It's a new record! - Also, Happy New Year!

Five. Whole. Months.

I'm so sorry!

I promise, I will explain why!  But first I need to say that this post will be different from most, as the only way that I can make sense of everything without writing the equivalent of War and Peace is to split this update into 2 parts.  The first, this one, will cover all explanations, life updates, political rants, etc. plus my usual first post of the year update on goals for the year (I know...) I offer fair warning now that it's going to be "Wall of text crits you for 9000".  The second post, which hopefully will be written tomorrow, will cover all the regulars, and actual knitting and penguins content.

So, if you're only here for the pretty pictures, you're fairly safe skipping this entire post.  If you want to know what the Hells happened, read on...

Content warning: There will be a couple of images that some people might find disturbing, as they show details of injury, eyes, and feet.

Eye-mageddon!

Yes, it does need a heading that big.  The last 6 months of our lives have been dominated by the health of Stephen's eyes.

Stephen, a white man with long hair and a ginger beard, with a surgical dressing over his right eye.

I'm starting with a less shocking image, as I know that when I share this on Facebook later, this will be the image that comes up on the post.  This is my poor love immediately after surgery on his eye.  I think this was at the end of November, just before his birthday.  If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll already know that he suffered a retinal detachment at that time.  Last I wrote about though, Stephen was recovering well, and back at work.

Of course, our life couldn't be that simple. After New Year, Stephen was back to work, although still working from home, as he hadn't had his final post-op check and been discharged as fit to go back on site.  On Monday 10th January he felt as though his vision was distorted again.  Both his boss, and the eye clinic advised that he had it checked out, just to be sure, so I drove him into Sheffield and left him at the hospital.  Where they couldn't find anything wrong. Reassured, we went home.

The next day he was still concerned, as the distortion was still there.  He has issues with anxiety at the best of times, so I advised him to go back to the eye clinic.  He didn't want to waste their time, or my energy, but I was determined that either he be properly reassured, or get any issue dealt with straight away, so I convinced him to go back.

I'm glad I did, as this time they discovered a second retinal tear.  This one was in a different place to the first, an artefact of the healing process, where as scar tissue forms over the original tear and repair, it causes tension across the whole retina, and can lead to further tears.  The scary issue with this is, if your body heals in a way that causes this stress on the retina, it means you are much more likely to suffer further retinal tears in the weeks and months following surgery,  Only once you're fully healed does your risk drop to normal levels.

Anyway, surgery was arranged, and performed on this second tear.  Except this was the second surgery on the same eye in less than 2 months, both under local anaesthetic in order to speed recovery.  It took much more anaesthetic than normal for Stephen to be able to tolerate this surgery, and afterwards the surgeon described his eye as "very angry"!

Here's what it looked like a few days later, after the dressing had come off:

A close up of part of Stephen's face, showing his right eye, the iris is grey, the "white" is bright red, the eyelids slightly bruised and swollen.

After retinal surgery, it's necessary to do something called "posturing", that is holding your head in a particular position for 50 minutes out of every 60.  This is because during the surgery they remove the vitreous from within the eye, and inject a bubble of gas to put pressure on the inside of the retina and hold it against the macula while it heals. You have to keep your head in the right position to make sure that the bubble is putting pressure in the right place.  You can't "save up" your few minutes of free movement in order to have an hour of normal movement in return for 5 hours holding still either!  After both previous retinal surgeries - that on his left eye in 2019, and the first on his right eye at the end of November - Stephen was fortunate in that the position he had to maintain was completely upright, or he was allowed to lie on is left side overnight.

This 3rd tear though was different.  He had to lie on his right hand side, for 50 minutes out of every 60, for a full week.  Staying in the same position for that long gets painful.  He couldn't see well enough to read, or watch tv, as while the gas bubble is still in your eye, you're completely blind in that eye.  It slowly shrinks and dissipates over the course of about a month. So he couldn't distract himself from worrying about the likelihood of further tears, the pain of more surgeries, the diminishing returns on repeated surgeries... It was genuinely terrifying.  Oh, and there was the eye drops!  3 sets of drops, 4 times a day - cold, stingy, and "tasty" we called them, as every. single. time. poor Stephen had to endure the sensation of cold on his eyes from the first set of drops, followed by painful stinging from the second, and a vile taste in the back of his mouth from the 3rd.  Bearing in mind that we'd only finished the 4 weeks of the same drops a few days before Christmas, and here we were less than 2 weeks into the new year doing it all again!  We survived by listening to Critical Role back episodes.  I think those nerdy ass voice actors actually saved our sanity, if not our lives!

So, we endured 2 consecutive retinal tears.  Stephen was acutely aware that he'd had to take a LOT of time off work sick to recover, and was really looking forward to getting back into a big new project. He just needed new glasses, as obviously his prescription had changed due to the surgeries.  He went to the opticians, and they said he'd need varifocals now, so they'd take a little longer to make, and cost a fair bit more, but that's fair enough, and worth it to be able to see properly again.  So we waited, Stephen did his best to work with his old glasses, we figured life would be back to normal by the start of March.

We should have known better.  

Stephen picked up his new glasses, and tried them on in the opticians.  He could barely discern any difference between wearing them or not.  The optician reassured him that sometimes it takes a while to get used to varifocals, that in a week or so he'd get used to which part of the lens to look through.  A week later it was clear that this was not happening, so another drive into Sheffield to the opticians, who took one look at Stephen's eyes and informed him that he has cataracts.  Cataracts that were not present, or not a problem, 3 weeks earlier.  In 3 weeks, he'd lost 3 dioptres of visual acuity.

We knew that cataracts are an almost ubiquitous side effect of retinal surgery, but usually they take several years to form.  Not 3 weeks.  As they're usually slow growing, and more common in older people, and the NHS is, and has been, chronically underfunded by successive cynical governments intent on breaking it in order to make a profit-making system seem appealing to the voting populace, and because covid has, and continues to, disrupt every aspect of healthcare, the waiting list for cataract surgery on the NHS is over 2 years. In less than 2 years, without surgery, Stephen will be legally blind.

Fortunately, he has private health insurance through his work.  He never expected to have to use it.  So he started doing what was necessary to find out if this surgery would be covered, getting referrals, choosing a surgeon etc.

He chose a surgeon based in Doncaster, as although they are a cataract specialist, they have a secondary specialisation in retinal surgery.  We thought this gave them a good chance of being able to deal with any complications in Stephen's case.  We got an appointment for the end of April. All the while Stephen's vision is noticeably deteriorating, yet he's still doing his best to work (from home obviously, he can't drive, and neither Finn nor I are allowed on site).  He's also conscious of the toll all of this takes on my body, so he's trying to do as much as he can to ease that burden, which includes walking Finn most days.  As long as he remains on familiar paths around the village, he thought he'd be fine.  Until he encountered a loose rock in the middle of the path that he couldn't see, and ended up face-planting in the middle of the road.  I collected him from a street bench near where he'd fallen, and took him to A&E, where he remained for many tedious hours, unable to read the screen that showed updates on expected waiting times.  

Stephen's swollen ankle and bruised foot.

Fortunately, nothing was broken.  It was just sprained, but obviously it needed resting for a while!

Finn attempting to steal the knitted patchwork blanket that is wrapped around a bag of frozen peas on Stephen's foot and ankle.

Finn had little sympathy for his daddy's injury. I used one of his blankets to protect Stephen's skin from freezer burns when he was icing his damaged foot and ankle with a bag of frozen peas.  Finn just stole his blanket back!

This meant that Stephen was using crutches to walk when I drove him to Doncaster, and left him at the hospital while I tried to find a suitable place to take Finn. 

Lakeside Lake, Doncaster, water bird nesting season, many swans!

Finn the cocker spaniel trying to reach coots in a lake.

I chose poorly, not knowing the area.  I chose what looked on the map to be a lakeside park.  In fact, it's even called Lakeside Lake (WTH?) Unfortunately it's about half new development site, and half nature reserve.  I'm sure it will be gorgeous when it's finished, but for half of it the wildlife was utterly un-protected from marauding dogs (or people!) with birds nesting just centimetres from the shore of the lake, which in turn was just a few metres from the footpath. The other half is a building site.  I didn't dare let Finn off the lead for a second, otherwise he'd have been beaten to death by a million maternally outraged swans, or he'd have eaten a duckling.

I made it about 2/3 of the way around the lake before Stephen called, so he had to wait a while for me to get back to him.  At which point he informed me that the surgeon in Doncaster did not feel able to take on his case, as it was too complicated and risky.  They'd recommended a surgeon in Sheffield, at the same eye clinic that Stephen had had his retinal surgeries at, as the facilities there are better, and Doncaster surgeon felt that a retinal specialist with experience in cataract surgery would be better for Stephen.

So, another round of phone calls to find out if this second surgeon was on the Insurance company's approved list, and if a re-referral would still be covered. Honestly, I've no idea how people in countries without socialised medicine cope!  The sheer amount of admin necessary at a time when you're in no fit state to be dealing with extra stress!

By this point it was almost May, my own doctor is concerned about a number of issues with my own health that I'd been putting off attempting to address until covid was "over".  I didn't dare tell Stephen that I was being tested for cancer markers until the tests fortunately came back negative.  We're trying to arrange appointments around each other, and my diary is packed with letters asking me to book appointments that I daren't arrange until I know when Stephen's are going to be, both of our cars are due their MOT's before the end of May (for anyone outside the UK, an MOT is a legally required annual road worthiness check), and several events that we planned pre-covid, that have had to be rescheduled, are rapidly approaching, and we don't know if we can make them, even though we've been looking forward to them for 2 years!

We were still waiting to hear about an appointment with the Sheffield surgeon, but instead he contacted Stephen to say that he doesn't feel able to perform the surgeries either!  Apparently he has access to the notes on the NHS system from Stephen's retinal surgeries, since he works in the same clinic, and after reading them he felt that even the facilities he has access to might not be sufficient.  He recommended yet another specialist, this one in Manchester.  This one is one of the top complex cataract specialists in the UK.  To find anyone with more experience, and equivalent facilities, we'd have to go to London.  Another round of phone calls and discussions with the insurance company, to be sure surgeon number 3 is on their approved list, and arranging for yet another assessment. By this point I was praying to deities I don't even believe in to please, PLEASE let this be what we need.

Then I dropped a wardrobe on my foot.

This needs us to backtrack a bit.  Stephen's parents live on Yell, one of the Shetland islands.  They usually visit for several weeks in spring/early summer, but for obvious reasons, we haven't seen them in 3 years.  During that time, I have officially moved in with Stephen, meaning that all of my stuff has also moved in to this house.  Because I moved during a global pandemic, my friends were able to help by bringing my stuff from one side of Sheffield to the other, but they couldn't help me unpack, or sort through everything. I managed to build myself a yarn cave, rearrange the entire house so that Stephen has an adequate office to work from home, and turn Stephen's junk room into a useable bedroom for us before all of my stuff arrived.  I had no energy left to deal with boxes that I hadn't packed, so I had no idea what things were in which box, and they'd been stacked at random in the spare bedroom.

The spare bedroom is the room that Stephen's parents sleep in when they visit.

I wish I'd taken photos of just how packed it was with stuff!  Over the 2 years that covid controlled our lives, I managed to sort out about 10% of the boxes.  Suddenly, I had less than a month to get them all out of the way, and turn the spare room back into a bedroom, while at the same time juggling medical appointments from every angle. Plus, Stephen couldn't help much, as he couldn't see well enough, and all of his energy is going into trying to keep working, when he has to have his nose practically touching the screen in order to read an email!  

To give you some idea of how bad it was, this is the current state of our dining room, where any boxes I didn't get a chance to go through have been placed while Stephen's parents are here with us.  I reckon I've now sorted about 80% of the former contents of the spare room, yet this remains to be dealt with:

A room half full of boxes, piled on the floor, and on a table that is folded down and pushed to one side. 

To help me organise everything in those boxes, I needed more storage.  The wardrobe in our bedroom had definitely seen better days, and wasn't terribly stable, and the space next to the wardrobe had become a dumping ground for anything we couldn't be bothered to put away properly. So I ordered a new wardrobe, and shelves, and set about demolishing the old wardrobe...

Obviously, Stephen couldn't drive me to A&E, and I couldn't drive myself! I tried to convince myself that it was just tissue damage, and I didn't need to go to hospital.  But then it started swelling up.  I called my sister, thinking her medical knowledge (She's a nurse, and ward sister) might save me the trip to hospital.  Instead she came over, looked at my foot, and took me to A&E herself.  

I could, just about, walk on the foot, but not well.  I own crutches and walking sticks already, because EDS means there are often times when I need them just because I woke up that day.  So I took my crutches with me. but I'm also getting physio for a persistent shoulder injury that's often bad enough that I can't dress myself.  Have you ever tried to use crutches when you've got bursitis in your shoulder?  I can promise you that it's not fun!  My sister eventually convinced me to swallow my stubborn pride, and get in an NHS wheelchair.  Which I then sat in for 3 hours, until the triage nurse came out and announced to the entire waiting room that the current waiting time was 9 hours.  I hadn't eaten, I was in pain from my foot, but also increasingly in pain from being sat unable to move and fidget the way I usually do to ease the pain of EDS, it was already after 9:30pm, and I just couldn't deal with waiting around in increasing pain until 4am, knowing that only then would I be sent for an x-ray, and then I'd have to wait for several more hours to get the results.  I decided to assume that my injury would be no worse that Stephen's sprained ankle.

You may not wish to see this:

A badly bruised and very swollen foot, with an angular scab where the edge of a very large lump of wood hit.

Now, I'm no doctor, but even I know that when the injury is near the ankle, but the bruising and swelling covers the entire foot, and the darkest, blackest bruises are at the base of a toe, it's probably more than just tissue damage!  The fact that it's now 5 weeks later, and my foot still hurts quite badly if I press on the top of it suggests that I probably did break something.  I probably did not make wise choices when I decided to rest this for about 3 days, then carry on as though it had never happened.

At this point I have to thank our dear friends Ian and Jo, as the day after my injury, they came over to our house and finished dismantling the old wardrobe, and built the new one that Ikea delivered that day.  Then they forgave us for missing their joint birthday party 2 days later as well.

New wardrobe and shelving unit in our bedroom.

Again, I wish I had before photos so you could see what a vast improvement this is!

One week after the wardrobe incident, Stephen's parents arrived.  I hadn't quite finished all of the cleaning, as they arrived about 3 hours earlier than we expected, but at least the house was tidy, and their room was ready for them. 10 days after that, Stephen had an appointment with the specialist in Manchester.

Let me assure you that driving 120-odd miles in a manual car, with a broken foot, is not a comfortable experience. I managed, and I managed to find a far more suitable place to take Finn for a walk and a play while we waited this time!

Finn looking for treats in my bag and hoodie, on a picnic blanket, on the grassy bank of the river Bollin.

It's a very good thing that we've discovered this park, as thankfully, this surgeon is willing to perform the surgeries.  He won't do both eyes at the same time, so I have to drive Stephen to Manchester 4 times in the next month, twice for surgeries, and twice for post-op checks.  Finally the end is in sight! (pun entirely intended). If all goes well, Stephen will be able to see well enough to drive by my birthday in mid July.

Of course, we know our luck, especially on this issue, so we're already expecting Posterior Capsular Opacification (the clinical name for secondary cataracts) to appear with unprecedented speed, because of course they will!  But at least the treatment for those is quick and easy, and since roughly half of cataract surgery patients develop them in the 6 months following surgery, we're absolutely expecting Stephen to do so.

When you add to all of this the state of the climate, war in Ukraine, the continuation of other wars that have been going on for longer, just further away, and with less significant impact on us, 1/3 of children in the UK in food poverty, but a UK government who think it's OK to party while the entire country is making sacrifices, and our monarch mourns her husband alone, the erosion of rights, and yet more mass shootings in the US, the Elephant In The Room that is the impact of Brexit, and the precarious nature of the border in Ireland, none of which have ceased to cause me to cry, and rant, and despair of humanity, just because I've had my own troubles to deal with, I think you should be able to see why my first blog post of 2022 is late.  I haven't had the time, energy, or mental capacity to sit down and write one.

Some stuff I have done

I haven't been entirely unproductive in the last 5 months though.  None of these things are knitting, and only one of them is even yarn craft related really, but here's a few little things that I have achieved:

3 resin buttons, one red, one sparkly purple, one opalescent black.

If you read my last post, you will have seen that Stephen gave me some resin crafting materials for Christmas.  One of the things I was experimenting with during the brief period that his eyes were mostly healed and working at the start of January was making my own buttons.  These are 3 of the ones I tried. My favourite is the black with the iridescent flakies in it, I think it looks like a black opal!  

All of the resin kit got packed away as soon as Stephen's right retina tore for the second time.  I wear a respirator when I work with resin, but during the winter keeping windows open to fully clear the air once I'm finished isn't an appealing option, and I wasn't willing to risk any residual resin fumes making Stephen's eyes any worse.

Purple knitted fingerless gloves with a grey skull motif. Sections of the fingers have worn through, and repaired with bright pink yarn.

I can't remember if this was before Christmas, or in January, but I'm pretty sure I haven't shown this before.  I made these gloves for Kelly years ago.  He wears them for running in the winter, but some of the fingers have either worn through, or caught on something and been damaged.  He likes them, so rather than have me knit an entire new pair, he asked if I could darn the damaged areas. He liked the idea of using a contrasting yarn so that the repair would be visible.  I've never done this complex a repair on anything knitted before, and I'm pretty pleased with how they came out!

A very large drawstring bag made with penguin patterned fabric.

The same bag open to reveal multiple inner pockets, filled with different types of dice.

I mentioned earlier that we watch/listen to Critical Role.  If you've ever seen it, you may know that Laura Bailey is definitely what is known in the Table Top Role Playing Game world as a "Dice Goblin".  That is, someone who collects/hoards dice.  Way more dice than even the most avid gamer could ever actually need.  Laura keeps her dice in several Dice Bags of Hoarding.  While I would very much like to own one of the official Critical Role bags, I cannot justify the cost. I do however have a fairly sizeable collection of dice myself, and since Christmas I also have the capability and intention of making more.  So despite my abysmal sewing skills, I dug out my penguin patterned fabric, and set about making my own version.

A counted cross stitch project of a crab, in progress, on a small wooden frame.

This isn't something that I've done this year, but it is something that I've found this year. During my sorting of the many boxes of my stuff, I discovered this, which I am pretty sure is my oldest WIP.

I started this cross stitch project before I married my ex-husband.  We married in August 2000.  This project is probably more than half as old as I am!  I think I still have the book with the chart in, so it's even conceivable that one day I might finish it!

Goals for 2021 - How did I do?

I usually start the year by taking a look at my goals from the year before, then setting some new goals for the year to come.  This year was no different, except that I only got as far as writing them in my blog notebook, and never managed to type them up until now.  

These are straight from my notebook, as written in the first few days of January 2022:

2021 Goals:

* No potentially upsetting social media after 9pm.

I did pretty well at sticking to this one, and I do think that it helped with my overall mental health.  I allowed myself Ravelry and Pintrest, as long as I avoided any high risk boards and groups.  I don't Tweet, because Twitter is a cesspool, so I was OK there.  I avoided Facebook and instagram, and set my phone to only give me news updates in the mornings.

I've not managed to maintain the 9pm discipline this year, but I have found that I check the socials less frequently than I used to, and I'm far less likely to scroll mindlessly for ages.

* Cool Sheep

Miraculously, I did pretty well at this!  

My self-imposed rules allowed me my Made by Penguins monthly yarn club, my first post-lockdown yarn show mini-splurge at Bakewell Wool Gathering, anything I needed that I couldn't find in my stash for a project that someone else requested I make for them, and my yarny advent calendar.

I bought only 1 skein that Third Vault Yarns was selling reduced price to clear stock, 7 balls of commercial sock yarn, 2 of which were for specific projects, and 3 mini-skeins from Ring-a-Rosie, just because I hadn't seen her in so long!

I did receive 1 full skein, and one mini-skein as gifts, and a full skein that I was permitted to keep the majority of, after knitting swatches for the dyer too.

All together, I added 9400m of yarn to my stash.  According to Ravelry, I used 9762m.  That's a net use of stash, so I'm pleased with that!

---Actual shock, and shame---

I've just done a quick ballpark of how much yarn I added to my stash in 2020, and it's in excess of 45,000m!  I know it was an unusually stressful year, and I bought a couple of sweater quantities that I wouldn't usually, and I accepted 9 balls from a friend's de-stash, but Holy Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and all his little carpenter friends!!!!!!!

* WIP-down.  Reduce number of WIPs to single figures, and keep it there!

Genuine success! I ended 2021 with just 7 WIPs, and one completed project awaiting the space for blocking! (obviously I'm only talking about yarn related projects here, so pre-historic cross stitch doesn't count!)

* Sort Stash.

Nope. I mean, it's all in one place, and it's organised roughly, but I still haven't sorted it, arranged it neatly, and updated Ravelry with current storage references.

* Publish Advent Sweater pattern.

Not even close.  I made changes to the pattern, and knit up a second prototype, but I got no further than that.  Grading was my stumbling block.  I'm going to have to spend some time educating myself in how to properly grade a sweater to make it size inclusive.  I learned enough last year to realise how gargantuan a task that is going to be, but not enough to start work on it.

* Re-open Etsy shop.

This was always a stretch goal to be honest.  I can't do this until I have the rest of my house in order.  I can't keep track of stock when I've got nowhere safe to store it!

* Sort house out.

Nope.  As I said above, I was slowly nibbling away at the pile of boxes in the spare room, but I barely made a dent in the overall task.

Goals for 2022:

* Learn to grade a size inclusive garment.

* Publish Advent Sweater pattern.

* Sort house out.

* Knit more than I buy.

* Make progress on the Mitred Squares Blanket.

The first 2 goals on this list have already been abandoned.  I haven't had the time, the energy, or the money to do what is necessary, and there isn't enough of the year left to do it properly this year, by the time you include test knitting, tech editing, and any adjustments that might be needed.  Perhaps next year the Fates will be kinder to me, and allow me to finally achieve this goal!

Finn snoozing and cuddling up to his daddy.

As this post has been decidedly text heavy, I thought I'd sign off with this beautiful photo of Finn, in the dawn pre-light, snuggling up to his daddy in our bed.

Thank you for your patience my dears.  I shall be back with a proper update.  Hopefully very soon.