It's June 17th 2020 now
and, back four and a half months ago I learned at my annual doctor's visit
that i had a detached retina. And...
that day i went to the
optometrist and one of the things we did was a simple test
where the assistant said look at my nose but i'm gonna hold up fingers at
different locations and i want you to tell me how many
fingers i'm holding up. So she holds up two in the upper right
hand corner and I look at her nose and i say two and then
she goes to the lower right corner and i say
one. And she goes to the lower left corner and i say one.
but then she goes to the upper left corner above my nose and
i say to and she says no look at my nose
how many fingers am i holding up but look at my nose.
And i said, i can't see your hand and she said that's the problem.
and that was an indication that i had a detached retina and also that
that meant that the underside of my eye
the underside of my eyeball is where the retina had detached.
so ...the bottom of your eye sees what's above you and the top of your eye sees
what's below you so that's how we knew that it was
she saved that corner for last because she thought that would be the problem
corner from another test uh another electronic
test that we had done
so that was interesting to me i had pretty good vision though in the center
of my vision and i could see the other three corners
and that day she said this is serious um
even though you know you have it feels to you like
you have pretty good vision and you and you didn't even notice that you lost
this area vision this is serious and you should see a retina specialist
today and she said i'm sure they will take you
with the description i'm going to give of
what i'm seeing in this exam and she was right i was taken that day
saw the retina specialist he looked at my right eye
and said this is detached and it's been detached for a while this didn't just
happen uh and we should really operate on this
this will only get worse and he looked at my left eye and he said
and your left eye has latticing your left eye latticing i
think it means that the retina is very thin and weak and he said
really i want to do laser surgery on your left eye tomorrow
to weld,... weld it down in place the retina down in place and also do
a scleral buckle on your right eye plus possibly a vitrectomy but i don't think
i'll need to do that but possibly of vitrectomy
and he explained what that would be and ..i have another video on that
and so i don't want to go into too much detail there and i will link that video
um and then i did have that that surgery it ended up he needed to do the
vitrectomy and i had this long period
of 10 weeks with a gas bubble in my eye obstructing my vision doing its job to
hold my retina in place but really
obstructing my vision and wreaking havoc on my lens
and advancing a cataract very far along... so...
at the three-month period he looked at my eye
i even though at this point it was all filled with liquid again
and i could now look through the liquid my eye vision was much worse in every
way straight ahead uh no matter how
what area i looked at my vision was blurry
so much worse than the day before i have the surgery
where all i'm missing is this upper corner here which is also kind of
covered by my left eye and my mind isn't even noticing that i'm not seeing that
and now everything in my right side no matter where i look is blurry so
so he said you will have more healing to do with the retina
and you also have a cataract so you can choose to wait to get the
cataract taken care of and see how far the retina comes along
or you can get the cataract taken care of now
it's really up to you and i kept trying to ask him questions about
you know what should i do what's the best thing to do
and i didn't get satisfying answers and finally my last question where i did
get a satisfying answer was well if this was you what would you do
and he said well you know you have problems from a cataract and you have
that has been caused by this vitrectomy and you have problems from the
vitrectomy but he said you can get rid of the
the cataract i just get rid of the cataract if it was me
like this should be obvious to me and it's like you know it's
i'm sorry.. i'm just not in this profession.. i don't know if the strain of
having the cataract surgery this early... but waiting another six months is so
much healthier for the eye i don't know these things that's why i'm
asking you that's why i'm here ..oh
but at least i got, okay that's helpful, so he's
saying at this point he would go for the cataract surgery because that
takes out okay everything related to the
cataract to the lens problem is gone and now
we're just dealing with what's the vitrectomy problem
so that surgery happened six weeks after that appointment so four and a half
weeks ago just two days ago now and i had
great and wonderful hopes for this surgery
i knew that before the vatrectomy before the whole surgery before the cataract
was advanced by the vatrectomy i knew that
the only place i was missing vision was up here and even if i didn't get that
back if i could see clearly out the center and these other areas
that wouldn't be so bad and getting this little bit
up here would just be extra gravy um and
after the cataract surgery was done and after waiting
to the next day when the uh no longer the dilation fluid effect
would no longer be in my eye that i could
that my eye would close and i could focus better
i was so incredibly disappointed with the quality of my vision
and so right now i am looking at the screen
without glasses and i have my my lens in this eye set for distance so
it's over arms reach away so this is just
barely distance and this lens this is my regular left
eye which is very near sided and we're about equally clear either way
uh looking out far away in bright light this eyes a little bit better than the
left eye but not a ton better not as good as it was before
my vitrectomy surgery. and um what is worse
is even with readers i cannot read the letters seem to be on top of each
other over typing themselves and the letters
next to them they seem to be stretched and elongated
um if i turn my head like this i can see parts of the letter shift around
it's it's so frustrating i was in the doctor's office and they had a big
l on the screen and the l had like a a cross on it like a t a
slight slam but like an l with like a cross on it to be like
a tl and if i turn my head like this as i
turn my head that cross would drop till eventually it was parallel with
the bottom foot of the l and it looked like an upside down t
and i said to the doctor here's what happens when i turn my head like this
um you know this this line which is being imposed up here
comes dropping down and i said is that an issue with the lens something about
the lens reflecting in my eye and he said no
it has nothing to do with the lens your your replacement lens
is not causing that um that is a factor of having the vitrectomy
surgery
okay um
and i believe that is very possible and likely
to me also that seems like it could be a lens problem
um and and now i'm to a point where i need to
to see the my regular optometrist
and the sir the retina surgeon again and i'll verify these things again at
that appointment but the bottom line is
i don't have great vision in my right eye right now
and it's already corrected with the lens so there is a little bit of swelling
that will go down with the cataract surgery but
that we're not talking about a great improvement because of
the cataract surgery i've got that improvement now and i can tell my
distance is not perfect but it is
much better than it was after the gas bubble was gone from my
eye after the vitrectomy but before the cataract surgery so
that distance is greatly improved with the cataract surgery
i can also say that there are many more shades of blue that i see with this eye
my right eye than my left eye but um
you know if i could click my heels and go back
to june to january 30th and and have some method
to freeze my retinal loss at that point if that even exists because i think they
really had to do the surgery at that point i don't know that
they could have just tacked down the retina
at that point um but if i could do that magically that would be
a better place for me that would give me clearer vision in my right eye than what
i've got now
so my concern for myself now is i was scheduled to
have my left eye done for the cataract surgery and there are
things that i would like about that
in theory but now in practice i wanted to get this right eye done
and see that i could read with the readers with the right eye
and see how that worked and now that i have this right eye done
and i have these results with letters of of characters being imposed on top of
themselves and not being able to read and putting on 2.5 magnifiers
and 3.5 magnify 3.25 magnifying lenses and still struggling and
struggling to read something that's very large font i can't imagine how i will do
my job looking at a computer screen and debugging programs or doing anything
complicated when i'm just struggling to read a single sentence
with my right eye and i am concerned that if that
if i have to struggle with my left eye to read up close
i'm not going to be able to do my job i'm not going to be able to function
i'm not gonna be able to use my cell phone i'm not gonna be able to use my
laptop for my personal life
i can't i know there's risks and i'm trying to equate
i i was hoping to know the difference in the diff
in the in the quality of life when you've got to use readers
all the time and i don't know that now i still a big
i don't know what that means because i don't i didn't get that from my right
eye and i'm just not getting comfortable data
from my doctors to know what is a really good course so i'm
i was really so disappointed i can't tell you how disappointed i was
with the quality of my vision and so disappointed so disappointed
and i know things could be worse there's people that are totally blind
i know things could be worse but now i'm just wondering what is the prudent
decision for me you know i'm not afraid to go under the
knife i've obviously had one eye done and and the actual surgery
is not bad but it is my concern with understanding the
results and making a good choice that is going
to let me live that is going to let me do my job
and it's a concern for me now many people said i was very brave to go
through what i've gone through and at each step
of this it's like i don't have any other choice
this is what the hardest thing for me is should i get the second cataract surgery
done because i'm kind of lopsided now in my view
but i can function like this and i don't know that
the doctors have understood really understood where i'm coming from
you know i i don't know that that i have found the
magical way to pose my questions that don't seem like i'm
challenging them that they don't think that the answer
should be obvious to me when it's again it's not i think
i have a suspicion that when you're in a career where you deal with something
every day answers become obvious to you
and therefore you think they're obvious to everyone but they're not
and so i want to make sure they understand my
my problem my concern and and still feel that a certain
course is the best course and explain why and that just seems
difficult
i'm gonna have an appointment with my regular
optometrist again in five days and i'm just hoping to become so
enlightened by that point