Post-op days 1 & 2

(Note - sorry for the huge font size and likely typos!) :)

Day 1:

No pain at all! And hardly any light sensitivity either. Went in for my one-day post-op appointment and my vision (through the pinprick shield) was 20:20 in my right eye (with some concentration, but still!) … not nearly as clear in my left eye, but I'm still excited! Dr Clary said to expect the peak of my discomfort to be about this time tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. My vision is blurry and definitely not as good as with my contacts or glasses before surgery, but I can see well enough to function around the house. I would feel comfortable driving a short distance on familiar streets, although I'm not planning on trying :) I did notice a decrease in my visual acuity towards the end of the day. Also, my vision was at its clearest immediately after putting in any of my eye drops. Since I had read this on several blogs, it was not anything unexpected.

Day 2:

DIFFERENT STORY! Still no pain, but when I woke up this morning I felt as though I'd been chopping onions all night. My eyes felt swollen and were gushing with tears, and it was all I could do to crack one lid open at a time just enough to see a tiny slit of the outside world. I am VERY light sensitive and have been wearing my dark glasses all day. Both the watery eyes and sensitiity have improved as the day has gone by, but by mid afternoon I can still not stand to have the sunglasses off. (I'm not looking at the monitor as I type, the white of the keyboard is as much as I want right now!) Vision is more blurry than yesterday, and I'm having some double vision when I look at something involving a conrast between light and dark. Again, vision is best right after putting in any of my eyedrops, and then falls back to blurry after a few minutes. I tried to take a nap, couldn't sleep, but after getting up I noticed a significant regression back to how I felt this morning. So I don't know whether the discomfort is related to the bandage contacts getting gummed to my eyelids, or hust the healing process in general. It is still not painful, just anooying :)

Addendum: by the afternoon I was able to keep my eyes open pretty much all the time (rather than this morning, when I had to pry my lids open just to do my eyedrop regimen), but by bed time I was back to my morning state of being. I took a Tylenol 3 before going to bed, and it definitely helped with the burning that had begun to develop.

PRK - surgery day

Well, today was the day my vision changed for the rest of my life! This morning I went to the eye laser center for my PRK. I was orogingally hoping to have LASIK, but my corneas were found to be too thin for that procedure. (In LASIK, a small flap is cut in the surface of the cornea, and the laser then has access to the part of the cornea that needs to be reshaped. In PRK, a chemical is used to cause an abrasion on the surface of the cornea, the surface cells are scraped away and that opens up the part of the cornea that gets lasered.)

When I arrived at the center and was taken back to the pre-op area, I was given my first round of eye drops - numbing medicine, an antibiotic and a steroid drop. And my Ativan :) I had a fairly lengthy wait between receiving my first set of drops and actually going in for my surgery, so I was glad that the first thing they did after laying me on the table was give m more numbing drops - pretty sure that first batch had worn off!

My Ativan is definitely still in my system even at the end of the day, so my memory of the procedure is already a little hazy. But this is what I remember:
He did my right eye first. I was told to focus on a blinking red light above me for the whole precedure. After a round of more drops, the speculum to prevent my eyelids from blinking was inserted. As far as I remember, the next thing was a set of drops that softened the epithelial layer of my cornea so they could be scraped away. All I felt during any of this was sometimes light pressure. Never any pain, which remained true for the rest of the day. After the Dr fisihed scraping away the surface of the cornea, a cold rinse was used to clear off any residual medication and/or cells. Then the laser was brought over my face, and when it turned on for my 38-second adjustment it made a loud clicking sound for as long as it was working. When it was done, the Dr wiped a medicine over my eyes for 30 seconds, then a think gel drop was put in and then the badage contact lens. Then some kind of darkened shield was placed over my eye area.

The laser was moved over to the left side of my face ... lather, rinse repeat :)

When I was finished, my right shield was taken off and the Dr leaned over to ask how I felt. And I could see his eyes - completely in focus! For the rest of today, I have been able to see at a level between what I could see with and without my contacts/glasses. Pretty much everything is blurry, even something as close as the typing on this monitor, but I can see a LOT more detail at distance than before. Where I used to see darker blurs against the white of our walls, I can now see individual areas of colour and even some shapes. I don't have any double vision so far, just blurring.
Honestly, the worst of my problems right now are the fact that I shoveled the driveway yesterday so Mark could get back in so now I'm aching, and the ativan they gave me for anxiety during the procedure made me so nauseous that I've thrown up twice since getting home. I'm sticking to my very involved regimen of eye drops, and I plan to update this for daily prgoress reports. Mostly for my own ability to track how my vision impreoves, I realise not everyone else is fascinated by this experience :)

Also, as a disclaimer: I can't exactly read what I'm typing here, so I'm assuming it's riddled with typos, sorry! Hopefully that will improve as my sight refines :)

'Tis the season

The tree is up.

Stockings are hanging from the mantle.

Lights twinkle cheerfully around our front window once the sun goes down.


It is December 1st, and we are looking and feeling quite festive here in the Crouch household. I am even (almost) ready to order our Christmas photocards! But this year, we are doing something a little different.

It is easy to remind my grown-up self that Christmas is not about presents and the lights at Rhema and stuff.  (Don't even get me started on the monstrous amount of credit card debt that is wrapped so prettily under millions of Christmas trees across the world.) A little harder to remember is that Christmas is not about feeling merry and bright, drinking hot chocolate (/ mulled wine!) in front of a cozy fire, and time spent with family. It's not even about the look of joy and excitement on my kids' faces when they wake up and realise it is Christmas morning.


Obviously I'm not saying those things are bad. We are buying our kids gifts, we will be taking them to see the lights, and I do love a mug of homemade mulled wine when the weather is cold! :)

But I don't want to get so sidetracked by the festive fun stuff that I miss out on something even more amazing. And I definitely don't want my kids to grow up with Christmas memories that only involve the festive fun stuff.


So starting this year we are observing advent. I am so excited. This is something that was stirring in my heart and mind last year, and I just didn't quite manage it. But this year it is happening! And I am learning as we go. There is so much richness in this season of anticipation. A friend shared this resource with me, and I am loving exploring it! Listen to this:

The word Advent means "coming" or "arrival." The focus of the entire season is the celebration of the birth of Jesus the Christ in his First Advent, and the anticipation of the return of Christ the King in his Second Advent. Thus, Advent is far more than simply marking a 2,000 year old event in history. It is celebrating a truth about God, the revelation of God in Christ whereby all of creation might be reconciled to God. That is a process in which we now participate, and the consummation of which we anticipate.

In this double focus on past and future, Advent also symbolizes the spiritual journey of individuals and a congregation, as they affirm that Christ has come, that He is present in the world today, and that He will come again in power. That acknowledgment provides a basis for Kingdom ethics, for holy living arising from a profound sense that we live "between the times" and are called to be faithful stewards of what is entrusted to us as God’s people. So, as the church celebrates God’s inbreaking into history in the Incarnation, and anticipates a future consummation to that history for which "all creation is groaning awaiting its redemption," it also confesses its own responsibility as a people commissioned to "love the Lord your God with all your heart" and to "love your neighbor as yourself."

Big quote, I know. But isn't it awe-inspiring?

So this year, here is how we are celebrating Advent.

Each morning during breakfast we are lighting our advent candle and reading a daily advent scripture, either from my Bible or from one of Anna and Levi's children's Bibles. I have the corresponding Jesse Tree printables (you can find them here) for Anna to colour and display on our kitchen window. We are talking about the scripture as we read it, since metaphors about the root of Jesse are still more or less lost on my three year old :)

Since the focus of our advent celebrations is the gift of Jesus' birth and second coming, I want to incorporate the sentiments of giving and excitement into our December. So I have come up with a list of advent activities that I wrote on pieces of paper and put in a gift bag for Anna to select from each day. It was so much fun to think up 24 activities that captured the spirit of advent! For example, today's activity was to bake and decorate cookies which we will share with someone outside of our family. Other activities include choosing some of our toys (and for me, clothes) to donate to people needier than ourselves, giving a gift to a stranger, and a variety of Christmas-themed games and crafts that will help us to give the gift of our presence to each other.


I also gathered up all of our Christmas-themed books and stories and CDs, and the pieces to the kids' Little People nativity scene. I wrapped all of the books & CDs and put them in a box under the tree. Each night we'll unwrap one and either read or listen to it, and in the 10 days leading up to Christmas Day (since we happen to have 10 pieces to our set!) we will unwrap one character from the nativity scene.

I am so excited to see how our advent season goes and how the kids gain a richer understanding of the weeks leading up to celebrating Jesus' birthday. But more than that, I am excited to spend this season celebrating God breaking into history and my life, and giving Him the gift - small and imperfect though it is - of a heart turned more towards Him.