Life is very challenging at present for me. On Wednesday I had my second cataract operation. That was worse than the 1st one, 6 weeks earlier. For two weeks I must not bend my head, body, lift or exercise. For 4 weeks I must not even cook. With these restrictions and coping with FM at the same time is not easy. Evrerything seems to go on the floor and although I’ve two grab sticks It is not easy to pick them up without bending your head. Then on top of these difficulties I have to put antibiotic eye drops in the eye every 4 hours, which is difficult when you have not glasses on to see what you are doing. On Wednesday the surgeon squirted liquid in the eye and of course I had to blink. The surgeon shouted at me and told me not to blink. A little while later he shouted at me again and told me to breathe! Since Wednesday the pain and fatigue with FM and arthritis has at times been unbearable. Thankfully the worse is over. On the 15th December I go back to the opticians and I cannot wait to get new glasses. I apologise for any errors in this but my glasses are just not right for me and therefore I am having difficulty with seeing what I have written. Does anyone have suggestions how to get through this period?
Hi Rose - be assured - I can’t see a single error!
Oh wow, like that doubles it all…
And shouting: I know these were probably tricky scary situations for him, but was that the only possibility he had left? 
I can imagine the sight problems, cos a neighbour of ours needs her other eye done, but her cancer, regular fever bouts and various severe infections are postponing the operation…
Suggestions to get thru hard periods sounds like you’re asking for mental strategies…?
Not the time now to learn completely new concepts, but praps you’re familiar with some that you can dust off and re-try? Like…
My main one is the mindset of “radical acceptance” as a management and coping strategy, don’t know how much we’ve talked about that, and if that’s something you’d want to get into. Acceptance and commitment therapy, ACT, is a variant form of CBT that focuses on this, very based on mindfulness and detaching, less on control than just noticing what’s happening. What it does is help make sure that we don’t have added emotional suffering due to the physical suffering. Altho I already have this mindset, so don’t “suffer from my suffering”, I’m now doing an online course here, to think and practice it further. Can’t say I need it or am learning anything much new myself, but there are a few things. Interesting and good that it is now being offered on prescription here because this course is being used as a study and the insurances have agreed to pay for it because they’ve decided it’s effective enough.
Here is an old thread on this here…:
And this one is in a similar vein:
Authors that have done this sort of stuff are Jon Kabat-Zinn, Peter Levine, Tara Brach and it’s been used for instance by “Lady Gaga” and got many studies saying it helps…
Best wishes from someone who went thru the same thing [plus 4 cornea transplants] some years ago. It will get better I promise, and you need to give your surgeon sharp rebuke: you’re doing the best you can in a very tough situation. [I know- who rebukes surgeons?]
Meanwhile, what I found best to pass the time, as a lifelong reader who couldn’t read for a long time, was listening to books- on cd at that time- and classical music to calm me down [whatever gets you thru the night of course!]. Now you can likely stream audio books- I don’t know where you are but our library allows us to stream materials from home. I hope you have someone who can help you navigate this tough time. Best wishes from an eye surgery veteran!
I don’t have any advice since I’ve not had cataracts but have had multiply surgeries where couldn’t bend. Take it one day at a time and let yourself rest as much as you can. Unless something is immediate to get from the floor, let it wait till you can step back & see where it is. Weird thing I did was use my toes to feel the object then grab with the grabber. Prayers for speedy recovery.