Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Eye Update aka Action Plan

I know most of you are probably rather sick of me mentioning how broken I am! lol I promise I'll be back together and at it in no time. I went in to see a retinal specialist this morning, Dr. S. I didn't know if I was going to have surgery today or not, but, was told just in case they do to not have anything to eat or drink after midnight. Let me tell ya, not exactly a fun was to start the day. But, hey gotta do what you gotta do.
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So I went in, got my pupils dilated once again (blech), then met with the doctor who looked at my eyes. At first he didn't make much sense. Holes? Degene...wha??? He reassured me that he'd explain everything in after he talked with his nurse and began making notes in my chart. He was penciling what was wrong with my eye on an eye diagram, when I heard the nurse say something to this effect, "Wow... I don't see you draw in like that." Which meant some bad mojo was up. You never wanna hear nurses or docs say stuff like that. Just my two cents here.
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Turns out yes I do have retinal detachment, about half of it (180 degrees of my eye) isn't where it needs to be. To top it off the inside of my eye is riddled with holes due to my retina pulling away. If I didn't get surgery to fix the detachment I'd go blind in my eye. If I didn't get the holes repaired I would have a detachment occur again. Surgery is the only option to fix both of these problems. I will go under anesthesia and Dr. S will go in, take out fluid in my eye and fill it with a gas bubble which will push the eye back into position. After that he'll cold laser the holes shut so I won't have this problem in the near future. Obviously there are some risks, I'm likely to get cataracts in 2-10 ish years because of the gas coming into contact with my lens. There is also no guarantee I will recover all of my vision. I may get lucky and get it all or most back. But,at the very, very least this surgery will prevent me from complete vision loss in my right eye.
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Thursday is surgery day. Tomorrow I go in and get all my pre-op blood work, chest x-ray, blah blah stuff done. This has been one crazy ride! Fortunately, this eye issue is being addressed and is fixable. The recovery is 10 days keeping my eyes in a downward position (to keep the bubble in place) and about two weeks of doing a whole lot of nothing. As long as everything heals up as it needs to that will be all I have to deal with. I'm missing loads of work which is going to be financially stressful, but, I'm trying to keep my chin up as I've been through much worse in terms of financial hardship. My bosses are all aware of the situation and promising not to give me the boot. They are being incredibly supportive. The doctor's office is being great and handling all the insurance stuff.
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I'm really lucky this is going so smoothly. Keep your fingers crossed it keeps going that way!

3 comments:

Sarah said...

I *LOVE* bringing something to the table that the doctors don't expect! SO much fun and specialness.

Anyway, good luck. I remember Michael's eye surgery well and have run the surgery gauntlet more times than I care to count, most of them at St. John's. Their nurses have always been great, and their anesthesiologists usually have the best senses of humor. Hopefully you have a nice, early surgery time, and call or text (or make Jon call or text) if you need anything! I'm not far away!

Habebi said...

It's fun huh?! lol Nothing like being the youngest person in the building needing eye surgery with issues they don't see lol. Yay me!

Thanks for the reassurances! I knew St John's was a great hospital to be at, but, it's nice to get a first hand account. I'll meet with the anesthesiologist tomorrow, I'm hoping for a funny one that won't make my throat hurt.

I'll let Jon know. Thanks for the offer of help! It's so amazing, everyone is being wonderfully supportive. I'm kind of overwhelmed!

Caitie said...

I hope everything went well for you, and that you are currently 'staring down' at a pretty pedicure with your lovely animals and boyfriend close by your side. I hope that everything is smoother sailing for you and I'm thinking about you :-)