Memoirs of a retinal detachment survivor: 4 months later

When I think of the multiple roles I play in my daily life (doting phonics expert mum, competitive sports mum, Shakespeare chatting/chiding mum to a pre-teen while keeping my temper in check, supportive spouse, CEO to my COO-darling husband, teacher, mentor, colleague, daughter, sister, friend, meal planner, house organizer, party planner, holiday organizer, soiree hostess,# yougetthepicture), I have had to, in the last 4 months add this new role to my resume- retinal detachment survivor.

It’s not an easy one. It’s seems rare but it happens. It’s not chronic and life-threatening; it’s not like a cancerous tumour. Yes, it’s your eye ; a very important organ, but you are expected to get on with your life and be thankful, grateful. I am. So full of gratitude. I am Bartimeas. I have been saved.

But I have had to concentrate on my new role because if I just ignore it, and say it has become me, then I might forget that I have been briefly in the darkness , reduced to counting fingers and seeing shadowy figures and back to light.

Since July 8 2012, I have had 5 operations on my eye( 4 on my right, 1 on my left) Three of them were laser ones(not LASIK, where one does it for vanity, or for practicality) but where the ophthalmologist shoots red light like “laser tags” your eye to seal your retina, to try to hold the delicate membrane together; it just beguiles and confounds me how this business of the retina works. Two of the operations were more delicate and invasive in nature. I really should have paid more attention in Biology lessons instead of writing haikus about bones! Also, I have had my eyes dilated so much that it really messes up your head!

But right now, in my new role as eye surgery survivor, I can tell you that the blooming retina is one heck of an important fabric of the human body! It decides on the amount of light that enters into your eye to determine your visual acuity. In fact, retinal specialists are really important medical experts- for they help you restore your vision using delicate microscopes and mini tools that you won’t probably touch in your lifetime. If they do a good job, you have a lot to be grateful for- whether it’s a retinopexy, a vitrectomy or a scleral buckle procedure.( I have had both the former.)

I am lucky( and I will say it again and again) that modern medical science has made me see again. 30 years ago, I probably wouldn’t have been this lucky.

One comic observation that has come out of this is that I have realised that it is a pre-requisite for ophthalmologists to really have nice ears, the amount of patients who have to stare at their ears all day!

There is a tiny halo left over from my post-silicone oil removal surgery that comes and sometimes goes. I have learned to live with it. It’s slightly smaller than a five cent coin and hopefully, my brain will train to see it like a parasite and will expel it. I will try to be positive and see it as a halo of God, rather than an irritant. Or an annoying oily glob leftover from the silicone oil tamponade used to buffer my retina back in place. I am technically middle aged-40- though of course my mind tells me I am really still 21. So presbyopia has started to set in. But imagine having to equilibrate your distinctly different eyes- one with a near 6/6 vision with an intra- ocular lens for long distance and the other, with a myopia of -700 which requires me wearing a contact lens on one eye. For reading, I now wear a pair of RM10 reading classes to help equilibrate both eyes, as fine eye work of telling the difference between a comma and a full-stop is really a daily occupational hazard.

Having been on eyes drops for about 3.5 months, from eye pressure drops to steroid ones to the much-despised dilation ones, I can tell you that it made me feel almost like a pill-popper. I was almost having withdrawal symptoms when I went off them! But gleefully so.

Sometimes, though rarely now, I wake up in nightmarish jolts just to check if I can see properly. I view people now as perfectly sighted or partially sighted or legally blind. I realize now that even if your sight is not 100%, life does go on. And you adjust. My partially blind foot masseuse( I have many conversations with my multiple masseuse- they are great conversationalists) taught me some humbling life lessons.

From him, I learned to slow down, close my eyes and be grateful. And just be.

That is all.

-R Nov 2012

Pre-surgery blues of a wonky-eyed girl

Pre-surgery blues of a wonky eyed girl

Image of a detached retina in the eye.

I don’t know which is worse, having an emergency surgery while on holiday in Europe, or planning for a scheduled one while working and in the throes of a tumultuous term filled with deadlines. I have had to tell all my classes that I will be away for about 2 weeks but they won’t be missing too many classes as they will be away at camp next week. Most of them are very genuinely concerned and very sweet. They have been accustomed to see me teach in my sunglasses for about 5 weeks now. But I had a 12 year old ask me with the brightest eyes, the most earnest of expressions and with the most pronounced Scottish accent- “Miss, what if the surgeon does something wrong, and makes you blind?” I had to laugh at that innocence, that honesty and that “Christ- kids do say the darnest things” statement! I told little A that I have every faith that I will be alright and I will be right back with my good eyes all, doing poetry in Jamaican accents and analyzing Blake’s Chimney Sweeper in no time. And if they were naughty, they’ll have lunch break detentions with me soon! My Year 12s were definitely more mature about my impending absence and they have assured me that the poetry assemblies we have planned will go ahead and they can be counted on to deliver them and they will be fine without me with them in Singapore on Camp Week! With my creative writing club, we have made a pact to write the scariest ghost stories and will meet again on Oct 31st to celebrate Halloween together! I told them I’ll have my ‘spying eyes’ watching their every move and making sure that all will be good. Of the 100 or so students whose lives I touch and whose lives touch mine weekly, many came by to wish me good luck, and told me they will be thinking of me with love & light. That’s really sweet. I have had loads of phonecalls from lovely aunts and concerned friends offering help and such. It’s such a different experience to my sudden emergency in Paris!

My own children told me that they have been praying for me every night. But they also told me that they are not worried as their mummy is very brave. My eldest girl is going to make me a David Guetta and U2 playlist with a little Baroque and Opera added in. My ever faithful rock of Gibraltar has cancelled all his appointments for tomorrow and will wait for me until my discharge from the specialist eye centre. He has not once failed to go with me to my countless eye appointments even though I said I can have the driver drive me. That’s pure devotion for which I am so grateful for. In sickness and in health.

As for the surgery itself although it’s a double procedure of removing the silicone oil and adding an intra ocular lense(IOL) onto my recently operated eye due to a cataract, it will apparently be routine, like going for a long eye examination. The nurse at the eye hospital told me that I won’t even get a bed to lie down after the surgery. I’ll get a sofa as I won’t be under GA or sedation. I’ll have local anaesthesia and was told to just bring a change of clothes. That’s good to know. As my eye centre is right next to my favourite mall in the whole wide world, perhaps I can pop over to the shops for a look after! ( kidding) I did tell the lady at Laura Mercier that I’ll be back soon!

Preparation for cover work for all my classes has been stressful. That means Julius Caesar lesson planning, IGCSE coursework and Susan Hill’s gothic novel analysis and reading assessments for the younger classes and activities that won’t mollify and muddle the cover/supply staff. I was even contemplating doing my surgery after a hard day’s work, i.e. after my favourite creative writing CCA on Wed. But I think that’s stretching it a bit too much. I should stop priotising work especially given the fragile state of my eyes. So, Thursday morning it will be.

Got to stay away from such fine eye work for a while after my double whammy procedure of silicone oil removal cum cataract surgery.

Last weekend, I treated myself to a foot massage and a facial, especially, since I won’t be able to have facial manipulations for a while. I didn’t bother with a pedicure for obvious reasons. You can never have nail varnish in an operating theatre.

I am a tad nervous but I have sought the opinion of my kind French ophthalmologist as well about this coming double surgery and I think I will be okay. This was after my frank discussion with my very experienced Malaysian ophthalmologist who was also quite blunt in his analogy of describing what my impending surgery will entail. When I asked, “Will you be making a big incision to drain out the oil in my eye or will you use the cannula irrigation method"? Answer: I’ll use a better finer method and try to drain it all out as much as possible and I will use the same incision to insert the news lense. My next question, What happens to the oil residue if any? Answer: They might form into clots or bubbles and become floaters. What? Why can’t ALL the oil be removed? It’s almost a catch 22- between silicone oil and gas. Both have their pros and cons, It’s like washing a greasy plate without detergent. Ok… (my brow furrowed?) You try to rinse out as much as the oil but you can’t guarantee it will all be removed if you don’t use detergent right? ( I started having an image of my eye going round and round a dish-washer minus the soapy suds and the oily residue doesn’t all come off. Not the best image to have before getting into surgery mode.

After having had ze best dream French medical treatment, it’s frankly quite a comedown, god-awful bedside manners-wise. No wonder, you pay for what you get. Private medical care in Malaysia is one of the cheapest in the world, and coupled with the MCP mentality of surgical demigods, I guess I’ll just have to manage my expectations. But I am sure my very experienced surgeon knows what he is doing and I really shouldn’t be doubting him. But goodness me, a little TACT would have been nice! For the surgeon, it may just be 'another day at the office" but for us patients, I think they forget that it's quite a stressful part of their lives!!!(Here I go in my “formidable femme fatale” mode again, as my better half would quip!)

This double surgery is not going to cost me the price of a Birkin bag but at least I’ll be 10 minutes from home. I may even take photos of the OT with my iphone since I am only going to be locally anaesthesised- again- kidding! I will have to learn to equilibrate both my eyes after the surgery as my untreated eye is still highly myopic. And the operated eye will hopefully attain the best visual acuity that it can be. And let’s hope that my retina will stay INTACT!

We shall see. But oh yes, I definitely have seriously mucked–up, bad luck eyes but I am still filled with gratitude. I am blessed. Right now, my adorable little boy is waiting for me to dance with him. So, wish me luck...

Wonky eyed girl

3 Oct 2012

Travelogue Amsterdam: Hippie Haven

Travelogue Amsterdam: Hippie Haven Or Travelling with elderly parents

A panoramic shot taken by Belly Boo, view of the Jordaan district with Dad in the background.

Welcome to Amsterdam- the amorous city!

These days hippies aren’t hip anymore but clearly the paraphernalia that hippiness is associated with– grass/weed/ free love/flower-power and a perpetual blissed-out stupor is still what you will easily find in Amsterdam. We found ourselves in this bustling and crowded Dutch capital on our last leg of our Euro tour this summer- a little tired, a little ready to go home but still excited to see what this city of canals and bicycles has to offer. It was actually my filial duty to ‘bring’ (not that my parents still need us to ‘bring’ them anywhere) my Mum to Amsterdam, as she has always expressed an interest in seeing this city. And why not? It’s always fun travelling with my parents and they are not going to be around forever and if you’re going to book accommodation for 5, you might as well book it for 7! Those of you who know us well know that we take go on at least at least one communal holiday a year with my folks. The children love bonding with grandma and grandpa and as we don’t live in the same city, my other half adores them to bits and there’s always that extra suitcase space in my Dad’s bag in case I have bought too much!

Happy signs like this abound in Amsterdam!

After failing to secure a canal house that I liked in the Jordaan distrct, I settled for an inexpensive 3 bedroom apartment which boasted a very convenient location- right next to Chinatown and near the red light district. What I didn’t know about Amsterdam is that every turn and corner, IS the red light district. Like many European nations, the world’s oldest profession is a LEGAL one, but nowhere does it become as entertaining as you would find it in Amsterdam. So we found ourselves thrown into the heart and soul of the RED LIGHT district on our very first evening in Amsterdam. After a hearty Chinese meal- the proprietors were from Hong Kong, and my dad had enjoyed himself ordering in Cantonese and speaking his native tongue, we found ourselves on a cloudy summer dusk walking the red light district, with 3 children aged 12 and below. I think if social services had been with us, we’d have been arrested for sure.

Moulin Rouge of a salubrious kind.

My other half had visited Amsterdam, years ago as an inter-railing university student and back then, the flesh trade was as active as before. These days the ladies are still at the windows and they do come in all shapes and sizes, colour and ages. While waiting for customers at their glass cubicles, they entertain themselves on their ipod, iphone or ipad! Dad was discreetly trying not to stare( so obviously), while my 9 year old popped this question to me: Mummy, who are these ‘creatures’ at the windows? I got flummoxed and told a BARE- FACED MUMMY LIE: Err, err sweetie, you know the wax creatures in Madame Tussauds? Yes, they are like that. But why are they dressed like that? For a show, sweetheart. What show? Our ever sensible and straight-laced twelve year old then turned around and whispered firmly to me: This is NOT a place for children, mummy, let’s get out of here, so there endeth our tour of the red light district at the strict behest of our very proper 12 year old.

Near the Red Light District in Amsterdam with my parents

After the kids were deposited back to the apartment which was very lovely and above board, despite its location!-with signs everywhere saying “we do not solicit sex or drugs in this premises”- M and I went down for a romantic walk. And like any curious tourist, we walked around to see what they had to offer. There was of course the sex museum. And countless sex paraphernalia shops. And there were live shows. None of which interested us. Scores of tourists were queuing up for that but to pay 36 euros to watch people simulate a sex scene in public, no thank you. But it was a fun walk with your other half, while the kids got babysat by the grandparents.( see the benefits of travelling with your parents?)

If there was ONE glaring thing that stood out between Amsterdam and Paris, it the LACK of pharmacies or apothecaries in the city! My half French friend, P told me that the French love their tablets. His grandparents would line up all their tablets next to their wine glasses at meal times. I guess the Dutch don’t need to be medicated as much, as they have fun things like cannabis tea, or happy cookies, and grass weed pizza to feast on. In Paris, every three steps you turn in a glaring green sign of the cross calling out to you- ‘drugs, drugs, drugs’. In Amsterdam, you couldn’t see a SINGLE pharmacy! I guess if just get the REAL stuff so easily, so no one ever falls sick, or needs eye drops or eye wash!

The next morning, I was adamant that we find our way to Anne Frank’s Huis. This wonky-eyed girl still loves her ambly walks everywhere and kinda didn’t think that her 68 year old dad who doesn’t like walking as much might not feel quite the same way. We did have fun on the walk from central Amsterdam to leafy Jordaan where the Frank hideaway house was situated. It’s not far away but canals after canals and houses that look the same after a while can make even the best street navigator get disorientated. We walked about 100m past the house before we realized we had to turn back. But that’s the joy of walking you find yourselves in places or SHOPS that you normally wouldn’t stumble upon. And there was a lovely, kitschy homeware store that I popped into to buy some really cool vintage cups for le abode.

Most people would be taken aback by the LONG QUEUE outside the museum and we almost didn’t go in, but I am a determined cookie and I queued up while dad and mum could wait in the shade. Within 30 mins, we managed to get into the house. For those of us who have read the Diary of Anne Frank, it’s a must see. The Jews were a persecuted lot and Anne's diary shows, just a fraction of that time of horror, torment and emergency that all the Jews felt under the terrible spell. It’s a humbling place- especially when you read snippets of her diary and see the windowless quarters in which the Frank family found themselves hiding for 2 years before they were betrayed and sent off to Auswitch and Bergen Bergen. The best thing for me was that mum and dad were really keen about the history, as they had been to Austria and Germany despite earlier misgivings about yet another museum with their Renie. For our children, it was an amazing living history lesson. Our older girls were especially keen! After all, what better juxtaposition of the social fabric is there in Amsterdam between the red light district and the house of Anne Frank?

We couldn’t take any pictures inside the house, but it’s definitely a must-see while in Amsterdam.

Queueing up at the Anne Frank Huis- uploading photos on my daughter's ipod.

Holland is a very compact country. To get outside to the “country” it’s 20 minutes away. It’s got to be one of my favourite cities in terms of accessibility into the city centre from their main airport. (Hong Kong is my second favourite city in terms of airport to city centre accessibility.) But Amsterdam tops it for sure as in 20 minutes from Schiphol, you are in the heart and soul that is Amsterdam. And onwards, if you hire a car or take a tour bus, you will find yourself in quaint cheese, clog, windmill, seaside village just minutes away.

My mum is mad on canals so we thought it’s be a great idea to go on a canal cruise and give my Dad a chance to nap. He loves his naps. The canal cruise itself was a bit of a disappointment but you will find on a warm summer’s day (25 celcius), gorgeous Dutch girls in skimpy bikinis will be riding on little boats sun tanning their torsos and drinking Heineken. The tour droned on for a bit after a while but it’;s not hard to understand why Amsterdam is known as the city of canals. Like arteries, they form the main mode of transportation, next to trams, around the compact, and rather picturesque city.

Lovely canals like this is found all over this beautiful city.

It’s easy to get a tram, across to Museumplein, where the magnificent and under-restoration Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh museums are situated. The green open spaces in front of the Rikjs is enough to lift anyone’s spirits. It was here that we took photos of the very aptly placed logo of IAMsterdam- the city’s proud logo! We managed to get into the Van Gogh museum using the shorter senior citizens queue( again the benefits of travelling with parents), and the children were really into the life and works of Holland’a most famous artist who actually spent most of his time in France. It was here, that we cemented the fact of returning to France this time to see the two key places where Van Gogh was inspired by, worked, tuned mad and painted- Auvers-sur Oise and Arles! The kids counted the number of sunflowers but I fell in love with the turquoise and gorgeous Almond Blossoms which were immortalised on mugs, plates, bags and what not at the museum gift shop.

Family at Museumplein.

The kids had a lovely play at Vondelpark, which is really lovely, green and such a nice green lung for the city. We wished we had more time to speand there as it was the sort of park that you could truly enjoy a gourmet picnic in. They ate Stroopwaffles like there was no tomorrow and we bought about 8 packets of this Dutch specialty home as they were really good. Like hardened pancakes with melted honey.

Here's our cheeky boy enjoying a stroopwaffle on the canal cruise!

Possibly my most favourite photo of the THOUSANDS we took in Europe! Grandpa with grandson!

Our Euro tour ended on a high note actually; well, due to some boohoo, Malaysia Airlines/KLM bumped us off our flight- and we had no seats on our intended flight to go home on. Every cloud had a silver lining, we managed to get seats the next day, which meant an EXTRA day in Amsterdam with my partying parents (who were leaving for Croatia the day after) and getting bumped UP to Business Class! For a girl who had had eye surgery less than 3 weeks before, it surely was a LOVELY & NOVEL way of getting home in style!

All of us at Zaanse Schans- the windmill village just 20 minutes away from Amsterdam

On our bonus day in Holland, we joined my parents on a tour!!! ( we don't do tours, I hate tours and once when the girls were very little, we got off a tour bus in the middle of Hong Kong’s Peak as I couldn’t stand the tour/guide/bus but we felt this was the easiest and most novel way of seeing a bit of Holland outside the capital). The bus driver was a bit of a jerk and bigot( the only unpleasant encounter we had with Europeans the ENTIRE time we were there) but the tour guide was useful enough and Zaanse Schans must surely be the most commercialized, most visited, and most photographed Dutch windmill village there was! Our whistle-stop there only produced some quick snaps shots and speedy information about the history and uses of traditional windmills. We then proceeded to Volendam, a quaint seaside port where we sat by the harbourfront to write postcards- the only time I sent postcards from Europe to anyone, and to the island village of Maarken where clogs and cheese were made.

My four favourite people feeding ducks in Maarken

It was a lovely half day tour which ended at 2pm and Mum and the girls and I managed to do some very last minute shopping at Amsterdam's main shopping district- Kalverstraat, which again is no different to Stroget in Copenhagen and to a lesser extent, though much less picturesque, like Champs Elysees in Paris. At Bijenkorf department store, I managed to spot some cool Jean Paul Gaultier designer diet coke bottles and got one each for the kids. (though I oppose to them drinking coke- ahh, the paradoxes of being a Tiger Mum)

I must say the KLM staff was ever so professional and helpful with us over our flight debacle home but it’s not bad at all to spend your final evening in Europe in Schiphol Airport’s (which to me is one of the most agreeable airports in the world) KLM’s Business Class Lounge, sipping champagne & eating gourmet cheese and watching the Olympics ( in English) before boarding our direct flight back to Kuala Lumpur. And on the plane, we met the nicest Dutch-Indonesian businessman lawyer fella who told us where to find the best Indonesian cuisine next time, and it’s NOT in the red light district.

Till next time, Europe. We’ll be back sooner than you know it!

Amsterdam July 30- Aug 3

R- Sept 2012

Diary of a Wonky-Eyed Girl

17 Sept 2012

Possibly the most unglam photo of me online-just before my discharge from the American Hospital of Paris. But with my seeing eyes wide open and oh so happy!

It has been exactly two months since my delicate emergency eye operation in Paris. How fast does time fly? Some of my lady friends are still teasing me about being 'fancy', to end up in, of all cities, gay Paree, with a surgery. After the surgery, I still had about 6 weeks’ worth of holidays, half of which was spent mostly in Europe. I had three weeks left upon our return to KL which was spent with follow up check-ups with my KL doctor then a few relaxing days in Singapore with my second sister and a couple of precious nights in Phuket with my husband sans children. Despite the one long haul flight home and 6 short haul flights that I had undertaken since my surgery, I am all good.

My eye about 2.5 weeks after the surgery- in Amsterdam.

Apart from that I have been home, trying to do what I DON’T do best. Relax, rest and stay still. About 3 weeks ago, I went back to work, and though challenging, I am getting used to it by now though it involves a lot of fine eye work!

On a daily basis people, I have colleagues and students asking me about my eye. People are quite sweet and very genuine with their concerns. Some are quite direct, others, nosey. Like one day last week, the library girls asked me why one eye was smaller than the other. It’s so Malaysian and so in your face and I patiently explained to them the lazy eye syndrome as I am not using my right eye as much. They looked shocked & almost felt sorry for me! Or when an elderly church member exclaimed loudly, ‘Wah, your eyes are still red, ah, you poor thing! You must Lie Down, Lie Down!” or this other person who kept making MY eye problem HER issue! or they stare, and ask if I am in pain. I am not! I think next time, I’ll just keep my sunglasses on and spare people the awkwardness. But mostly & thankfully, people are kind and concerned.

About 4 weeks after my surgery, back home in KL.

So I thought I’d write a diary.

You know that endearing classic Van Morrison song, “Brown- eyed girl”? Now hubby sings that song to me except he has changed the lyrics to ‘you’re my WONKY eyed girl. It’s one of my all-time favourite songs, so I don’t mind. “Wonky”, my eye still is though my visual acuity(with silicone oil) is now about 6/12 or 6/15 on most check -ups. I had to go off my steroid drops because my ocular pressure shot up so now I am steroid free. However at the last check up, my opthalmologist has detected that I am starting to show signs of cataract. I wasn’t surprised as my dad had his cataracts done when he was only 38. I know cataract problems are usually linked to geriatrics. I am hardly one, YET, but my eyes apparently are. SO he will monitor it at my next retinal examination, and he may just FIX ME UP at my next surgery when he removes the silicone oil. And NO, I am NOT going back to Paris for the second surgery and to do a spot of shopping, ladies! Though it's very tempting!

Every day is still a blessing. I did not go blind. I am blessed. I can see! Medical science and amazing surgeons do exist and they are great.

I have heard of WORST cases of retinal detachments.

I have been lucky. Last week I stumbled upon a blog by a guy in Canada who had 4 successive retinal detachments on the same eye and finally, he had a similar eye operation as mine, but he kept going blind. He stopped updating his blog at the end of Sept 2009, so I shudder to think what would have happened to him. I only hope he’s fine.

My scary wonky eye look!

I have got used to relying on my untreated eye MORE which has become a habit, which is bad for my treated eye, so I had to change the prescription of my glasses temporarily to even out both eyes. Hey, bring it on, last week my GOOD eye came down with conjuntivitis, as though saying “GIVE ME A BREAK!” Sometimes I go without my contact lens on the untreated eye so I use my wonky eye so it doesn’t get lazy or smaller. I try to read with only my wonky eye only for at least 20 minutes a day. I also test my eye sight by closing one hand one each eye on a daily basis, sometimes a few times a day! :) At the back of my mind, I worry a little bit about my 'good' eye too. The French doctors have discovered that I have signs of lattice degeneration( where the periphercal retina becomes atrophic) on that eye. Laser thereapy has been recommended but my opthalmologist here says to leave it alone at the moment. Let the macula-off retinal detachment eye recover as much as it can first.

As I shared in my poem, I am VERY paranoid of floaters now- any spots, or flying mosquito or black dots in the distance can sometimes shake me to the core. At my morning hill walk today, I saw a bird in the distance, and thought it was a floater in my eye, that’s how scary it gets, sometimes. But mostly I am very calm. I am very conscious of my head position especially when lying down. I try not to look up at the ceiling AT ALL COSTS. I still sleep on my side, or on my front, very conscious of the viscousity of the oil in my eye. A couple of weeks ago, I made the mistake of looking up into the sky when taking a shower, and saw bits of floaters ABOVE the silicone oil level, and panicked. My dr here says it’s ok, it’s the oil that’s causing the instability inside my eye. It looks like we are going to have the silicone oil removal surgery on the first week of Oct. My KL surgeon is going to France for most of September and he shoots off to Italy for a congress in mid Oct and he wants be around from early Oct till mid Oct to monitor me in case there are any complications post-silicone oil removal.

Fingers crossed. SO my next surgery using local anaesthesia will most likely be on Oct 3.

In these 2 months, I have heard of 3 other people having retinal detachments over the summer. So I know I am not alone, one man is in his 50s, a lady in her 30s and a young man, just 22. So it’s not exactly an age thing. One guy I know can't play tennis anymore as he keeps missing the ball! Thank goodness I am not into contact sports.

I have gone back to most normal activities. I can drive easily but gently with one side of my contacts. I have resumed my weekend 12km hill walks by mostly looking down, and I stop myself from running on rough pavements. I haven’t started swimming again, at least with my head fully submerged in the pool. Because of the incisions in my eye, sometimes the redness flares up, especially now that I am off my steroid eye drops. I am not sure how chlorine will react to it but I am sure it will be ok.

The specialist eye centre that I go to in KL is always FULL of patients!

I still daren’t go for my monthly facial yet, lest the manipulations cause any redetachment. I can’t walk our big dog Sparky, as he’s huge and he might yank my eye off. Luckily, I don’t wear any eye make-up so that hasn’t been an issue at all. I have been taking more berries of all kinds- goji berries, blue berries, eye berries:)and been drinking copious amounts of fresh carrot juice. For whatever it’s worth, if they don't help my eyes, I am keeping my other internal organs healthy. It's funny that it takes something like this to force me to keep my head down, literally!

I miss, miss, miss CARRYING my 5 year old and swinging him about. He’s about 20kg and that’s the weight that I am not supposed to haul, at least not yet until I am a 100% sure I am ok. My greatest struggle really is to remember that I need to take it easy. But sometimes that's easier said than done.

My students, bless them, are used to seeing me teach in my shades as sometimes the glare from the sunlight outside or the florescent lighting in the classroom can be unsettling. There is no pain, but just a mild discomfort when the glare hits my eye. I can also feel that my cataract is setting in. Oh joy!

I still hate getting my eyes dilated every time I am at my eye clinic. The KL dilation drops seem to be so potent that I feel awful for hours on end- and can’t use my eyes to read for at least 6-7 hours afterwards. The nurse says it's because my iris is too small that they have to top up the dilation dose for me. The ones in Paris were fine after just a couple of hours. I am not comparing.

As for reading, it’s part and parcel of my occupational hazard so how do I cut down on that? I must know when to rest my eyes when they get tired.

In the meantime, being wonky-eyed has its perks- I get to wear my Chanel shades all the time, get cat-whistled, “Hey, Jackie O,” and my Year 7s think I am a dictionary with cool shades, and best of all, my other half has hired a personal driver to chauffeur me around. What more could a girl ask for?

I could SO get used to THIS! Wonky eyed tai-tai!

And please don’t laugh at my eye pictures here- they were a personal photo journal to track the progress of my healing!

I am keeping everything crossed & praying that Oct 3/4 will be a success!

Till then, c'est la vie!

A bit of wonky-eyed glamour!

R- Sept 17 2012

Confessions of a "granny" blogger!

OR WHY I WILL NOT END MY SENTENCES WITH WTF!

My (ten years junior to me) baby sister, whose opinions I regard highly, has said that my blogs are too long. She was trying to get me to add ads into my blog and use more photos. Apparently, people who have nuffnang-endorsed blogs are the successful bloggers. I clearly am not. I have a grand total of 14 followers, many of whom are close friends and some sweet students whom I have bribed. I am hardly a serial blogger. Though I love writing, I hardly have time to update my blog posts especially during term time when I am juggling with planning, teaching and marking on top of the kids and our hectic social life and other side secret projects that I seem to get myself embroiled in. And I write in long form.

So I went into these so called popular blogs that she told me about. The ones that NETizens on Blogosphere are raving about. And it’s confirmed, I am definitely OLD(er). And I can’t bear the acronyms that they use, or the poor grammar that sometimes comes along with it. And the incessant camwhoring! ( but that’s another blogpost altogether!) I blame it on politics which has destroyed our education system and has annihilated a whole generation of potentially strong writers in Malaysia. C’mon, we have been a British colony until 1957. In 55 years, we have managed to lose potentially the most important legacy that colonialisation (sometimes) bring- a strong education system- and with it, a nation of competent, if not fluent speakers and writers of the world’s most important language (no, it’s still English, not quite Chinese , yet). And I don’t think adding wtf at the end of a sentence is cool, or right, at all. Perhaps it’s because I am a product of an all-girls school that was started by very proper Catholic French and Irish nuns. Perhaps, I am an ole grandma when it comes to writing conventions. Or as my hubby often says about me, you are an old soul.

I am human. Of course, I cuss, but if I am going to add wtf at the end of every sentence, I might as well slash my wrists. That’s not blogging. That’s writing poorly, in bad English. (That’s a redundancy). I may THINK WTF in my head, sometimes,( or all the time if my thyroid is on overdrive), but I don’t need to put it at the end of a sentence.

Which comes back to my main point, I am NEVER going to get thousands of followers for my blog, because I sound, old, archaic and wordy. And I use real humour, irony, sarcasm, hyberbole, persuasion and rhetoric, which I guess can be summed up with one acronym- WTF- by the generation Y bloggers. It’s almost a professional hazard: being a teacher.linguist.grammarian.writer.editor.critic type person that I am, which finds me English knickers knotted in this manner. I admit, I even cringe when the Jesuit padre in church makes subject-verb agreement errors in his sermon, and I am in church, for God’s sake.(no pun intended). But I do calm down after a vigorous prayer session, and ACCEPT and understand that many EAL English learners of the world do struggle with English, particularly of the written form; if it is their second or additional language, hence they will not write or speak in that fluency that is required of a first language speaker. I still blame it on the education system.

Often, I get asked, how are you an English teacher, Miss. You don’t have an accent. Aren’t you Chinese? Aren’t you Malaysian? Being stereotyped and sussed out at the same time. I tell them, my dear students that I am a citizen of the world, and as long as I dream, and cuss in English, it’s my first language. Never mind that it’s the only language that I really feel comfortable ranting in or grew up writing the most in.

So, back to my long-winded blog- I think it’s the age thing, but I am also a very detailed person. I process things chronologically, and I pay attention to detail in everything. Hence I can arrive at a 5000 word blog entry (worthy of one chapter in a Master’s dissertation without the citations) in an hour if I set my mind to it, and this is excluding all the wtfs that I have omitted! Perhaps I should go for a course in concision, precis and "less is more".

So, dearest sister, I am definitely a confirmed Generation X. I think , if I I may say so myself, a pretty cool one too, considering that I own a blog, know how to run it, have facebook, ( but stops at twitting), is on instagram and now use google+ and googledocs and use email daily. I also teach a large number of very young people on a yearly basis, and from them, I have struggled to get the point across that if you do not know your parts of speech, your articles and prepositions and your clauses and what not, FIRST, before anything else, there is little point in going WTF, BRB, LOL or NP with me. As for people of the younger generations whose blogs get all the followers and hits like crazy because they use wtf at the end of every sentence, I am sorry, I shall be happy with my 14 followers and odd and rare comments or limited likes.

I am NOT from generation Y or Z and proud of it! Now excuse me, as I GTG and LMFAO cause YOLO!

R- Sept 2012

On Blindness-An Ode to Milton

On Blindness (An Ode to Milton)

I wonder when Milton wrote about his blindness

If he ever worried about not

Being able to do power-point presentations anymore

Or those whizzy Prezi slides

Or read the fine-print of his students’ essays

In sometimes unintelligible handwriting.

Of the words of yet another brand new author or endless lecture notes and lit crit.

Or whether he knew that retinal detachments

Can be 50-50 though more likely 85% these days

I so thank the good Swiss doctor in the 1920s

For inventing the surgery that has saved many eyes

But I’ll bet you Milton didn’t walk out of Chanel

On Avenue Montaigne weeping, salty hot tears

of uncontrollable sobs, in thankfulness, of his eye sight saved

But I wonder too if he ever felt paranoid

About spots on his windscreen, or a buzzy mosquito near his eye

Thinking NEW FLOATERS have appeared

Or any little black dots set off new alarm bells

Sending him on a mini-panic of something being wrong with his eyes(again),

Nor wake up in jolts sometimes, testing if he could see in the dark,

But I know for sure I am just

Thankful, grateful and humbled that

I can see my salty tears; I can see the redness on my pupil,

I can SEE!

And even when that little boy

in the paediatric opthalmological suite next to mine

who was bawling with his unseeing eyes,

which made me sad,

But I feel doubly humbled and crushed in my humility and smallness

That other problems- glaucoma, cataract, ptosis

Seem pale in comparison,

For I’ll NEVER ever take for granted again,

The beauty of a simmering sunset, or the radiance of my mother’s smile,

Or the majesty of the sky slowly opening at dawn

And the intricate motifs and patterns on a lovely sheer softness of a silky scarf,

Or that I can still tread a needle, or buckle my son’s sandles,

And see, watch, witness, capture, behold

In the beauty of my children’s innocent love or watch them slowly grow

Or forsake the simple pleasure of reading them a bed-time story

And mostly see, freeze, frame the generous and vivid love,

Glowing in my man’s kind and earnest face,

How can you take such beauty for granted?

So, I thank Science and a God who loves me

For saving me

from blindness.

R-September 2012

Travelogue Denmark: The Happy Nation

Travelogue Denmark: The Happy Nation

The magical Tivoli Gardens at dusk

I think if my sister wasn’t living and working in Copenhagen for a couple of years, we wouldn’t have gone there on purpose. It’s a bit removed from the rest of popular Europe, and it’s a very expensive city. Yes, it’s one of the happiest countries in the world. They seem really happy. Always polite, smiling and are very friendly. Fit as hell too considering the number of bicycles there are, all beautiful and blonde and very young. If Danes were my type, I’d be ogling, but I think they may be a little too tall for me, plus I had a wonky eye, so I let my Dad and husband do the ogling as they saw scores and scores of immodest sexy young female Danes just with bare naked torsos and sexy bikini tops out in the summer sun, down by Islands Brygges’s harbour -front where my sister lives.

The Harbourfront at Islands Brygge

I am full of admiration for my baby sister( nearly ten years my junior). She’s an expat heading a change management department in a huge Danish shipping conglomerate, she is newly married, and has lived separately from the beloved other half for almost a year, had survived a winter bike accident, which saw her being operated on in Mumbai, and would cycle to work, like a native about 8 km away in her office suit and does all the DIY herself. And she makes chicken rice from scratch, and this is someone who has lived in Singapore since she was 14!

So Copenhagen was our most special destination. Our eldest girl, S, ever the sensible one, upon seeing Chinese food being sold by the weight in Paris opted for ratatouille, steaks, mussels & frites and double cheeseburgers & escargots for a week, and patiently waited till we got to CPH to have a taste of home. And it was truly home, as Nana and Kongkong were there waiting for us. They had just arrived from Penang via Singapore the day before we did and it was almost like Chinese New Year! Mum was dishing out all sorts of Nyonya delights in E’s compact kitchen- kapitan curry, dark soya sauce pork strips, sweet & sour fish, you name it! Dad, bless him, finally realized that I had had a delicate and an open, invasive eye surgery, not just a laser one, and we had many a long chats about my recent scare, and eye issues, from his 5 operations to mine and both of them fussed over me as any retired parents would their 40 year old daughter. I wasn’t allowed to do anything or lift a finger. It was as if I was suddenly an invalid, with a wonky eye! And at my sister’s apartment in Copenhagen, I slept and slept and my eye healed and healed.

On our first evening, we had the most magical evening at Tivoli Gardens, the world’s oldest theme park. Walt Disney apparently was so inspired by Tivoli that he based his Disneyland theme parks on this. While M and the kids with my sister E went on all the rides, I sat in between my parents, just like I was 5, and listened to live, DJ-spun music from the fairground in Heineken sun-loungers under a twinkly tree and watched the sun set on a lovely warm summer’s evening, feeling cocooned and protected. It was heavenly, and one of the most memorable nights of my life.

We took it really easy in Denmark. We ate at home, both lunch and dinner and Mum made sure we got our fair share of home cooked food for me to recuperate!( I didn’t tell her about my mussel eating and beer drinking habits in France and Belgium!) Given the fact that eating out in Copenhagen is rather expensive, it worked well for us. At the request of my dear husband one day, I accompanied him to the Carlsberg Brewery by foot!( The kids opted to stay home with grandma and grandpa to play Scrabble and to bond with their beloved aunty.) It was a complete letdown to him( compared to the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam he had gone to when interailing as a student), but I enjoyed the slow 5km walk that I did with him to get there. If it’s one thing I LOVE about Europe, is that I can walk everywhere. The weather is (mostly)always lovely to walk.( Except this one time when we were bracing hail and wind walking from Marie- Antoinette’s playground back to the main palace of Versailles one wet and freezing spring day, and I had worn boots that heaped blisters on my blisters!) But, mostly, it’s therapeutic and a wonderful form of exercise. It’s bracing if it’s windy, and it’s not humid and even at its sunniest, you don’t actually get HOT. After my brief love affair with Belgian beer, Danish beer was just plain awful! As Carlsberg is freely available in M’sia, I have never liked it. And my opinion didn’t change in Denmark either. The best part of the brewery- seeing my man enjoy himself so much, trying out the different kinds of drafts. I realized it doesn’t take much to please him. Just his beer and his Malaysia Airlines ‘kacang’ that he’d packed in his back pack. A Malaysian true and true. And seeing him completely relaxed and away from work and business calls is a pleasure in itself. After my Paris scare, he, for one, completely deserved to have a break from any form of stress. And I got to see the sculptures in the garden. That was my high point. And we found out that the family who founded Carlsberg are also big advocates of the arts, and they had donated the Little Mermaid statue to the city of Copenhagen, so they aren’t just plain, greedy beer barons after all.

A man and his beer is a happy man!

The next day, we managed to drag Dad( who isn't fond of castles and museums) and Mum with us to see Hamlet’s Castle called Kronborg, an hour away by train. The castle itself wasn’t great as far as European Castles go, but as an English Lit person, it wasn’t to be missed. Nope, I didn’t see or feel Hamlet’s ghost nor hear Ophelia’s cries but there was a boutique on the Elsinore high street named Ophelia, so that'd do I suppose. We could see the ferries going back and forth the harbour to Helsingborg, Sweden. There isn’t really much of a difference between the two neighbours as we discovered. Both citizens speak excellent English, they both love fish on Ryvita (a phrase I shamelessly borrowed from Bill Bryson) and the use the same currency. But Elsinore is a quaint little town and the market square was atmospheric and being another sunshiny summer’s day, the kids had ice-cream and I did a bit of shopping!

Mum & Dad in their element at Kastellet Park

Following that, we also managed to see Kastellet Park and the Little Mermaid at dusk, and it’s really a pleasant stroll through verdant greens and grassy knolls. We had a fresh and dewy sun blessed evening, one of the loveliest of the year in all of Denmark which made it all the more pleasurable. My sister says mostly she gets home and stays as close as she can by the heater. We also saw Amalienborg Palace in the night which was another lovely jaunt through one of Europe’s most agreeable capitals.

With my baby sister by the little mermaid- I used to read aloud Hans Christian Andersen stories to her as a child!

My sister then whisked us off to the island of Bornholm, by bus, then ferry, which technically is on the Baltic Sea and south of Sweden and not far from the German coast. A sun-kissed( on the day of our arrival), windblown isle, the day we arrived was the sunniest it had been all year. I think we Malaysians tend to bring the sun with us wherever we go. (Someone said the same to us in Paris the morning we arrived, for it had been chilly and cloudy in Paris right up to Bastille Day weekend). We hired a car and drove around the main key spots of Bornholm. There is nothing more joyous than squares upon rectangles of bright yellow rape fields and pine forest whizzing by you as you drive along Bornholm’s picturesque and rural country roads. The views from the ruins of Hammerhus Castle was particularly arresting.

Belly Boo atop the ruins of Hammerhus Castle in Bornholm

We enjoyed a family picnic by the grass. Mum was taking it easy as she was still recovering from her recent asthma flare up. It’s quite rare for us to be able to explore castle ruins so openly and for the children to be able to climb trees in the shade. As my sister had booked our accommodation rather late in Bornholm, we ended up staying in a family hostel in an 8 bedded room, so we had a bit of a George & Lennie kind of adventure on bunk beds with sheets and pillow cases that we had brought with us from Copenhagen. Of course this was Scandinavia, so the rooms and shared bathrooms were really pristine and hygienic and we all fell into a restful, communal sleep that weekend on Bornholm. On our last day on Bornholm, it rained and rained and all the shops worthy of going into were shut and we had a few hours to kill before the next ferry to Sweden, so we went to the cinema instead. The one theatre cinema was so quaint and empty during the mid-afternoon showing of the Miley Cyrus-Demi Moore movie set in Chicago, screened entirely in English that we felt that we owned the cinema!

Bornholm's wild coast on the Baltic Sea

A visit to Denmark is not complete without mentioning their much-loved royal family. The Danish royal family has got to be one of the more popular blue-bloods left these days. Their Queen Margrethe II is very much loved and revered though lately, it’s good ole Princess Aussie Mary who hog their headlines on Hello. It’s Mary in her new trench coat, or it’s Mary- pregnant again with Princess number ???. It’s Mary- shopping at Illums Bolighus for a new cot!

In all seriousness though, the Queen, in her 41st year as Head of the Monarchy is very much loved and her recent ruby jubilee was well celebrated and the people of Denmark love their royals, who seem so well behaved in comparison to the other royals in the region. As a European country still holding on to their kronors, Denmark is one of the countries in the world who give the citizens an incentive for recycling! Every tin can returned with the code still intact fetched 1 kronor to 2 kronors each. To our horror, the only people bothered about recycling were the Asian immigrants, carrying large empty recycling bags around and ensuring that they fill them up to the brim so that they collect 50-100 kronors for their ‘recycling’ effort. The Islands Brygge harbour-front and Nyhavn after a big night are pretty lucrative recycling hauls. It’s a huge shame that the Danes, who are well-noted for living well, are not partaking in this recycling endeavour initiated by their government.

No visit to Copenhagen is ever complete without a stroll through Stroget, their popular long pedestrian mall now chock full of fast food joints and fast food takeaways which brings the tone down a little, which made it look like any international high street in any majot European city. It was in Illums Bolighus, the Danish homeware department store that is appointed by Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark that I was in retail heaven, looking at designer lamps and furnishings and all gorgeous house things! It's hard not to fall in love with Danish design. They are clean cut, very swish and really beautiful. Every piece is a work of art.

It was full moon at the tail end of our week in Denmark and we were on the beach near the serene & tranquil deer park where the former king used to hunt and play, and as you know, kids say the darnest things. My little girl pointed to the full moon, and said to me: “Mummy, you didn’t turn into a were-wolf this month!” Haha! Perhaps it was the easy going atmosphere of being in Denmark, the world’s happiest nation. Perhaps, I was still high on eye drops of all kinds, but mostly, it was such a special week, of family closeness and love and just catching up with my baby sister and my parents. So, I didn’t turn into a werewolf as I sometimes do when I am particularly stressed out.

Full moon in Denmark near the deer park.

We left Copenhagen for Amsterdam, our final European leg with stuffed up bags- the kids had discovered 'Tiger', A more upmarket Danish equivalent of Daiso, a really cute 5 dollar shop if you like, with anything under the sun done in kitshcy, cutesy Scandinavian designs and I discovered their designer homeware, especially the lamps!( that I wasn’t allowed to carry at all), heavy hearts and teary eyes. It’s hard saying good bye to family. And in Copenhagen, it truly felt like home, one away from home. R- August 2012

Travelogue Brugge: Beer Country

Travelogue Brugge: Beer Country

Map-reading, a week after my eye surgery. Ensuring that we do not get lost:)

I never ever thought I would enjoy a glass of beer, that is, until I got to Brugge. After my retinal eye scare in Paris the week before, the last thing I wanted to think of was stress. So Brugge was a complete opposite of that. I could relax. It was fuss-free, small, compact and medieval and magical all at the same time. And the beers were dirt cheap and in the pleasant & cool summer heat, so refreshing and downright delicious. It started with a sip off my husband’s glass. After my costly medical emergency(read previous post on Travelogue Paris), he was ready to have more than a few glasses of beer to zone out, chill out and vege out as we continued our Euro Tour de force with kids, luggage and an invalid wife of sorts, et al. After that thirst-quenching sip, I was ordering beer, in restaurants, and buying them off Carrefour’s shelves. So unbecoming and unfeminine of me. But wheat beer is yummy, and so dirt cheap( I think I already said that) that it made sense to drink it instead of water! And I think good for healing!

Bruges, as one may spell it too, is beguiling, enchanting and pretty. It’s so small that our three kids could waltz through her entire streets and see all the main sights in a day. The homes are very modern inside though they look like they were build for bucolic Flemish people thousands of years ago. It was so so pleasant, and quiet after Paris, with their crazy taxi Merde-chanting drivers, surly waiters, crowded Tour de France tourists, Mona Lisa paparazzi, and determined Eiffel tower climbers. Yes, it was crowded too and extremely touristy, but it was postcard pretty and very quaint, and you could find yourself on an empty bench by the canal looking at whimsical ducks and think, yes, you could spout poetry or paint a picture here. So Brugge really is when our Euro vacation began. As much as we didn’t let my surgery in Paris affect us too much, everyone had been walking on eggshells on whether mummy’s eyes would get elbowed by a rushing tourist rushing into a slamming Metro door or if walking up & down staircases might not be good for her recently reattached retina!

In Brugge, you walked slowly or rather, ambled- everywhere. On cobbled-stone streets, where you can hear the merry clip clop of horse drawn carriages( filled with gullible tourists), you also hear the belfries all over the small city go ‘ding dong ding dong’ all day. Like a mini-Venice, Brugge has its fair share of pretty canals, historic alm houses, ancient churches and atmospheric breweries. Spires and just bucolic people ambling about gently, probably high on the delicious wheat beer they have drunk copious amounts of.

The many pretty sights of this UNESCO Heritage City

It’s a great place for children, as they do star jumps in the squares such as Mkrt and City Hall . Kids too enjoy the canal boat ride that meanders through the city, that lulled my son little T into peaceful slumber. The chocolate museum is fun and informative, as are the cheese shops for our cheese-loving children, and chocolate shops abound, and cute, pretty Tin Tin merchandise along with amazing and delectable biscuits of all kinds. And in Brugge, you'll find shops selling the prettiest Christmas ornaments, not made in China. My favourite spot, has got to be the Beguinage(could I have been a nun in my previous life?) I don’t know, but it was such a peaceful little slice of heaven, I genuflected in the church within the compound and gave thanks for having my eye sight restored just the week before. We stayed at a lovely family-run B & B and the owners had reconstructed a former butchery and a fish shop into a modern, contemporary home inspired by Philippe Starck, one of my favourite designers. Their garden used to be part of the countryside of the ancient city of Brugge. It was also here that M and I, after the kids went to bed with the eldest in charge, managed to sneak out for a “just the two of us” dinner, at dusk on a lovely summery day. It was very romantic, the clip clop of horses gadding about, smiley waiters who all spoke perfect English with no trace of an accent and bells ringing all around us at just the right intervals and a gentle dusky breeze blowing. Apparently, lucky us, we had missed miserable rain by just a day and we had lovely sunshine with lots of ice-cream and waffle stops in the two days we were there.

On our last evening, we stumbled upon a lovely restaurant close to the Beguinage with a courtyard garden, so private but chock-ful of blooming hydrangeas and had the most enjoyable family meal there. These hidden surprises, all unplanned and stumbled upon, is always what makes family holidays so special. Till today, I can remember every single word that each of the children said & the expressions they had on their faces at that meal and how S enjoyed her rabbit stew( she's always determined & adventurous to try something local everywhere she goes), little T enjoying his baby lobster pasta shared with Mummy, Belly Boo had a whole roast chicken by herself, and my better half, a happy man with his frosted beer glass of Belgian beer and a beef stew & all of us feeling completely relaxed.

Dinner on our last evening in Brugge

So Brugge, will always be special, for its quaintness, its lovely quite streets and pretty buildings, but most of all for it cooling wonderful Belgian beer that makes it oh so drinkable. Another ice-cold glass, please? We’ll definitely be back. Our son picked up Shakespeare there, from a T-shirt! “Shakesbeer, To beer or not to beer!” After all, he’s got to continue with his education!

Family with a beer vespa!

Postcards from Paris: The City of Light through my children's eyes!

Paris through my children’s eyes

We got our girls a camera each just before we left for Europe, as a reward for an amazing school year and wonderful results and achievements that they had had all year. But mostly, we wanted them to take ownership of their travel snapshots. We wanted them to see new places with their own lenses so to speak, so here are my favourite photos of Paris which they captured with their own cameras. They are especially precious to me as I was able to see what they had observed while I was in hospital for my emergency eye surgery and couldn’t be with them!

At the Lourve museum, we did a very unbecoming thing, as parents. To get them laughing and giggling, I suggested a Lourve expedition with a twist: we would look for as many statues, sculptures, statues and paintings with boobs and bums. After seeing the Mona Lisa and the standard ones, what else was there to enjoy at the Lourve, its vastness gets tiresome after all and one gets easily museumed out,( plus it wasn’t the first time for M and I) so we were being naughty parents indeed. Rather than memorising dates and artists' names, their 'slightly twisted' and naughty experience at the Lourve was more fun, more real and definitely less boring!

I noticed that when children have their own cameras, they then have the desire to create their own narratives. We learned that as they photographed what they saw, felt, touched and sensed around them, their self-actualisation and awareness became stronger and more vivid. Belly Boo has now been able to re-produce Degas' ballet dancers and all three can easily sketch out Paris's key landmarks from memory. They also use their own photographs as fodder for sketches or paintings which they did later on.

At the Notre Dame, I noticed S taking a keen interest in the stained glass patterns and the history and description of each painting or dyptiches on the walls. Belly Boo was keener to take action shots so there were lots of star-jumping mostly throughout Europe. Little T had our SLR camera most of the time, and from his wee height, he managed some cool photos too, especially later in Brugge.

Plus they notice wall murals better too!

Enjoy their photo-journey encapsulating the joie de vivre that is Paris!...

Wall art in the Quartier du Marais

Well-decorated vespa

Ladybird at the Place des Vosges

All is lost for France with Hollande the clown?

A pic of Daddy on the Eiffel Tower with a bird's eye view of Paris

Oh no! It's Spidey on Champs Elysees!

The view from our window at our Marais apartment. Perfect for recuperation.

Our favourite Paris roundabout taken from the Lourve!

Stalking Mummy through the Marais!

I got you, under my skin.

Travelogue Paris: Rendezvous at the American Hospital

Travelogue Paris: Rendezvous at the American Hospital of Paris

My retinal detachment drama

Two days after my discharge from the American Hospital. Our only en famille photo in Paris.

Most ladies who go to Paris end up with a handbag or two, whether a LV, a Chanel or a Birkin. I ended up with the Hermes of eye surgeries. Ever since we got back to KL, I have been inundated by questions such as, “What happened? Why did you get an operation in Paris? What IS a retinal detachment? Were you in pain? You mean you chose Paris for the surgery? Why not Singapore, if you don’t trust Malaysian doctors? (Haha, I had to laugh at that one, and the little faith we have in our poor surgeons).

So, here’s my story. A blow by blow account of my treatment du jour through my lenses.( no pun intended!)

First of all, a retinal detachment is NOT an elective thing, it’s almost a silent but acute emergency. It’s definitely not like, “Okay, I am flying to Seoul, and getting my nose done!” It’s not like I know that on July 16, when we arrived in Paris, I would suddenly emerge from a dark plane in CDG into the early morning summer sunshine to see hundreds of annoying floaters swimming in the periphery of my visual field. It’s more like as the day progressed(We managed to take the children to Place de Vosges( my favourite square in ALL of Paris) while I sat on a shady park bench just resting and enjoying the fresh cool Paris air, walked through the Marais quarter,sat down to watch buskers & dancers on the Ile St Louis bridge & finally, in submission, sat down for Mass at the Notre Dame where I fervently prayed for 3 important things, one of them was 'DEAR GOD, PLEASE HEAL MY EYE'), the floaters would still be there, but later that evening, it felt as though half my contact lens had peeled off, and my visual field got slightly opaque, with a shadow cast on my the bottom left side of my right eye.(I think the exact moment this happened, I was at the local Marche Prix buying milk, cheese, ham & eggs with family, and I remember telling M : I have to go back to our apartment NOW to lie down as I really didn’t ‘feel well’ (as though lying down would help reattach my retina!) So, those were the symptoms- floaters,a shadow and opaqueness, then flashes of neon in the darkness, all in silence. Spontaneously detaching. Silently but surely, urgently. Painlessly...

First day in Paris; fun with the kids despite my retina slowly detaching itself silently.

Citing jet-lag and tiredness( I had been so looking forward to some time away from KL after a hectic and quite challenging year at work- the last 6 months have been really tough and stressful, and I just needed this break to clear my mind from the reality of work life.) So on the evening of July 16, I dropped off to bed by 8.30pm while M and the kids watched a movie- I think it was a cartoon called A Monster in Paris, which he had downloaded( all Paris movies) prior to getting to Paris being a hopeless romantic that he is). I slept restlessly then woke up at 4am Paris time, and this time, I knew that I HAD to go to a hospital that morning. The neon flashes in the dark had become more frequent, and I just didn’t feel right. I could still see okay but I calmly & silently prayed in the dawn light, & waited for M & the children to wake up.

When Martin woke up at 8, we rang up his very amiable and friendly Paris-based client/now friend G who happened to be in their farmhouse in the Loire at the time, but she very quickly phoned her ophthalmologist for an appointment. However, being July, he was already away on vacation. G suggested we go straight to the American Hospital in Neuilly- sur- Seine. I quickly googled the American Hospital and got the exact address and read up their homepage and we got dressed and got a taxi there. (Now, what I didn’t know then that green and clean Neuilly-sur-Seine has had its fair share of famously rich and well -heeled French top guns.) It’s a leafy upmarket suburb west of the centre, on the fringes of central Paris, just beyond Arr 17. The infamous DSK was born there, Sarkozy and Hollande both grew up there. SO, you can imagine my hospital bill later! :) Our lived-in Filipino helper, who used to work for a royal Syrian/Lebanese family in Beirut later told me that her employer had a mansion there, next to the Imelda Marcos’ and were friends with them. Her previous Ma’am had had brain cancer and had treatment there and it’s an excellent hospital. Ok, had we know it then, would we still have gone there? Without a doubt of course. A retinal detachment is not something to be taken lightly. When you are abroad, the best place you will feel is in a hospital where you would receive the best treatment.

The corridor of my ward at the Hopital Americain de Paris.

My point is, the French have one of the best health systems in the world and even if I had walked into a public hospital, I would have been fine. But the American Hospital is excellent- so good and efficient that I was seen too within 45 minutes of my arrival. They even asked if we needed a Mandarin or Cantonese translator! 187 patients to 400 doctors? The second we arrived at the hospital by taxi, we were ushered to the Ophtalmological Suite 3. The attending doctor was an older doctor, with a pot-belly named Dr L. He was nice enough, but dismissively French with all the flourishes that we typically associate Parisians with, and he announced to us after examining my eye, confirming my WORST fears, in a French-accented English: “YES, you have a retinal detachment. You need an operation!” We asked, “Dr, could we fly back to Kuala Lumpur immediately and have it done there? His answer: Yes, you can fly back, but you will lose your sight. ( Okay, that was reassuring, NOT, Dr!) Us: Let’s schedule for an operation straight-away then. Dr L then rang his colleague on his mobile, spoke in rapid French about ‘this patient with an emergency retinal detachment from Malaysia’, and immediately confirmed that the surgeon would see me at 6, and the operation would happen that evening at 7. “I can’t do the surgery for you, but my colleague, much younger than me, about 40 who is a retinal specialist will come later. He's good. Don't worry. Start fasting."

Suddenly, it SANK IN. I started processing- 'OMG, SURGERY, in Paris?' The costs involved were the last thing on my mind. I knew that side of things would get taken care of. But an actual surgery in an operating theatre, with anaesthesia and scalpels and scrub nurses, in a foreign country?( I think I had been watching too many episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and have also listened too much to my brother in law who is a consultant anaesthesist and his sometimes funny cum horror OT stories over the dinner table!) I thought of my poor children, my sweet husband, my parents? my 2 sisters? my dogs! What if I don’t wake up after the surgery? What if... what if...? For someone like moi, who essentially likes to be in control, (As my husband says of me, you are a formidably strong woman, and that’s what I love about you), I have NEVER had anaesthesia in my life. Even with the au naturel birth of my 3 children, which were quite textbook, I was in complete control of my labour, my obgyn and the nurses. But to 'go under'? To have someone cut open my eye(my EYE?!!!) and do stuff to it? I masked my fears behind the bravado of a loving mother and put up a brave smile for the children and M. Secretly, I was a little terrified.

Trying to stay brave in front of the kids just before my admission.

I first thing I did was try to ring my Dad in Penang. For some reason, we couldn’t get him on his mobile, so I had to speak to Mum instead. We Leng daughters know that when there are emergencies, we always speak to Dad first, not Mum. Mum loves us to bits and is a wonderful woman, but she’s also a Chinese Hokkien mother. So she was like, “What, an eye operation? In Paris? Aiyo, why like that? Why didn’t you look after you eye? You shouldn’t have flown, must be the pressure and high altitude. (Okay, how do I explain to Dr. Mum over 10,000km away, that no matter how much I ‘look after my eye’, if my retina was going to detach, it will just detach regardless??) Anyway, it was nice chatting to you, Mum, I feel better already! Next, I whatsapped my best friend D, my prayer pal, and admitted to her that I was scared. Later on, I sent a short text by whatsapp to my sisters and my other best friends who by then were getting ready for bed in KL to tell them what was going on. My great tough-cookie friend, S, who had surgery on BOTH her eyes to fix both her retinas a few years ago assured me all will be well! “You’re in France, babe, you’ll get the best treatment. So just relax, you’ll be fine.” Their support and encouraging words held me together. And faith kept my spirits up. Together, we had a mini family conference cry, just to let things out. The children were amazingly strong. My eldest was stoic as ever, my two younger ones held me close. I could see M trying not to break down and I felt really bad putting him through this.

My patient tag!

By 1.00pm, I got admitted as an official patient at the American Hospital of Paris, short of checking into the Crillon or George V, the smooth English-speaking staff assured me that I would receive the best treatment.I thought of Yves St-Laurent doing the same, years before, before he died there. ( No negative thoughts, no negative thoughts!) I spoke to my KL ophtalmologist as he was having his dinner KL time, who advised me to use silicone oil & wished me luck! M was sorting out the insurance at the same time. The kids, bless them, had the ipad to occupy them; the only times they ever were hooked on the ipad to distract them was when I was at the hospital.

The kids were immersed in a game on the ipad: we allowed them that small treat only during my time in hospital and at the doctors' to distract them from the reality of the emergency.

By 2.20pm I was checked into my room no. 516. All rooms are single, so the patients get all the privacy they needed, watching French TV and drinking copious amounts of Evian water, if you are not fasting or on drips and they even give you a set of Peckniffs' mood therapy toiletries! The last time I had Peckniffs' mood therapy was in our hotel in Shanghai a couple of years ago. I started smiling, amused, to myself, to console myself of the COST( & irony) of this Hermes operation! But again, that was the last thing on my mind! At least, I’ll smell nice, I thought!

My room!

Once settled in my room, I asked M to take the kids out for a walk and for a late lunch. Neuilly -sur- Seine, especially where the hospital was located, was unfamiliar territory to us as tourists. Leafy boulevards with gated mansions don’t result in too much entertainment for kids. Just before that, my debonair anaesthetist, Dr K came in to ask me some questions. Do you smoke, what’s your health pattern? ( I thought, wait till I tell my bro in law, E about this impeccable PR skills of his Paris colleague!) He was surprised I haven’t had any epidural for my 3 children but I feebly joked that I was trying to save my husband money but look where that got me? His response, in effusive accentless, English was “May this be your last one, Mrs Leng."-possibly NOT the best thing to say to a girl who was about to go under, but it became a standard joke between us in the next 3 days! ( I was also too tired to correct him to say that I was not really Mrs Leng,( but actually Mrs LEE nee Leng) and that it's not de regueur for Chinese women to adopt their husband’s surnames when they marry but I didn’t think this was the right time for me to be so gungho about my feminist ideals either so I smiled back at him.) Then the rigmarole began, nurses and orderlies started streaming in. My blood pressure was taken, my blood( oh yes, I discovered that the veins on my right elbow joint may be fat and look really juicy but no blood can be drawn out of there. If we had known it then, I would have been poked and prodded so much).

I was weighed, had my temperature taken and then given some antiseptic to wash myself my top to toe. So that I get squeaky clean for the OT. I changed into that dreadful hospital gown that labels you officially as a PATIENT! You'd think that with the room rates they charge you at the American Hospital, the least they can do was to give you a silk dressing gown, all sterilised of course! I thought: Good one, Renie, from TOURIST TO PATIENT! Then the paperwork came, the signing of the CONSENT FORMS! I did them quickly and kept my fingers crossed. Alone, in my room at last, I started to pray again and my fear slowly evaporated, and I managed with one failing eye, to write a letter each to the four most important people in my life ---to dearest M and the 3 munchkins. Only then did the second reality hit me, I was well & truly going under, and I better get out of the OT with my eyesight fully restored, if not for me, for THEM!

With my iphone and complimentary WEEFEE (They bring you a new password everyday!), I managed to google my surgeon to see who this person was who was going to operate on me. The first page on google netted some positive results- I was relieved that he was consulting for the American Hospital, had a double-barrel surname, was in a medical video on youtube and has written copious amounts of research papers, and was Chief of Surgery at Hospital Foch so he must be be pretty impressive.

By 5pm, the nurses popped by to give me two happy pills, atharax which is a very sleepy anti -histamine, and a relaxant. I felt drowsy straight away, and suddenly felt much better. Now I know why some people are hooked on drugs! When M & the kids came back, we prayed together as a family and I was starting to languish into my own drug-induced world of a new druggy! The kids too started to feel tired and were falling asleep on my bed as by then they were a little worn out and jet-lagged.

After 6, the orderly brought a wheel chair to take me down to the eye examination room to say that my eye surgeon ( & an assistant surgeon who, I recall reminded me of Steve Jobs) was finally here to see me. The second I met him in my drug-induced state, when he shook my hands firmly and smiled very kindly, and told me that it will be alright, I INSTANTLY felt much better. Dr PK, is so not your typical Frenchman or alpha male surgeon. Not that I have met too many of them in my lifetime. For starters, he’s really warm, reassuring and very nice. He seemed very sincere and had very kind eyes. And even with my wonky eye, I could see that he was a bit of an eye candy( again no pun intended). And for a girl on drugs and about to go into surgery, that truly is a bonus. ( As my girlfriends later tell me, “Trust You to get a dishy doctor, for most of us would probably end up with an old fuddy- duddy, grumpy one"). In the words of my best friend D, "Well, if you are going to be operated on, what better person than a Mark-Ruffalo looka-like!"

But seriously, it’s not the eye candy bit. But more that he completely radiated compassion and emanated kindness and a genuine honesty that you don’t get from surgeons especially. There was no showiness, cockiness or abruptness that I have experienced with other male doctors like : "Trust me, baby, I’ll fix you right up with my scalpel.” Lucky me, I got a doctor who took his Hippocratic oath very seriously. He examined my eye thoroughly( I was down to only counting fingers by then), listened to me intently, and patiently drew an eye and two holes to show 2 TEARS in my retina, on a piece of paper and explained that he was going to perform a VITRECTOMY in my eye. At that drug-induced stage, I wouldn’t have cared if it was my appendicts or heart or brains that he was taking out, as I was suddenly overwhelmed by drowsiness, nothing too intense was registering really. (Sorry). I remember him telling me he does 400 of this type of surgeries a year which I thought was reassuring. I later looked up the meaning of vitrectomy only AFTER reading the surgical report and am glad I had no idea what it meant BEFORE the surgery! As M was with the kids in my room, I requested that the surgeon explain to my dear, worried -sick husband what he was going to do to me and he kindly consented to, and that really reassured M so very much that he said it made him feel so much better straightaway.

Soon, I was transferred onto a gurney trolley & wheeled into the OT. Drowsy, in semi-induced state, with a detached retina in one eye, and no glasses on the other, it was all a haze to me. I recognised Dr PK’s voice saying hello and Dr K my friendly anasthesist saying hello, and my male orderly, who looked Algerian, was so sweet, he kept reassuring me on the way to the OT to not worry and that I was in the best hands. All in all, the best bed-side manners I had ever encountered from all the staff. I remember seeing a window, and joked with them,"Wow, an operation with a view; at least we're not in the basement!" At about 7.20pm Paris time on July 17, I had my FIRST EVER dose of general anaesthetic. The second Dr K told me that he was going to put me to sleep, I was knocked out completely!

I wouldn’t know what exactly happened to me in that two hours when I was operated on, but all I know, in layman's terms is that advanced medical science and an excellent, experienced surgeon can do wonders. In most cases now, retinal detachment surgeries are done under a local anaesthetic and the patient goes home straightway. ( Had I been operated on in KL, it would have been under local anaethesia.) But I don’t see how that can be comfortable for the patient. In the 2 hours "as I lay sleeping" under anaesthesia, with a clamp to keep my right eye open, Dr PK made two incisions in my right eye, on both sides of my pupil. Through a microscope, he then removed the vitreous( gel like liquid) to get to my retina( which really is at the back of my eye) He repaired the two tears on my retina by cryotherapy, removed all the burst blood vessels-probably sucked out at the same time the vitreous gel was removed ( which were causing the floaters) then reattached the retina and the macula as well. Pretty complicated stuff and such a delicate procedure! ( A month later, I youtubed some videos of retinal detachment surgeries, I was almost sick, & slept really badly after, as it’s not a pretty sight AT ALL, and I am NOT a squeamish person!) The anaesthesia worked so well that I didn’t come to until about 11pm that night. They had difficulty slapping me awake. I may have lost a few good cells but that's a small price to pay.

M was hugely relieved when the surgeon came to my room to wake him up to relay the good news, that the surgery was a success, and all would be well. He then told me that between 9.45 to 11pm, I was delirious, holding his hand, and moaning to him that my eye was painful. But I have absolutely no recollection of this. I remember being moved to my room and onto my bed and had to lie in a face-down position for the entire night as the viscous silicone oil which is a tamponade to help seal the retina flat back to my eye ball won’t run upwards. Normally gas( which will dissolve naturally) is inserted to buffer the retina but that would mean absolutely no flying for at least 3 months. As I had to return to KL in the 3 weeks, silicone oil was used, ( I will, however, need another procedure to remove the viscous silicone oil in the next 2 months which to me is a bugger, as that means the redness of my eye won’t fade for another few months.)

I think I mostly slept well that night in the hospital. I was worried about M and the kids getting home to the apartment so late in the night. The nurses kept checking on me, checking my pressure, my drip, etc. I really felt quite positive the morning after even with a bandage on my eye. I was wheeled down just before 7.30am for Dr PK to check on me but he wasn’t there yet, so the impatient orderly wheeled me back up again. In my sleepy state with my eyes half-closed, I just remembered hazy hospital corridors and busy orderlies and nurses walking about in the early morning, and wondered if the children had slept okay and what M would be feeding them for breakfast. When Dr PK finally arrived, they wheeled me back to the ophthalmology suite and I was reassured by him that my surgery went really well,the worst I would feel was that day, with a sandy feeling inside my eye, and he had even reattached the MACULA which was off as well. ( Having forgotten my biology lessons on the eye, I had to research my macula later, and it’s the centre of the eye that allows us to get a bird’s eye view in our visual field). Because my macula hole was also involved, my visual field on my right eye sees a slight dip/curve when I am reading of looking at straight horizontal lines. The doctor said I didn’t need an eye patch but had to lie on my front or left side for a few weeks. One of the side effects of a retinal attachment is unfortunately an early onset of cataracts( which is in my family history anyway) & in some cases, ptosis( droopy eyelids), etc.

I then returned to my room and pretty much slept through the day. M and the kids got to the hospital by 11, and it was so lovely to see them again, without floaters in my eyes, without the opaque lens feeling. It was so wonderful to see them in high spirits and my fear and doubts the day before vanished in a flash. I was really thankful to be alright. But I think the painkillers were still working and that sedated and calmed me a lot. I even managed to update my facebook status to tell my friends & family who have rallied for me that I was now fine, with my eye sight saved, no less!

I sent M and the kids off to see Paris that I had intended- they happily found their way to the Eiffel Tower and they WALKED up 669 steps up and down to get a bird’s eye view of the City of Light. And they brought back lovely photos to show me. I felt a new awakening by my reattached lense. And a bit subdued. It’s very humbling when something like this happens to you. Medical emergencies are scary no matter what. ( My last one was when I was 20 weeks pregnant with T as we found out that he had a 1 in 100 chance of being a Down Syndrome baby as opposed to 1 in 300, and I had to live with that for about 19 weeks but no matter what, the grace of God was with us then, as it was in Paris with my detached retina).

So I slept and slept, face-down, or propped up with my head down, (probably tired too from a very hectic term, a little bit of jet lag, and just recovering from that along with the shock of surgery abroad.)

I told the good doctor that I would like to stay one more night and then be discharged the next day. So he thoroughly examined again on Thursday, two days after my surgery, and was happy to see that my retina was now flat and reattached, my intraocular pressures had improved as well as my visual acuity. These terms will afterwards become common terms for me as I understood my eye problem better. Oh yes, Dr L, the first doctor, the anterior specialist, who checked me on the first day had found my left eye to be slightly problematic too(with evidence of lattice degeneration and had offered to do a laser photocoagulation for me, but I sought the opinions of Dr W and Dr PK and both agreed that I could do that when I get home. I really didn’t wish to have another medical procedure on my eye, with one retina recently attached and another getting lasered at 4-6 times the price it would cost me to do it at home. Plus if truth be told, I would now actually prefer to be asleep when I am being operated one, and I had told Dr W once that laser surgery to me is worse than being in labour!

One of my meals during my stay. Mushroom poillet and rice with a bottle of Evian!

Two nights after my surgery, I was discharged from the American Hospital. We went to say goodbye to Dr L and to say thank you. In yet another taxi-ride with a slight mad, Merde-chanting French driver, we made our way 'home' and we celebrated by having lunch at the Cafe de Musees near our apartment in the Marais quarter where little T had his first taste of escargots and simply relished them. I just wanted to get to bed and sleep again, and I did. M took the kids to the Tuileries and to Musee D’orsay where the kids had a fun time sneaking photographs of some classic paintings. I was happy that they go to run in the gardens around Tuileries and that they didn’t get lost!

Finally, discharged from the American Hospital, a cloudy summer's day in Paris @ 20 C.

We had a lovely quiet evening as I would do at home. I got used to my routine of a saline eye-wash and instilling various eye drops, including a steroid-based drops and drops for dilation. I only slept on my front with my head down position juxtaposed sometimes with a left-side position. I stopped taking any sort of painkillers the day I left the hospital. Poor little T, who had looked forward to climbing in between us was so mature and understood that he could NOT sleep in-between Mummy and daddy for he might inadvertently kick Mummy’s eye.

The next morning, a Friday morning, we went for my final check up with Dr PK at his lovely private practice( with a very beautiful receptionist), near the Arc d’Triomphe in Avenue Niel in Arr 17. Again, the check-up was very good & thorough, and Dr PK as ever, with his impeccable bed-side manners, was positive and professional and he was determined that we continued with our holiday without any major change in plans. Hence, I was given the all clear to continue with our intended journey, which was a train journey to Brussels/Brugge the following Monday and a flight to Copenhagen the following Wednesday and subsequently two weeks later, another flight to Amsterdam and finally, homeward to KL from Amsterdam. Dr PK was very reassuring, and M, especially felt very comforted by his kindness and generosity. He actually let us leave France without paying his surgical fees as we couldn’t settle it by credit card as his fees were separate from the American Hospital’s. A bank transfer from Denmark was possible a week later. That was kindness and trust beyond belief.

With the kind surgeon who saved my sight.

We spent the last weekend in Paris mainly taking things easier than I would have normally liked it. We didn’t make it to Giverny to see the real water lilies, or to Chartres for the stained glass windows,or to the Phillipe Starck restaurant that I wanted to take the kids to, but no matter, France will always be there, and my eye- sight, possibly not. But as I promised the kids, we did see most of what we had promised to show them- the Eiffel Tower(kids loved it), the Mona Lisa(no big deal), the Arc de Triomphe(symbolic), Champs Elysees(completely over-rated), Parc Villete(comme ci comme ca), walks along the Seine(throughly romantic & therapeutic), the Sorbonne( for inspiration) and on my final morning, we went to Place de Vosges( did I say it's my fav spot for some Muse?) again to look at the square with no floaters swimming this time. And on lovely our final evening, I had the best duck dish that I have had in ages, at a buzzy, provencal bistro near our digs called Chez Janou at 10pm at night with my new Chanel shades on! It was indeed my most 'unforgettable' holiday, ever.

Did I panic? Or wished I had flown home? Not really. You just make the best out of bad situations and stay positive. I rested so well in our apartment in the Marais overlooking a quiet inner garden courtyard, more so than I would have done at home probably. My godsend other half couldn't have coped better and my wonderful children- they were amazing beyond belief!

I do know that I am NOT the anomaly in getting a retinal detachment. On one medical website- the NHS one, it states that it happens to 1 in 10,000 people. 1 in 4 of severe myopes( short-sighted with high power) people have a higher chance of getting it, Asians tend to get it more as we are more Myopic and it has to do with the change in our eyeball (corneal) shape. My myopia has stayed at -7.00 on both eyes since my early twenties and I have worn glasses since I was 11, contact lens since I was 18. And family history counts too- my dad has had eye issues since he was 38 but now at 68, he’s absolutely fine and doesn’t need glasses except for reading. The strange thing that despite my MANY visits to my KL opthalmologist in recent years, NOT ONCE was I told I was high risk in getting a retinal detachment. I was lucky that I had no side effects whatsoever from my first ever GA. I actually woke up feeling high and relaxed! ( But I now have 4 opthalmologists' direct numbers on speed dial, just in case!)

They say that the eyes (les yeux) are the windows of the soul- and what happened to me did open up my soul, however corny it sounds. NEVER ever take your eyes( or any part of your body) for granted; I should know, having also occasionally suffered from another serious recurrent eye problem of uveitis. Don’t take EVER floaters lightly. Get your eyes checked often. My husband now has a private joke with me- “You would have saved your husband a lot more money if you had married an ophthalmologist.”

I have started to take things easy. No more making ten appointments a day and hurtling from this to that, when one would suffice. Me first. Not someone else. Family. Alone time. Walking slowly. Reflection. Naps to rest my eyes. Quietude.

Do I really need a Birkin bag? No. It's more tres chic to have my retina reattached. As for the American Hospital, well, it wasn’t the Four Seasons George V, but it’ll do.

I got to see clearly again, I am so grateful( and very blessed), and it’s a bit je nais se quoi to describe it but it was indeed a miracle. I call it my Paris miracle.

My little nomads helping with the luggage as we head towards Gare du Nord to catch our train to Brussels on our final morning in Paris. My heart breaks into a thousand pieces seeing how intent they were in NOT letting me strain my eye. Bless them.

PS. Had it happened in Siem Reap ten days before while I was there knee-deep in volunteer teaching, perhaps it might have ended up being a Cambodian Catastrophe instead.

PPS. A retinal detachment recovery takes months. I am lucky to be able to see very well with the silicone oil, with only a slightly distorted vision at times if I use only my right eye. I hope that once the silicone oil is removed, my retina will stay reattached and there will be no further complications.

R- August 2012