Sunday 18 October 2009

After the wedding

Liz and Paul were spending their wedding night at Combe Abbey just outside Coventry, so invited everyone to come along for a walk the next morning in the adjacent country park. It was a beautiful morning and my parents brought along pink fizz and the left over wedding cup cakes to really help it swing.


So many thanks Liz and Paul for a fantastic couple of days, and we wish them a long and wonderful marriage.

Here comes the bride

So Friday October 9 was the day that my little sister Liz married her long time boyfriend Paul, and was the main reason for our trip to England. The wedding was held in the Guildhall in Coventry (one of the few old buildings the Germans missed), with the ceremony being held in the Crypt which was a wonderful room with vaulted ceilings.








Paul, awaiting the arrival of Liz.












Mr and Mrs Taylor signing the register













Liz, looking stunning. Shame the same couldn't be said about the weather.





My other sister Carolyn and I were bridesmaids, together with Liz's best friend Jo who she's known since they were both 3. And very lovely we looked in our hot pink dresses.















The meal and evening do in the Great Hall, also part of the Guildhall, and it was a fantastic venue with oak panelling, stained glass windows and high ceilings. In the evening a 7 piece 'Commitments' style band played loads of soul and 60s music which was fantastic to dance to.






















The eyes have it

And here is the un-bearded fool complete with new eyes...


...doesn't he look young?

Fool with frikkin' laser beams .....

So the good news alluded to in a recent post, what was that all about? Well I have had a bad man slicing my eye up with lasers and sharp knives.
In a nutshell I had contact lenses inserted INTO my eyes in front of the natural lense.

You can see all about the exact process here:
http://www.gimbeleyecentre.com/visioncorrectionoptions/implantablelenses.html

Jacqui was brave and watched him slice and dice the second eye, she described it as the wife in her was horrified but the engineer was fascinated :)

The itineray for the process was fairly epic.

September
8th pre op stuff
9th iridotomy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaucoma_surgery#Iridotomy
This was pretty uncomfortable, bascially it's a laser drilling through part of your eye to help ensure even pressure post-op. It feels like some flicking your eye many many times, they do this twice in each eye.
15th Right eye get's done. Many, many drops then an intravenous injectiont to relax me and the fun begins. The doctor makes an incision into the side of the eye and injects the lense which unfurls. He then makes another couple of small cuts to enable him to get at the lense and position it correctly. The operation bit takes about 20 mins and job done. Come out of surgery, recover a bit and get driven home by wife.
15th - 21st Recovering, my eyes are sensitive to the drops which dilate the pupils so I have scary eyes until the weekend. Very uncomfortable week with headaches eyeaches and just general fun trying to focus on anything. Lots of wearing sunglasses indoors, I'm cool.
22nd Right eye checkup, left eye mutilated while the wife watches.
23rd Left eye checkup.
29th Left eye checkup.2
And aside from literally hundreds of eye drops I'm done!

And this all means:

After 33 years of needing them I no longer need glasses, full stop, underlined. I can also see better than I could before while wearing glasses. To give you an idea I had roughly 20-50 vision before, possibly 20-40 with the best prescription possible. The optician was aiming for 20-40 with my new eyes and achieved around 20-30. For everyone like me who does not really understand 20-40 20-20 etc this means an extra line and a half on the magic chart.
This also means I feel a lot more comfortable driving = more driving for me yayyy!

One negative point I was not expecting is a reduction in my close range vision, I need pretty good lighting to read books, computers are fine they light themselves.

But weighing it all up it's a huge plus for me.

Been There Done That....

We have sucessfully been over to Ing-er-land and returned safely to Canada. Whilst over there we saw friends and family, went on a boat and 'did' a wedding, all of which was very nice. I'll let the Wife fill you in on the wedding details, I'll just say it was groovy and we both enjoyed ourselves immensely.

It was cool to see everyone and we really had a good time doing things and eating stuff. We had a particularly cool time on the Norfolk Broads slowly driving our electric boat around, Now we have moderate-high jet lag and a loooong week of work ahead for me.......meh.

Monday 12 October 2009

Canadians have landed

Hi guys, we've made it across to the UK and if any of you guys are about we'll be at the Trafford Arms on Tuesday 13th October around 4pm until about 6pm. Feel free to wander down and say hello!
I reckon we'll either be the couple looking lonely in the corner :)

Friday 2 October 2009

Ok that's over with, we're okay !

Hello again everyone, just a quick follow-on we're both fine and very much looking forward to our trip to the UK. We're also both looking forward to trying again to create mini-Millers, just to stick that picture in your minds :)

More updates during and after our UK trip in October, and I have a major announcement for then too.....drama!