Two Doctors Plus Honoring and Surviving the Sadiversaries

It snowed off and on Wednesday and we even got some hail but nothing stuck to the spring landscape. According to the local weather guy we’ve gotten snow this late in April before but I don’t remember the last time it happened. Mother Nature, I guess, wanted to let us all know who rules the earth. Still, it’s disheartening to see snow so late after the robins had moved back to town.

That day I had an eye doctor appointment and I was sweating the encounter. My eyes have been bothering me all winter and since I’d just seen him in June of 2014 and got a new prescription back then, I was sure he’d find a dreaded disease or at least want to rush me into the cataract surgery rat race of follow up appointments and eye drops. My sight had changed a lot, he said, and I have to start seeing him once a year now instead of every two years. Oh, goody, another sign that I’m getting old. As if I didn’t already know that. He pronounced my eyes free of macular degeneration with no glaucoma or retinopathy---and my cataract, although cloudier than he normally sees, is still too small to remove. I do have extremely dry eyes (who knew) and vitreous detachment which is causing some distortions that glasses can’t help but eye health-wise that’s not considered serious. Once the detachment is completed, I should see better. In the meantime I’m to start using artificial tears throughout the day and wait a month to get my new glasses made. It got lost in translation why I have to wait, but he’s the boss of my eyes, so I'll do it. I’m just glad I won’t have to add a white cane to my shopping list.

Also on the day planner this week was my final follow up for the shoulder surgery I had last October. What a long haul! I’m 98% pain free but I can go back to the bone doctor any time for follow up shots, should the pain not stay at bay. I should be good for a year, though, if I mind my p’s and q’s. In the process of giving me a list of do’s and don’ts the orthopedist asked me what kinds of hobbies I like to do and when I rattled off the list they sounded so stereotypical old ladyish that I threw in skate boarding. The look on his face was priceless. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him speechless. He likes me and probably thinks I’m smarter than I am. That’s because I’m usually reading a nerdy magazine like Scientific American when he comes into the room. I don’t understand much of what I’m read in that magazine but he doesn’t need to know that. This time, however, I was actually engrossed in an article about experimenting with using electrical shocks in the brain to control pain associated with chronic diseases and it had several paragraphs on how the history of strokes fed into this path of study. It was quite detailed and mentioned precise speech issues I know about because of my husband’s stroke damaged brain. You just never know when something around you will trigger flashbacks to your pre-widowhood days.

On the way back from the orthopedist’s office I was on the belt line that skirts the city when I got behind a 2015 Corvette with its top down. I was in my Trax, the heater turned on and I was wearing a winter coat. I kept pace with that car, remembering all the good times we had in my husband’s Corvette. That old car and this new model both have such beautiful lines. Reluctantly, I had to turn off the road at the sculpture park; I was enjoying my Corvette related ride down Memory Lane. 

Every April since Don died I’ve made a pilgrimage to the sculpture park and gardens where the annual butterfly exhibit reminds me of the cycle of life and how fragile yet beautiful that is. The pilgrimage is meant to offset all my April sadiversaries. While I was at the park I wandered through the exhibit of ‘treasures from Japan’ and I also hiked back to where the oriental tea house and gardens is taking shape for its June debut. Then I walked deeper into the woods. Daffodils and hyacinths were in bloom everywhere and beds of tulips looked ready to do the same. I took a bench overlooking a pond and listened to the Red Winged Black birds calling back and forth as they took turns sitting on cattails. The air was so crisp and clean, the sun was bright and warm and it made me as toasty as a Ball Park Frank in a steamed bun as I sat bundled up in my winter coat. My widow’s heart although tinged with memories of better times was accepting of my past and the present. The future? None of us can know what the future will bring but I did know that a slice of brown cow chocolate pudding cheesecake at the sculpture park’s restaurant would make a good ending to my April pilgrimage so I left the bench in search of a widow’s best friend: chocolate.  ©