developed her chronic bronchitis, which she had for many years after. Nobody could tell me what the reason for that condition was, but one of the hypotheses was that she had an underdeveloped lung because she was a premie. As a result, any slight cold would develop into the obstruction bronchitis within several hours from onset. Most of the time, a pediatrician won’t recognize that bronchitis is coming, and I had to learn how to diagnose it.
It was scary, and it was not something you could get used to. Roughly every six weeks, it looked like your child is dying. There were no children’s versions of the regular medicine for that condition (and no inhalers, if you are curious about it). I would buy the pills, which helped with the spasms and crushed them into powder. I always had these pills both in my purse and on the nightstand. And when Anna would start coughing non-stop and wheezing: “Mom, open my mouth!” I had to manage to get that power in her mouth, along with some water. I knew that it would help, but it was scary each and single time.
I learned how to listen to her breath and catch an onset of yet another bronchitis. I learned to perform a special massage, which would help to get mucus out of her airways.
As a side effect, it would often happen that I could not send her to the daycare, and then I would take her with me to my postgraduate classes. One of the classes was philosophy, and I had to take an exam at the end. Fortunately, that class taught by the same professor Alexeev, whom I had during my undergrad studies, and who secretly taught us about existentialism :). Anna was sitting there very quietly, and I was always allowed to take her to my class. Could that trigger her future interest in social studies?!
Back to the picture below.
Our family tradition continued: everybody celebrated the New Year’s Eve with their immediate families or elsewhere, but on January 1, everybody would gather at the Aunt’s Kima house to celebrate her birthday with the extended family.
I know that I had several pictures from that particular gathering, but now I can only find that one. I have no idea why Igor is not on that picture because he was most definitely present.
Vlad and Anna wear animal costumes because, as I’ve already mentioned, costumes for the New Year go back to the old tradition Sviatki – the time between Christmas and New Year. Anna is in a squirrel mask, and Vlad wears a hood with bunny ears, and both of their faces are painted with animal features.
In the back row from left to right: my cousin Dodik (David), Kima’s son, with his wife Alla, then Aunt Maya, Uncle Slava’s wife. In the middle row – I, Aunt Kima, and my mom. My shoulders were not intended to be bare to that extent, it’s just my dress pulled down, and I was still very skinny back then. I made that dress myself. I got the garment as a fee for teaching English to the son of one of “a friend of a friend.” It required only minimal work to fit my small body, and it looked spectacular, or at least I thought so back then.
Here was the start of 1995, and many things were going to happen that year.
My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.
Another friends and family update. For the past month, I was learning to wear contact lenses again. It was very different from my previous experience because my eyes are getting dry fast. First, I was freaking out to put the contacts in and to take them out, because the implants are so close to the surface. Also, I started from just two hours, as I was doing thirty-eight years ago, when I started wearing contacts for the first time.
Another problem was that I wore hard contacts for thirty-eight and a half years and the soft ones just for four months. I was having trouble with soft contacts for most of that time, and now, after four months interval, it was even more challenging. It’s only through the past week, that I became more confident in putting the contacts in and taking them off, and that my eyes are not so dry all the time. However, I still do not wear contacts for the whole day. The good part is that with implants, I am -4, not -14.
Yesterday, I went to my next post-surgical appointment. The goal was to check whether I need a removal of the film over my implants, and as expected, I need it. There will be two procedures, one next Thursday, and the second one a week later. After that, I should go to my regular eye doctor and hopefully will figure out a more accurate prescription. She should be open by then. As for my retina, it looks like the problems which were likely to emerge, emerged indeed. Again, not like ai did not know that my left eye is only half functioning, but it looks like fixing it is not an option but rather a necessity. I was scheduled to go to the retina doctor on July 9, but the surgeon asked it to be changed to ASAP, which will be six days after my second procedure. Then, I guess he will schedule surgery.
All of the above make my travel plans even more uncertain because now I need to plan around Brussels decisions, our internal regulations, my medical procedures, and Boris’. Fortunately, the airlines are extremely flexible now, and you can change your flight plans an unlimited number of times as close to the flight as possible. So we will see what the retina doctor will say, what EU will say, and whether there will be flights with less than twelve hours connections.
I was telling about the University boarding house here, and for the next four summers, we would follow the same routine – staying there for two three-week sessions. It was all the same no hot water and tons of cockroaches situation, but since my living conditions in the city did not improve, it still worked great for me.
After I was fired from Urbansoft, I never had a stable source of income. The University paid close to nothing, and all the gigs were just gigs, but I was always ready for some extra work – more work meant more money. Thereby, even though I had four weeks of paid vacation in the University (and in any case attendance was optional), I had to take extra work whenever an opportunity would present itself.
The gigs tend to appear at a most inconvenient time, such as when I was about to go to the University boarding house, or when I just moved there. It would mean I have no time to relax, and that I have to craft a way to work without any equipment.
Fortunately for me, half a dozen teenage girls who stayed in the same boarding house loved Vlad and Anna and didn’t mind being a collective babysitter. Most of the gigs I had at that time involved technical writing. I had decent English, good enough to write User Guides, Helps, and How-to manuals. At one point, Boris was contracting for an Italian entrepreneur Dr. Conrad (I have no idea what kind of a Doctor he was). They were developing an HTML-editing tool called HighDoc, and I wrote all documentation for it.
There was a verbal-agreed pay for each portion of that work, and Dr. Conrad would bring payments in cash (in US dollars) when he came to Russia. He always tried to delay payments as long as possible, and I had these cinema-featured Italian arguments with him, yelling and pleading. And not just me, all people who worked for him did the same. The last project I did with him was so interesting that it requires a separate blog post. But now we were in summer 1994, and Vlad and Anna were two months shy of being three, and Igor was almost nine.
I still didn’t own a camera and didn’t take any pictures. Only when Boris came with his camera, we would get some. So all the pictures below show one day when we went for a long “hike” to the Old Peterhoff park.
So, twenty-five year ago we all wore socks with sandals :). Oh, and by the way, that blouse was timeless. It traveled with me to the US, and I only retired it a couple years ago! It was dark purple, with tiny buttons, and I loved it.Anna was always the first to climb a treeContinue reading “Summer 1994: Some Pictures”→
It’s hard for me to tell whether the problems with my back have returned because I am working from home, or they just returned – after all, last spring, the situation was the same. It started to get worse when it should have become better. This time, it is all related to walking. Standing is fine, but walking started to be more and more painful again. On the one hand, it could be because I do not walk with my backpack anymore (it helps me to stay in balance); on the other hand – it still shouldn’t have been like this.
I do not like to go at length about “how exactly I feel unwell,” so I will stop here. I still had some leftovers from the last year’s prescription, but I had to use it often recently and was running out of it. I was not sure whether the orthopedics is considered essential, but I was hoping that I could get a prescription refill.
When I called the doctor’s office, they told me that they are open and that if I am comfortable with it, they would rather see me in person.
I went there last Friday; there was almost nobody in the waiting area, and I didn’t wait at all. They took the Xrays, and it looks like all the same problems I had a year ago, which does not go away, and which was not supposed to go away.
So I started everything again, as last spring: a steroid pack, already done, which, as usual, caused a short-term relief. On Wednesday, I started physical therapy. My usual place is in business, which means I do not need to travel far. Fortunately, I got my favorite therapist, who has scoliosis herself. Last year, she showed me a lot of great exercises which help me a lot, if done consistently. I already had two sessions with her and will continue for two more weeks. They all wear masks, and I wear a mask when I come in. They also have a box of disposable gloves, so when a patient needs to get on an elliptical or to do some other exercises, they put the gloves on. They also limited the number of patients they treat simultaneously.
Last week, when I was at the doctor, he said I might need steroid shots (which I refused the previous year), and that he hopes I won’t need another surgery. I hope so, too! It’s frustrating that I do not quite understand what causes the problem. All these “narrow exits” do not bear any meaning to me, and I can’t consider steroid shots being treatment, it’s just pain management. Most likely (and hopefully), I will feel better in a couple of weeks, but most likely, it won’t be permanent. It might become my seasonal activity :).
On top of all the thins which affect everybody in the world, my laptop battery decided to stop charging. And as you can imagine, our company tech support was busy with making sure everybody can work remotely, and they didn’t have time to figure out my computer (they were already working 24 hours a day!)
Fortunately, there was one new computer coming, so today a got it (thanks for our senior devops, who brought it to my house in the evening!) However, now I have to set up all the apps and then carefully transfer stuff from my time machine. Which will take, as I estimate, the big portion of Sunday.
I have at least five blog post in my queue:), but not sure when they will materialize 🙂
Hettie's Reflections 