I'm back!
I'm awake. I forgot my pain relievers and woke up and I wrote a complex post explaining the bizarreness of my Conflux and LJ then ate it. I don't know how much eye-focus I have left, so I hope you will forgive me if this fades. When the pain reliever kicks in, I'm going back to sleep...
My right eye went funky last week. I had to miss some of Thursday (which you will remember was my birthday) due to the need for emergency hospital (Lily Mulholland is the person you want beside you in a crisis, folks - she's amazing, and Karen Herkes is the person on whose shoulder you want to cry when the emotions catch up with you - both of them are wonderful and made the biggest difference) and every other day I had to take an hour here or an hour there to rest my eye (for it made my whole body tired) and I couldn't actually read the programme, so I missed things I really wanted to attend. I managed to tweet one session and I had pain reliever and alcohol before the masquerade so also I managed to give a sense of normalcy, but I was most certainly not normal. I've left a trail of things behind and am trying to retrieve them... (the two outstanding items at this moment are a brown bolero and my author copy of Next)
One big thing I realised was how much some of the partially-sighted depend on others. I missed room parties (and missed getting my room party on the board, so I ended up donating my room party things to someone else, for no-one appeared) and couldn't find friends and got lost more times than I can count. I gave up even worrying about it after a bit, and just went along with whichever friends I was with at that time and hoped we were going somewhere I wanted to be. We mostly were. And my eye's adjusting faster than it did last time it got blood-filled, which is good - and I won't know until later in the week what the prognosis is and whether I need eye surgery, so watch this space. I now know what a maze a convention is for people who can't rad fine print or who are reliant on verbal indications, so it was a useful experience. It was not, however, always comfortable.
My other personal note for conventions in the future is to be much less accepting of programming. I didn't want to kick up a fuss because programming is such a tough thing, but being scheduled during mealtimes (always) and being overscheduled on the first day resulted in problems. The 3 hour workshop wasn't a problem (except that I had to eat chocolate instead of lunch, for the teacher can't take an hour off to locate food - I made sure my students had to freedom to find food and gave them extra question time at the end to make up, but didn't tell them that was what I was doing - I created a field trip so that they got learning plus time and space, which solved all). The problem was being put on an evening panel as well, on that very same day. It meant I didn't get dinner with the friends who wanted to wish me happy birthday (I didn't even see them! and it was hard to get dinner at all) and I couldn't find anyone afterwards, for my panel was at prime drinks time and I couldn't see to find the bar (which is where some of my missing friends were - funky vision doesn't help, but in this case the main problem was not having a sense of direction). So the plans for that evening were totally mucked up because I had to spend so much of it doing con-stuff. Evening panels on birthdays... don't do it, people. Some of the friends I'd planned to see that night spent half the con chasing me, and I never got those birthday drinks with them.
Instead of Thursday providing the moment to remember, today did. I was presented a huge bunch of beautiful flowers. The flowers were for turning 52 (I turned 52 on the first day of the 52nd Natcon!) and for the PhD - and thank you those wonderful, wonderful people who thought of it and put in for it and thank you Craig for presenting it. The first thing I did when I got home was put those flowers in water. They're magnificent - and they're going to go a long way in getting me through what may be an interesting week.
I'll try to do you a proper con report later, but it all depends on my eye holding out, for I have a solid week's teaching (3 courses, one of which is entirely new) and now have an even more solid week's medical appointments as well. Plus I have my next set of deadlines.
Conflux was very good - Nicole and Donna run a fine con and it had a lovely atmosphere. I caught up on old friends and new. One of my great highlights was catching up with Nalo.
And all the rest can wait.
For those of you who are trying to work out just how ill I am, things aren't so bad. My eye is a serious worry, obviously*, but my underlying health is *so* much better that I woke up to take pain reliever rather than sleeping right through and paying bigtime for missing a dose. Somehow, in the last few months, I've gone from being impossibly chronically ill to being able to do as much as other people, even when life turns itself inside out. I can't help thinking that this is a wonderful thing.
*Angiogram soon! Then I glow and we find out just what's happening.
My right eye went funky last week. I had to miss some of Thursday (which you will remember was my birthday) due to the need for emergency hospital (Lily Mulholland is the person you want beside you in a crisis, folks - she's amazing, and Karen Herkes is the person on whose shoulder you want to cry when the emotions catch up with you - both of them are wonderful and made the biggest difference) and every other day I had to take an hour here or an hour there to rest my eye (for it made my whole body tired) and I couldn't actually read the programme, so I missed things I really wanted to attend. I managed to tweet one session and I had pain reliever and alcohol before the masquerade so also I managed to give a sense of normalcy, but I was most certainly not normal. I've left a trail of things behind and am trying to retrieve them... (the two outstanding items at this moment are a brown bolero and my author copy of Next)
One big thing I realised was how much some of the partially-sighted depend on others. I missed room parties (and missed getting my room party on the board, so I ended up donating my room party things to someone else, for no-one appeared) and couldn't find friends and got lost more times than I can count. I gave up even worrying about it after a bit, and just went along with whichever friends I was with at that time and hoped we were going somewhere I wanted to be. We mostly were. And my eye's adjusting faster than it did last time it got blood-filled, which is good - and I won't know until later in the week what the prognosis is and whether I need eye surgery, so watch this space. I now know what a maze a convention is for people who can't rad fine print or who are reliant on verbal indications, so it was a useful experience. It was not, however, always comfortable.
My other personal note for conventions in the future is to be much less accepting of programming. I didn't want to kick up a fuss because programming is such a tough thing, but being scheduled during mealtimes (always) and being overscheduled on the first day resulted in problems. The 3 hour workshop wasn't a problem (except that I had to eat chocolate instead of lunch, for the teacher can't take an hour off to locate food - I made sure my students had to freedom to find food and gave them extra question time at the end to make up, but didn't tell them that was what I was doing - I created a field trip so that they got learning plus time and space, which solved all). The problem was being put on an evening panel as well, on that very same day. It meant I didn't get dinner with the friends who wanted to wish me happy birthday (I didn't even see them! and it was hard to get dinner at all) and I couldn't find anyone afterwards, for my panel was at prime drinks time and I couldn't see to find the bar (which is where some of my missing friends were - funky vision doesn't help, but in this case the main problem was not having a sense of direction). So the plans for that evening were totally mucked up because I had to spend so much of it doing con-stuff. Evening panels on birthdays... don't do it, people. Some of the friends I'd planned to see that night spent half the con chasing me, and I never got those birthday drinks with them.
Instead of Thursday providing the moment to remember, today did. I was presented a huge bunch of beautiful flowers. The flowers were for turning 52 (I turned 52 on the first day of the 52nd Natcon!) and for the PhD - and thank you those wonderful, wonderful people who thought of it and put in for it and thank you Craig for presenting it. The first thing I did when I got home was put those flowers in water. They're magnificent - and they're going to go a long way in getting me through what may be an interesting week.
I'll try to do you a proper con report later, but it all depends on my eye holding out, for I have a solid week's teaching (3 courses, one of which is entirely new) and now have an even more solid week's medical appointments as well. Plus I have my next set of deadlines.
Conflux was very good - Nicole and Donna run a fine con and it had a lovely atmosphere. I caught up on old friends and new. One of my great highlights was catching up with Nalo.
And all the rest can wait.
For those of you who are trying to work out just how ill I am, things aren't so bad. My eye is a serious worry, obviously*, but my underlying health is *so* much better that I woke up to take pain reliever rather than sleeping right through and paying bigtime for missing a dose. Somehow, in the last few months, I've gone from being impossibly chronically ill to being able to do as much as other people, even when life turns itself inside out. I can't help thinking that this is a wonderful thing.
*Angiogram soon! Then I glow and we find out just what's happening.
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