Successful surgery

We were out of the house and on our way in the early Tuesday morning commuter traffic to get to the Heath Hospital (aka University Hospital of Wales) just after half past seven this morning, for Clare's eye surgery appointment. She was one of five people to be treated by consultant Mr Raj Kumar for the relief of high eyeball fluid pressure, brought on by her hereditary glaucoma. 

She was second in line for the twenty minute treatment, the whole process took three hours from preparation to recovery. I waited with her, and while she was being treated, I went for a coffee with another of the patients in the day's queue, a Palestinian man in his forties. He'd never been to the Holy Land, being born in Kuwait and studying in Hungary and Libya before coming to the U.K. We had an unexpected hour of interesting conversation together of a philosophical nature, in the middle of a challenging day for both of us, before it was his turn for treatment. 

We were home again by half past eleven, with plenty of free time and space for Clare to rest and recover. My job was to issue communiques to the family and cook meals. Thankfully, Mr Raj Kumar declared that he was satisfied with the way the procedure had gone.

This morning, we returned to Heath Hospital again, by eight, for an outpatient appointment to check that recovery had continued overnight without complications. I sat in on the examination, made by an optometrist, who declared afterwards that the result was as good as it possibly could be. Clare was sent home with three different batches of eye drops to be taken at different intervals during the day, and left to figure out the self administration regime for herself. This régime will last several weeks!

We went out for a walk to the pharmacy and shopped for vegetables before preparing lunch. Then I finished editing our annual newsletter, ready for production and mail out with Christmas  cards. It's good to be home to put these things in place. I'm delighted that Kath is coming tomorrow, a day early, so we can spend some time together before I return to Spain for my last fortnight of locum duty for this year, and look after her Mum before Rachel arrives from Arizona on Monday.