Eye c's U....

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

It's happened. They cut my eye open like some cavier on a plate... really they did.
I just had to forget that I don't get numb very quickly under the administration of local anesthetic. Ooops!

Felt every cut of the knife as they cut around the cornea to lift it so they could free up the scarring around my pupil. I felt that cutting around the outside of the pupil as well I would swear.

They kept adding more eye drops and more pain meds to my drip line every time I said, "that REALLY is a BIT uncomfortable...translation

THAT HURTS LIKE A MOTHERF***CKER!!!"

Then she asks me to bear with her for just another moment. So I ask for something to hold onto. Two nurses bravely volunteer their fingers...2 and 3 at a time, but then tell me not to break them. ;D They didn't realize it was hazardous duty. I'm supposed to be an old lady. And I don't think they really realized how much the pain meds HADN'T taken effect.

I dropped back to one finger a piece. It's harder to break a single finger by squeezing. ;D

But then the doctor asked for the crusher...which I told her wasn't extremely comforting from the patient's side of things. I'm assuming it's the ultra sound tool that dissolves the actual protein lens in your eye so that the prosthetic one can be inserted. That part of the surgery took about 5 minutes, tops. LOL She's that good.

But I swear I got to watch her reattach something around the cornea, and I was seeing rainbow halos around the cornea and everything was this lovely shade of old blood through that eye yesterday. Cuz of course they drape your face in a lovely blue sterile sheet and tape it so that only the eye they are working on is open to the room. Makes for an interesting viewing arangement...NOT.

At least my arms were free and they took my claustrophobia seriously and gave me some GOOD anti-care pharmacueticals...better than valium according to them...I'd believe it. I really didn't much care that I knew I was all bound up with people all around me and cutting on my eye. Weird stuff.

Also got the financial shock of the week yesterday. It seems the doctor's scheduling department forgot the little detail of the $400 insurance deductible. Ouch! So that gets added to the rest of the medical bills that we've been trying to pay off all year, and I thought we were finally seeing some light!

But today I had the post op check and got the plastic shield off. I have 2 eyes! Binocular vision! I see in 3-D again! I have depth perception!

For those of you that have never been without it. Try putting gauze over one eye and taping it shut for a day or two and seeing what a massive pain in the rear it becomes. You can still see and do things. But you have to feel your way on anything that involves placing a paintbrush, needle, wheel, bead, fire torch, aargh! The list became endless. Made me so appreciate my vision. I may not have the perfect close vision I'm used to when I'm done, but the clouded wall I've been looking through will be gone! I cried.

Dr. Armour says I should wait a week to see Avatar again so that I really can appreciate the full 3-D effect. (More in another post on my thoughts about the movie without the 3-D.) And I have to wait a week for the lampworking as well. Aargh! I have this really cool idea for a necklace for my sister's birthday next week, but I don't even know if it's possible yet. Darn it!

Anyway. My body and surgery were a bit weird (what's new) and the pressure in my eye is a bit high today so I'm really supposed to keep track of stuff this weekend and report ANY loss of vision or increased pain. I added another couple of eyedrops to my arsenal and another appointment to my week next week, but I console myself with the fact that...I've got EYES....

from the goddess of vision...

Eye again...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

No, that is not a pretty starry planet...that is the starry form the retinal scarring took in my eye as of last February. The picture was kindly supplied by Casey Eye for me so I could show the few people who are bored enough to read my blog what it looked like. ;D

The next one down is what it looked like in November. Uveitis and the associated infections have definite effects on the retina of your eye, and in this case on the pupil and iris. It actually scarred the pupil and built up scar tissue that glued itself to the lens.

I've also had to have all the explanations made to me about the swelling (macular edema) in the back of my eye, and they take pictures in cross sections across the plane of my eye socket to keep track of how swollen it is compared to what it should be, or what it was the last time.

This one with the colors is almost like a thermal shot showing the swelling as higher topography across the back of the eye in November. And then a cross section through the actual swelling.

They did the same cross sections in December before they did more of those lovely steroid injections into my eye socket.

You remember. The ones that carried a risk, but that I didn't realize would CAUSE a cataract. Gee! Learn something new all the time...and doctor, why didn't we go with the systemic steriods? I still haven't gotten a good answer on that one.

These pictures in December were just before shot number 3, or was it 4? The cataract was now bad enough that everybody is pretty well admitting they can't see squat through it.

Got the good news on the 9th or so of February when I started writing this that the eye doctors are willing to totally disregard all their own guidelines for macular edema and go ahead with the lens replacement for my cataract after only 2 months of the swelling being reduced in my eye.

My surgeon obviously is worried enough about the edema coming back quickly that she scheduled me for as soon as I could clear my schedule...she wanted me in there the next week.

Somehow it's not as reassuring as I would like it to be. But I guess they are realizing that if they can get the lens replaced while the swelling is quiet at all that then they can keep injecting the steroids into my eye socket as much as they want without further damage to the lens...the synthetic one won't cloud like my real one is what I've been told.

The cataract has gotten bad enough that there is only one machine they can photograph the back of my eye with, and it's the new machine that is only available up at Casey Eye Institute itself. The doctors can't even really see to the back of the eye much any more, and they are even admitting it to me. ;) Go figure. More later....I've actually done it...

from the goddess who sees....