Solitude is not always a sad thing. Over the years, I have had many periods with only myself for company. Sometimes I hated it. Sometimes I loved it. After everything that has dogpiled on me in 2016, I think right now I craved it. I had a beautiful weekend with my daughters. I learned a lot about myself over the summer living with a housemate who was very different from me. But ultimately, the person I need to live with right now is myself. After my older daughter and her derpy little dog left this morning, I have a stretch of time with me and only me in the house. Now I get to talk to myself out loud and not feel self conscious about it. I can leave the bathroom door open and still have an expectation of privacy. I can hang out and watch television all night and not disturb anyone's rest but my own. Eventually I'll fall out of love with the solitude, but this week I'm excited to have a crack at it.
All the medications I take now have consequences. Most of my regimen makes me feel significantly better, except for the whole idea of being forced to take twelve to eighteen pills every day for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, the one I like the most, the one that seems to have the biggest impact (and is the smallest tablet to swallow), also has the most serious side effects. The best medicine for lupus is an anti-malaria drug that can and frequently does cause irreversible damage to the eyes. It took me months to get the insurance referral properly submitted and coded, but today was the trip to the ophthamologist for the baseline measurements to see how this medication will affect me. I've been on it since late April. This test should have been done back in May or June, and I wish I'd been a little more proactive about it. The risk is for retinal toxicity that can lead to partial or complete destruction of the macula. They did all sorts of imaging, put me through functional tests, and put the fear of God into me. When he described one of the key measurements (I'm going to guess it was the thickness of my maculae?) as "the thin side of normal," I got the message that this is something to pay attention to from this moment on. I have been having a really hard time reading with my glasses on, and when I want to see color well, I always pull them off. I don't know whether this sudden (in the last six or eight months) change is due to the medications or not. All I know is I will not skip the six month recheck they told me I was getting.
For all that I was happy to have some alone time, I decided it wasn't as much fun to drive home on a sunny day with dilated eyes. My right eye was squinted almost completely closed the whole way back to the house, and I kept one hand above my left to shadow it. It wore me out, dealing with too much light. I should have taken a nap, but I never got around to it. Perhaps I'll take advantage of being the sole boss of the house to go to bed early tonight. Who will tell me no?
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