One award, two opthamologists

My computer has been in the shop, aka the Apple Store, to fix a popping sound that occurred every time I opened and closed it. It needed a hinge replacement, like a hip replacement for computers.

So that is why I haven't posted.

These are some of thing things that happened.

I got an email saying that my blog made Healthline's list of the top leukemia blogs of 2015. According to the email, "Healthline’s editors carefully selected each winner based on quality, frequency of updates and contribution to the community."

Here is the blurb: Ronni Gordon, an avid runner and tennis player, felt winded while running a 10K race. For many, that would be par for the course. For her, it was the first clue that something was wrong. In 2003, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Now, she’s been living cancer-free for more than six years, but cancer isn’t far from her mind. Ronni is a writer and Running for My Life: Fighting Cancer One Step at a Time is her journal.

In other news, I saw two opthamologists in one week, one a cornea specialist and the other a glaucoma specialist. There is no such thing any more as a plain eye doctor. Dr. Dana, the cornea specialist at Mass General, has been following me for possible Graft vs. Host of the eye. He thought I previously had it, but now, he said, with continuing use of Restasis, my eyes look good. I do have dry spots in my right eye due to surgery right near the tear duct to remove a squamous cell cancer. I need to keep putting Genteal gel in it.

Meanwhile, my optometrist wanted me to see a glaucoma specialist due to a test he gave me that was either suggestive of possible glaucoma or just something that shows up with very near-sighted people like myself. Also my mother had glaucoma. But thankfully I don't.

When the nurse was checking me in, she said she was going to ask me some questions that might not seem applicable to my eyes, such as, "Have you ever had any blood transfusions"?

I said, "Yes, a million of them. I had leukemia."

When she went to write it down, she repeated it incorrectly to me, saying, "You have leukemia."

This is one of those instances where one little misspoken word can set off an alarm, such as when I was in the hospital sick after graft failure, and a physician's assistant, in telling me about the next step in my treatment, said, "Assuming you get better..." and I dropped my spoon and my sister said, "She doesn't like that word," because it made me think she wasn't sure about it.

Anyway, the nurse at the eye doctor's said to me, "So you're in remission," and wrote that down, and I wanted to say, no, it's better than that, I'm cured, and would you say to a woman who had breast cancer, I'm going to write down you have breast cancer, but of course it makes no sense to get into it. And I don't like to use the word cured anyway because I think it's a jinx. Maybe someday I'll get over that.