A little eye surgery in store for me

While our plan was to stay one month in College Station our departure date would be entirely flexible dependent upon what we decide about my eye care. The day after we arrived I had an appointment to have my eye examined for a lens replacement. Sharon masked up to take me home from the appointment after they dilated me.

Those who follow our blog might remember a few years ago while wintering in Arizona I experienced a retinal tear while we were on a walk. I had laser surgery the next day as it was a large tear which threatened the sight in my eye. Well a year passed and the amount of floaters in my surgically repaired eye never diminished so it was recommended I have a vitrectomy.

A half a year ago while spending the fall in Arizona I returned to the same doctor and had that procedure done. A vitrectomy is a procedure where the surgeon takes out the fluid (vitreous) inside of the eyeball and replaces it with a sterile saline solution. The procedure was successful as my vision was clearer but I was informed that this surgery would likely advance a cataract forming in the same eye.

The glasses after the vitrectomy became worthless in a few short months so I  scheduled to see a Doctor here in College Station to have yet another (my third) surgery on this eye. This explains the length of our stay being dependent on the outcome of this surgery.

I will fast forward a bit and say that I had the lens replacement surgery done and all is well. However, I have decided to go ahead and have the lens replaced in my other eye while we are here to avoid having to go through this again in the near future. As a result we have extended our stay to June 11th.

While we are waiting to have my next eye surgery we have been enjoying birding at some of the local parks during this spring’s migration. Birding here isn’t as productive as in the Rio Grande Valley on the Texas coastline but there are occasionally days where lots of migrants settle down for a day to fatten up before moving further north.

We had one such day like this while visiting the Texas A&M University Research Park. In this area after cold fronts bring severe weather there are occasionally large numbers of migratory birds settling to avoid the turbulence. On this particular day the migratory birds were in abundance. However, no matter how patient we were in trying to focus our cameras on these tiny little birds we found it a bit more challenging than we hoped.

Today’s photos are from our some of our hiking and birding excursions here in the Brazos Valley of Texas…

NOTE: We are now in College Station, TX until June 11th