cataract surgery

I had cataract surgery on the second eye yesterday.

For years, my ophthalmologist has been telling me that I'd got cataracts, and they may affect my night vision, but they weren't enough to work on yet. Finally, at my routine annual visit in March (and how privileged am I, in this benighted and broken US healthcare system, to be able to have routine annual eye and vision visits!), I complained about night driving, and the doc agreed to set me up for surgery.

There was a five-month lead time (the doc is, apparently, busy). I improved upon the time by allowing my anxiety to take over (regular readers will know that I have anxiety in various strengths and industrial quantities). I can fall into the anxiety hole over a multitude of topics, including midnight rehashes of occurrences from decades ago with people who likely could never find me again (and completely don't care, I'm sure), but eyes are special. I have a grotesque fascination with eyes in general. For my own eyes, I have a combination of gross-out and fear of losing vision (I've said for decades that the reason I never used contact lenses, is that there are not enough drugs in the world to get me to put something into my open eye). 

When not stuck in that anxiety hole, I did research on the types of lenses available. A cataract is a discoloration of the natural lens that you grew yourself, and it can get bad enough that the lens is opaque (and you go blind). During WWII, a physician treating pilots discovered that, when pilots got shards of the plastic from which the cockpit windows were made into their eyes, the pilots did not have an immune system response; they body did not treat these as infections. Thus, lenses made of this plastic could be used to replace your natural lens. You can't flex these lenses, as your body does with your natural lens to change the focal distance and see both near and far away... but you are able to see, and can use glasses to compensate for the distance vision needs.

But the lenses are plastic, right? So the shape of the insertable lenses can be made to allow for the same problems that are managed by your glasses, including astigmatism and presbyopia (presbyopia is the loss of close-up vision due to aging, and astigmatism has something to do with the angle that the light comes into your eye, and I admit I don't really understand astigmatism). So (for additional cost, of course) you can get lenses that allow for either distance or close vision, that manage astigmatism... and now, that give you vision at every range, or at some limited set of ranges rather than just distance. You don't get nothin' for nothin', of course, so you make your choice based on what's important to you.

To me, night driving was (is?) the most important, and the lenses that completely free you from any dependence on glasses, have effects around bight lights that might interfere with driving. The lens that gave me one range of vision is also available to fix my astigmatism... but there was another choice, that gives some intermediate vision, without the glare effects of the all-vision lenses. They have a reputation for giving less contrast than the single-vision lenses... but I'm not comparing to single vision lenses; I'm comparing to the lens-with-cataract I had.

The ophthalmologist said I was a good candidate for these intermediate vision lenses, so I went with those. 

After the first surgery, I wrote this too-long report to a friend:

Eyes: well, for the first time in 50 years or more, I see 20/20 out of my right eye. I popped for an extended depth-of-field lens, and that hasn't improved yet, but the doc says to give it a few days. I've taken the right lens out of an older pair of glasses, and, while I feel a right fool with them on, I was able to drive in them. I know I'll need reading glasses, and OTC (over-the-counter, for those who didn't spend decades up to their knees in drug-talk) "cheaters" at 2.5 seem to be working. They're too much for the computer, but some 1.5's seem to be ok for that, for now (and if the extended depth-of-field lenses kick in, I may not need even those). I've got sunglasses with 2.5 and 2.0 bifocal sections so that I can read the GPS, but both of those may be too strong... it's too soon to tell. In other news, the surgery site is irritated, but responds well to the prescribed eye drops. As far as the night vision goes, I'll have to check that later (it was too soon post-surgery last night). I CAN see a color-shift; the image in the untreated eye is yellower, and the image through the new lens is whiter and bluer.

(Those one-lens-in glasses got to be a particular bête noir; I have enough eccentricities and weirdnesses without walking around the Stop&Shop with glasses with one lens missing...)

In the weeks between the surgeries, I didn't have enough varieties of night driving experience to notice whether the vision had improved much. (Driving just after the beginning of a nighttime heavy rain was the worst trouble I had, and the weather has been dry...)

Now it's the morning after the second surgery. I still haven't had enough night driving experience to see if that has changed, and vision improvements after cataract surgery sometimes take a few weeks to develop, anyway. But I have been working on the computer this morning (including composing this post) without glasses. I still need glasses for tiny text, and for the phone... but for my mid-range vision, this is a remarkable improvement. Contrast appears improved. And the blue shift in my color vision, noted above, is even more evident (cataracts tend to give things a yellow cast, changing the way we see color). So early reports of the cataract surgery results are not only positive, but impressive.

I need to write also about the experience of the surgery itself. I have made a real bore of myself, complaining to all who would stand still long enough to listen about my worries. I had visions (did I intend that pun?) of surgeons coming after my open eye with scalpels, shovels, and backhoes. It wasn't like that at all. First, of course, I was anaesthetized... but also, they put so much gel (anaesthetic and antiseptic) in my eyes that I couldn't focus much anyway, and then, the surgeon comes at the eye from the side, out of the regular line of sight. While I was awake for the process, and could hear what was supposed to be happening, the process of the surgery was far less gruesome than I'd feared.

I'm writing this at stupid:30 in the morning before my post-surgery visit. I expect to hear good news about the surgery outcome. I'm certainly happy with it, right now. 

 

 

'nother co-leader ride

Yesterday (Saturday, August 30).Tom H & I did another of those co-led rides for the club. Now, Tom wrote the book on road rides in NJ (he really did; check the link at his name), and I'm hopeless at routing (I really am; I could get lost in a bathroom), so Tom picks the routes. He goes out first with the faster folks; I ride behind with the slower ones, and to pick up any that don't keep up with Tom & co.  

We had 21 registrants. I usually limit to 20, but I got a communique from a rider when we only had 19 registered that the online registrations weren't behaving, and when I was able to reset the ride listing to fix the problem, another rider zipped in and registered before she had the opportunity. So I raised the max registrants to 21, and registered her myself. (We then had two cancellations. Wouldn't you know it?)

There were three or four rides leaving from the Cranbury start.

 Tom took out his first group after my too-long ride-rules speech, and I followed up... and wound up with ten in my group.

 We were on a route (you can see it at the link) that took us through part of Hightstown and into the Assunpink before heading east into Clarksburg. It was a great day: cool, sunny, mostly with little wind. And while there was the usual range of paces and abilities for a ride of this type, we mostly stayed together and collected at turns and stops (Boris M swept like a champ; I will happily hire him for that service any time he's available).

At the Clarksburg Deli, we rode in just as Tom's group was going out.

 Now, the Clarksburg Deli might have been there when men were being conscripted to go fight the Rebs who wanted to secede. The last time I was there, it didn't look like it had been cleaned since then, and some of that original merchandise might still have been on the shelves. It's been taken over by new management, and, while it could still use paint, it's been cleaned up and is considerably less awful than it was the last time I was there. One of the riders had complained vocally, before the ride, about stopping there, and I would not have disagreed with that person's assessment. It's still no "best rest stop" contender, but I wouldn't forego a ride because that was the planned stop (and I have done that, although those decisions are less about condition and more about the contempt that the stop owner shows to cyclists).

And back. We picked up one who didn't want to finish the ride at Tom's pace. The group continued to pace well and stayed together. We did a mile on Applegarth Road that wasn't my favorite part of the trip (but as is common in this part of NJ, there's not a better road that goes where we want to go). We got back after most of Tom's group had already left.

I hope to do a few more of these with Tom before the weather gets so bad that the smart, sane riders are putting up their bikes for the winter. In the meantime... hey, there's a club ride on Labor Day! 

ride to eric's favorite stop

 I knew yesterday (Saturday, August 16) was going to be busy. The Excellent Wife (TEW) and I were meeting friends in Manhattan for a visit to The Frick Collection (not The Frick Museum, for reasons we were unable to puzzle out). TEW and I don't drive in (or into) Manhattan, so this required the train from Princeton Junction, and then puzzling out the MTA's offerings for transport within Manhattan, with the ensuing time and mental energy investment.

I was gonna do a rant here about Frick, but what you really need to know about him was that he was insanely rich, and while he was as evil as modern billionaires, he had much better taste and style than that shown by the current crop. Not that the latter criterion is difficult, given the tackiness and stupidity of modern evil billionaires.)

In the evening, we went to the show of a very good Eagles cover band, at the clubhouse of our over-55 community. Even though the show was over before 9, it was a long day.

But I'd been contacted by Eric H, and agreed to do a club ride. I used to lead rides to an Italian bakery in Raritan, with which Eric is smitten, so he took one of my routes and agreed to lead the ride. ('Cause I sure didn't wanna lead!)

 Although the humidity was high, the temps were not at the start. We'd been complaining that none of us were in great shape, and we were looking forward to an easy ride, but Eric set a pace that was faster than I expected. It turned out his GPS device was misbehaving, and he realy had no idea what his pace was. As the ride progressed, we settled into a more comfortable (for us) pace. 

 Because of the GPS weirdness, Eric didn't have a great idea of the specifics of the route.  Those of us with GPS devices that were behaving took turns calling out the instructions.

You can see from the ride page that, after about mile 11, there are a couple of climbs. By the time we hit these, the weather had warmed up, and some of us found those climbs challenging (others did not, which may have been disheartening).

We stopped at the bakery for rest and sustenance.

 (The truth is, I really like to stop here. The bakery really is top-notch, and they have Arancia soft drinks... and the proprietor is always happy to see us. I'm a sucker for that.)

The return route does by the Duke mansion, and there's some dodgy maneuvering we have to do... but that's over in a mile or so. But with the heat and humidity, one of our number was suffering by the time we got to the end. We DID get to the end, though, without incident.

I'm going to have limited opportunities to ride in the upcoming weeks; I'm in for minor surgeries and will need recuperating time. I'm glad I got out today. 

a couple of rides this weekend

 

I can't believe I got a complaint from a reader that I haven't posted in a while... it's been a couple of weeks, but I had no idea that anybody followed at all closely. 

Well, I did get a couple of rides in this weekend. Yesterday (August 9), I went along with The Excellent Wife (TEW); that's she smiling at you in the pic at the top of the post. A coupla-three years ago (Four? Five, maybe?), she did the Flemington Jewish Community Center Farmland ride, and was smitten with the route, so we saved it, and she does it once or twice a year (or maybe more). I agree it's a nice route, and I think she does it as much to complain about the hills as to look at the views and whatnot.

But the route goes up Yard Road, one of my favorite cycling roads.

We adjusted the route after Lower Creek Road was destroyed by whatever storm it was that destroyed Lower Creek Road, and the adjusted route goes right by the Covered Bridge Bagels in Sergeantsville. We stopped there, partly because the Carousel in Ringoes closed. (There's a deli a bit farther up, but the toilet there is behind the counter, and TEW says that it's pretty gnarly, barely better than a porta-potty.)

The ride page shows that I did the 32-mile, 1800-foot-climb route at an average of 11.5mph, because we were more interested in the social aspect than the speed. I can tell you that the slow speed did not make the experience appreciably less demanding than doing it at the somewhat-faster pace I'd have fallen into if I'd been alone. I'd like to say it's hard work riding at a slower pace than one is used to, but I'd probably be engaging in mendacity to exaggerate both my fitness and my friendliness.

---

Today was one of my no-pace rides. I had six. Some of the bikes:

Laura OLPH's "Beaker", above.

 

Above and below, one of Tony G's stable of gorgeous bikes. He's got almost two dozen.

Above, Stacey Perkowski's bike - the other one has a substantial crack in the carbon of the seat tube, apparently.

 I do these rides so that people who don't want pressure to keep up can come out on a club ride. Sometimes, the group doesn't connect that well, and sometimes it's a congenial social experience. Today's ride was one of the latter. We stayed together, and chatted with each other, and enjoyed the day. (I used to ride with a guy who'd say, "If you're on a ride and you can chit-chat, you're not riding hard enough." This is not the ride for him!).

We stopped at the McCaffreys on Southfield.

 

In the picture above, TEW is actually talking to someone, but I've agreed with that person not to include a picture without active, enthusiastic consent.

Ride page. I had a long nap after this one. Maybe I just need to plan on a nap after a ride.

co-leader on a group ride

Tom H approached me a few weeks ago with the idea of co-leading a club ride, with him leading the faster group and me coming along with the slower group after, to pick up any of his that may have dropped. There's at least one other team in the club that does that, and they've been quite successful and have a substantial following. And, especially with my spotty prowess, it sounded like a good idea to be able to go a bit slower, but also (perhaps) to see some of the folks I used to ride with.

We set one for yesterday. Tom came up with a 42-mile route, starting at Village Park in Cranbury, and with a stop in Allentown.

Cranbury's a popular start location for the club; I think there were four rides going out within half an hour of each other.

 I rode in from home. It took a while to warm up, but I figured I'd be riding stronger after I had a few miles in.

Tom took off with the faster riders. I had one who stayed behind with me... and I was grateful for it, because I never really warmed up on this ride. Near the stop, I asked if the other rider wanted to cut it a bit short and head straight to the stop. I was a little disappointed when he declined, and we took the "assigned" route to Woody's in Allentown.

Tom hadn't named the stop during the speech at the start of the ride; he'd only said it was about at mile 22. It turned out he had three riders off the front, and, when they didn't see the stop at mile 22 (it was a bit short of that; they'd already passed Woody's), they just continued at their pace back to the start.

Tom and his crew stopped at Woody's; the two of us rolled in some time after.

 The east wind yesterday was stronger than I expected, and it felt like after the stop, we did nothing except ride into that strong headwind. My co-rider and I took turns taking pulls. I did the second half of the ride noticeably slower than the first.

When we got to the start, all but one or two of the riders in the faster group had left. I still had the five-mile ride home, so I fortified myself with a root-beer float from Gil & Bert's in Cranbury... and then rode home at a pace such that I would have been passed by a funeral procession.

Some days are better than others. 

breaking a spoke, and repercussions

 

On Wednesday, at the suggestion of The Excellent Wife (TEW), I went out on Al P's Wednesday Allentown ride, with a neighbor, David G, who lives in the same over-55 community that I do.

 

He did a route to Emery's Farm (see it on the ride page). It's a good route, and it was a good day... but something was off for me about the ride; the Yellow Maserati, my titanium bike, just didn't feel right to me. 

When we stopped at Emery's, I found out what the problem was: I'd broken a spoke on my rear wheel, and the wheel had gone enough out of true that it was binding on the caliper brake on every rotation. I'd built this wheel years ago, and had to rebuild it when there was a problem with the rim, so I wasn't either terribly surprised or terribly upset about it.

Technical stuff you can skip: On a rear wheel for a bike that uses caliper brakes, the right spokes are much shorter and tighter than the ones on the left because of the presence of the cassette, where for the corresponding front wheel, the spokes are of the same length and tightness on each side, if the wheel is assembled correctly. (With disk brakes, the front wheel has a similar issue, but the left spokes are tighter, due to the presence of the rotor; the issue with the rear wheel with a disk brake is similar to the issue with the caliper-brake wheel, but less pronounced, having an allowance for the cassette on the right and a lesser one for the rotor on the left.)

More technical stuff you can skip: when I built these wheels, I was taken with a rim that was surprisingly light for a rim of its class. It turned out that the lightness was achieved at the cost of rigidity. I built the wheels three-cross on both sides (that is, each spoke crosses three others on the way from the hub to the rim), and I found every time I put power down (like on a climb), I had the most annoying creaking from the rear wheel. No amount of tightening of the spokes eliminated it, and I ruined another rim trying to get them tight enough to stop creaking. I finally re-strung the left side of the wheel so that the spokes on that side did NOT cross, and that eliminated the problem. But the excessive tightening had affected the rim, so I noticed some cracks when I removed the wheel, and the changes in spoke tension probably ultimately caused the broken spoke.

So there I was at Emery's, with the gang making noises like it was time to depart. I could have tried to true the wheel enough so it would go through the brake (yes, I have spoke wrenches on my bike for that; they're in my multi-tool, and I have used them on a fellow rider's bike)... but that would take time, so I decided just to undo the cable on the rear brake, and use just the front brake on the ride back to the car. (I teach the class in Basic Bicycle Maintenance for Princeton Adult School, and have a unit where I talk about how the front brake does most of the braking, so I was confident I could do this.)

At one point, we had a stop at the bottom of a downhill, and if I'd started braking a second later, we might have had another insurance claim... but I stopped in time, and rode with more braking distance after that. The bike went well with no brake interference in the back!

After arriving home, I popped on another wheel from my supply (it will surprise no one who knows me that I have extra wheels), did the necessary adjustments, and the Yellow Maserati is ready to take on more rides!

(Yet MORE technical stuff you can ignore: the maximum tire size I could get on the Yellow Maserati was 25mm wide, because of the limited clearance at the back brake bridge. The rear wheel I'm using now is wider, and may allow for a 28mm tire, and I would like the ride-quality benefits of a wider tire. I have a 28mm-wide tire on order, and even if it doesn't fit the Maserati, I can use it on my wife's bike, which has much more sensible tolerances.)