Cataract Schmataract

Cataracts … Huh! Who needs the smeggers?
Yesterday Phil drove me to hospital where the lens that had served my right eye faithfully (if defectively) for the past 52 years was destined for the slop bucket.

After a shedload of tests, some unashamedly pathetic middle-aged flirting with the hot nurses and the anointing of my forehead with an enormous magic marker arrow pointing to my right eye (everyone due for a cataract op had one of these … we sat around comparing arrows while we waited as that was more entertaining than the magazines on offer) I was led into the operating theatre.

After a few eye drops, including an iodine one ("Oooh! It's all gone yellow! Trippy!") they sat me down in a big ol' dentist chair thang and wound it down until I was laying flat on my back with my head clamped in a rather comfortable set of pads. Then they slapped a mask over my face and ripped open an eyehole in it before sticking my eyelids open so I couldn't blink.

After that, a nurse held my hand (you have to squeeze their hand if you feel you're gonna sneeze - not a wise option when someone is cutting your eyeball open). Unfortunately I got Nurse Tim rather than hot nurses Emma and Judith. Hey ho.

And then they shone a bright light in my eye and this is all I saw for the next twenty minutes. Actually, this is a photo of a lightbulb that I dicked around with in Photoshop but it's pretty close to what you actually see during a cataract op if anyone's interested. I'm rather proud of how accurate it is (the darker smudge in the lower left is the surgeon's hand ).
There was one unnerving moment when the whole thing blossomed red but they washed the blood off and carried on.

What happens is the doctor slices into your eyeball (try not to sneeze) and inserts an ultrasound doohickey that sounds like a speeded up dentist's drill. This gradually breaks up your lens and they flush it all away. While that was happening the white light got more and more blurry until at last all I could see was white.

Then the doctor inserts a new lens and things get seriously weird for a few seconds while your brain tries to adjust. And suddenly it's all over and you can see a ring of grinning faces and a big ol' lamp.

Luckily they washed the arrow off my forehead, otherwise I'd have looked even more dorky than this. Many thanks to Phil for picking me up and driving me home as it's a ten mile walk otherwise.

So anyhoo … Here I am trying to cope with the fact that my right eye cannot see through my glasses any more and I cannot have a new prescription made up for six weeks: the time it takes for my new lens to fully settle in. But at least after that period I'll be able to see again. Woohoo!
The computer screen is glary as hell so I'll post this and turn the damned thing off

Bad Nose Day

Hokay.
We're back to the pitfalls of Dive's anosmia.

First off, let's play catch-up so you know what I'm moaning about.
This is what I wrote about it way back in the mists of time:

"I lost my sense of smell when I was fifteen.

I'd been rushed to hospital with a burst appendix and a fully functioning pheromonal facility. A couple of weeks of hilarious japes with abdominal drainage tubes later and I left hospital with neither appendix nor sense of smell.
My doctor shrugged his shoulders. Had I been a private patient, he could have made a lot of money from me, but this was the NHS, so his reaction was best summed up by the word "whatever".

Recently, this condition seems to have become fashionable and even has a name (anosmia) and lists of famous anosmics such as William Wordsworth and Michael Hutchens (and somewhat more yummily, Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream) have appeared in the papers.

While this condition is classed a disability, we anosmics don't qualify for disability allowance like those scrounging slackers in the blind and deaf communities (smug bastards with their "proper" disabilities, curse their cotton socks).

Apparently, permanent anosmics like old Dive often have a much more developed sense of taste than those sniffy people with real working noses. It's kinda nice for an arty-farty snob like me to have my superior taste officially recognised.

Weirdly, I can still remember smells and that can be a real pain.
I sometimes wake up from a dream (I can still smell in dreams, how freaky is that?) with a smell stuck in my brain that stays there all day. The most annoying "virtual smell" I get stuck with is the smell of washday from when I was a little kid. We had a cold tap and a copper by the range for heating water. The awful smell of damp, soap-powdery clothes in a tiny back room sometimes assails me for days at a time. And oranges … which is a real pisser if I'm hungry.

Some advantages I have over "normally nosed" people:
- I can sit quite happily beside a farting dog and not notice a thing, while the rest of the room runs away, gagging.
- I am a demon at raw chili-eating contests.
- er … that's about it.

Some disadvantages:
- Being unable to smell burning.
- Being unable to smell gas.
- Being shaken awake in the dead of night with a "What's that smell?"
- Having to follow a frantic woman round the house as she tries to locate the "burning smell" or "leaking gas" she is convinced has woken her. And being bawled out for my inability to help.
- Not realising I have a drainage problem until someone visits and reels back, going "What the fuck is that stink?"
- Not realising I've got dogshit on my shoe at work.
- Becoming a fanatically clean person so I don't risk being smelly.

And a couple more:
Having no sense of smell and an enhanced sense of taste, I tend to "taste" smells, but can only pick up on a tiny amount of any smell. And it's usually the wrong part of it …
Ame (and a lot of other people besides) loves Lush products. While I can understand that they might smell very nice to her, all I can pick up on is a horrid taste of washday soap powder and rotting fruit.
And I know a lot of you like perfume …
Well should we ever meet, please, PLEASE don't wear any. It's an effective Dive repellent (maybe I shouldn't have given that away).
Even with the most expensive perfumes, all I can taste is the solvent. Chanel No5 tastes like a petrol/paint-stripper flavour and is the last thing I want to inhale close up.
I'm with the Japanese in finding the neck the most erotic part of a woman. For me, there is nothing nicer than nuzzling into that bit under her ear and inhaling lovely fresh, clean woman. If she's wearing perfume I have to reel away and have (once or twice) been known to involuntarily gag. EWW! That stuff is repellent!

So. That's me and my anosmia.
At least I have better taste than you. Official."

So … back to this morning and my "bad nose day".
I woke up this morning and could smell something icky.
After a few seconds confusion I realised that this was going to be a bad nose day. A very bad nose day indeed.
My brain was registering the smell of stale vomit.
Eww!
I know, it's disgusting.
I looked around … No sign of vom in the bedroom or indeed anywhere in the house. The smell stayed constant as I moved around and sniffed at various smelly things like vanilla pods and coffee beans so I knew it was an hallucination. Much the same way as amputees can still feel their missing parts itching from time to time, anosmics get a "virtual smell" stuck in our brains and it drives us crazy.

Today's stale vomit smell made me get back in the shower and scrub my saggy bod and wash my hair twice, then it made me throw all of my fresh clothes in the washing basket and put on new stuff.
It kept me awake on my train journey, paranoid that people could smell sick on me.
It ruined my coffee and breakfast and it has just ruined my lunch.
These stupid smells usually linger for around forty-eight hours, so if I appear tetchy you know the reason why.
Fucking fuck!

And it is NOT funny!

… Okay, so it's funny, but laugh amongst yourselves, not where I can see you.

Fat Bastard

Before we start, I just want the Oxford English Dictionary people to know that I lay claim to the word "Gojirabilia" (noun … Gojira memorabilia … see the last lot of comments).
That'll mean I get two new words in the next edition. I got "Knudsenesque," too.
Stop looking at me like that. It's a long standing ambition, okay?

Hokay … confession time.

I was on the phone to my lovely girlfriend yesterday.
That's not the confession.
I've got an old retro phone, not one of these jobbies that you can wander round the house with and lose. Mine's attached to the wall with an umbilical.
I like the old fashioned seventies phones because they come with a "MUTE" switch for the ringer and my commuting routine means I need to be asleep by nine in the evening and any fucker calls after that and wakes me up is gonna die!

So anyhoo. We were chatting away and mooning like a couple of teenagers and the phone was sitting on my lap.
Here's the confession bit:
I leaned forward to grab my glass of wine and my FAT GUT squished down on the phone and hit the redial button!

And yes, I fessed up.
Hey ho.
As if I don't do enough bloody sit-ups as it is …

My Dog's Got No Nose

I lost my sense of smell when I was fifteen.

I'd been rushed to hospital with a burst appendix and a fully functioning pheromonal facility. A couple of weeks of hilarious japes with abdominal drainage tubes later and I left hospital with neither appendix nor sense of smell.
My doctor shrugged his shoulders. Had I been a private patient, he could have made a lot of money from me, but this was the NHS, so his reaction was best summed up by the word "whatever".

Recently, this condition seems to have become fashionable and even has a name (anosmia) and lists of famous anosmics such as William Wordsworth and Michael Hutchens (and somewhat more yummily, Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream) have appeared in the papers.

While this condition is classed a disability, we anosmics don't qualify for disability allowance like those scrounging slackers in the blind and deaf communities (smug bastards with their "proper" disabilities, curse their cotton socks).

Apparently, permanent anosmics like old Dive often have a much more developed sense of taste than those sniffy people with real working noses. It's kinda nice for an arty-farty snob like me to have my superior taste officially recognised.

Weirdly, I can still remember smells and that can be a real pain.
I sometimes wake up from a dream (I can still smell in dreams, how freaky is that?) with a smell stuck in my brain that stays there all day. The most annoying "virtual smell" I get stuck with is the smell of washday from when I was a little kid. We had a cold tap and a copper by the range for heating water. The awful smell of damp, soap-powdery clothes in a tiny back room sometimes assails me for days at a time. And oranges … which is a real pisser if I'm hungry.

Some advantages I have over "normally nosed" people:
- I can sit quite happily beside a farting dog and not notice a thing, while the rest of the room runs away, gagging.
- I am a demon at raw chili-eating contests.
- er … that's about it.

Some disadvantages:
- Being unable to smell burning.
- Being unable to smell gas.
- Being shaken awake in the dead of night with a "What's that smell?"
- Having to follow a frantic woman round the house as she tries to locate the "burning smell" or "leaking gas" she is convinced has woken her. And being bawled out for my inability to help.
- Not realising I have a drainage problem until someone visits and reels back, going "What the fuck is that stink?"
- Not realising I've got dogshit on my shoe at work.
- Becoming a fanatically clean person so I don't risk being smelly.

And a couple more:
Having no sense of smell and an enhanced sense of taste, I tend to "taste" smells, but can only pick up on a tiny amount of any smell. And it's usually the wrong part of it …
Ame (and a lot of other people besides) loves Lush products. While I can understand that they might smell very nice to her, all I can pick up on is a horrid taste of washday soap powder and rotting fruit.
And I know a lot of you like perfume …
Well should we ever meet, please, PLEASE don't wear any. It's an effective Dive repellent (maybe I shouldn't have given that away).
Even with the most expensive perfumes, all I can taste is the solvent. Chanel No5 tastes like a petrol/paint-stripper flavour and is the last thing I want to inhale close up.
I'm with the Japanese in finding the neck the most erotic part of a woman. For me, there is nothing nicer than nuzzling into that bit under her ear and inhaling lovely fresh, clean woman. If she's wearing perfume I have to reel away and have (once or twice) been known to involuntarily gag. EWW! That stuff is repellent!

So. That's me and my anosmia.
At least I have better taste than you. Official.