Eye Update
erimess
(Yes, I know, LONG... but it's me. What do you expect?)
It's now been about 3 months since my oh-so-fun retinal surgery. I
don't remember the last thing I ever said about it, but I do know that
it was actually a much worse thing that I originally thought. It's
not like I knew much about it, so had to just put some pieces together
based on what the specialist said and stuff I read. My retina was
half ripped off, which is not good, and also got to the macula. For
the untrained folk, that's the center that is responsible for the
sharp vision.
In a totally medical sense, things are healing very nicely. I kept
being told we were ahead of schedule, but I don't think it really hit
me that much until about January when it got stressed to me how well I
was healing, given how bad it was.
Towards the beginning of January I had a full glaucoma screening done,
because the retina guy didn't like some stuff he saw in the optic
nerve. When the glaucoma lady first looked at my eye, she had to ask
what surgery had been done because she couldn't really tell, said it
had healed well -- and when she discovered it had been a "complicated"
case, she said, "Oh, well then it looks *really* good."
Just as a side note, one of my tests was this big lighted circle, with
a circle of orange lights in the middle. Then these little lights
would go off at random, some dim and some bright, some near the center
and some way out towards the edges. I had to keep my eye on that
center circle, and hit this little button (like a mini mouse) whenever
I thought I saw something. In the middle of the test, I thought, hey,
this is just like shooting at the tie fighters in the Star Wars game.
:-) And then had to try to concentrate on the test. The doctor lady
said I did *extremely* well on that test and that I had the peripheral
vision of an 18 year old. Well, that's cause 18 year olds are
shooting at tie fighters. I found that terribly amusing.
But tie fighters aside, that's also good stuff, cause a retinal
detachment can affect your peripheral vision, and apparently mine's
still good as new. (Or at least as good as 18 years old.)
And my last follow up at the retina guy produced some good news. He
did mention I had some "folds in the macula resolving themselves,"
i.e. meaning wrinkles coming out. I'm still getting a lot of
distortion when I read, so I don't really see the results of this, but
maybe with some time (and patience - nothing but patience!!), that may
improve. He stressed really strongly that nearly anyone else that had
been through what I had would not be doing nearly as well. I've been
hearing stories from friends whose relatives have ended up on
disability cause they couldn't work and only seeing shadows and that
sort of thing. I'd say I've been extremely lucky and that the surgeon
was really good. And I did follow their instructions to a tee, which
helped.
From a medical standpoint I'm healing well and everything is looking
fantastic. They are still unsure of the visual outcome of this. I'm
still more near-sighted in that eye than I used to be, which is
probably permanent, but no big deal. And I do have the distortions,
which mostly affects small objects... like reading. But given the
complicated nature of it and how other people have done, having some
reading distortions is minor.
I still can't wear a contact in that eye, which is annoying. But I'll
be able to try it sooner than he originally thought, maybe in about 6
weeks. The new glasses help, but they still annoy my nose and my ears
and give me headaches, just like the old ones, so I can't wear them
all the time. My brain has adjusted to one contact fairly well at
this point and I'm going to mostly stick with that until I can do the
other contact.
I don't think I've mentioned that I can drive again. It started with
little short trips in the neighborhood, progressed to making it to a
bus hub, which greatly helped the work problem... and next thing I
knew I was getting around fairly well. There's some depth perception
problems cause of no contact in that eye, but my brain has gotten used
to that too. I just can't get on the highway (bummer) and do better
on good roads with lines. i.e. roads with no lines and cars parked
along the side are roads to stay off of. I was having trouble with
night vision, but the glasses do help that issue. So I wear those if
I need to drive at night. That all happened within about a month
(January), so that was some great progress. I'm still limited, but
making it around fairly well. I went through a scare in December that
I might never drive again, so I'm really happy with this progress.
Speaking of driving... that's another thread and even more exciting.
But that's about where things stand.
--
Erimess Dragon
-==(UDIC)==-
d++e+NT++Om UK!1!2!3!A!L!
U+uCuFuG+++uLB+uA+ nC+nH+nP+nS++nT-xa6
Never compare yourself to the best others can do,
but rather to the best you can do.