The procedure went smoothly and the next day he thought it looked 90% better. He said to come back in 2 days for another look. That night I thought I saw different light flashes, so I called the on call doctor thinking this was an emergency and found that my doctor(#8) actually still on call. I woke him up. He was annoyed. Despite being annoyed, he told me to come in and see his partner as he was going to be in surgery tomorrow morning. I hung up thinking, "He's going to be in surgery tomorrow but he's on call now. This guy works too much.
The next morning opthamologist #9 says it looks OK don't worry. OK fine. I come back two days later and #8 looks at it and says "It looks worse, It's "guttering" (As in rain gutter) He said lay on your left side only and I'll see you on Monday. This was Friday.
I spent the whole weekend in one position moving as little as possible and boy was I sore. I went back on Monday. After looking, #8 said It looks much better, about 90%."I'll give you one more day on this procedure if doesn't look 100% tomorrow, then you're going to surgery the day after.
Next day he said Sorry it's not 100% so off to surgery tomorrow. The surgery went well but I was not sedated enough. I was only going to have a local anesthetic with a twilight sleep. Not a general anesthetic. In the operating room, #8 said to the anesthesiologist, OK we're ready. My left eye and face is covered with a checkered cloth. All I can see is a bright blurry lighted circle. I can see objects(that look probe like) moving in the lighted circle. I hear #8 say "we should deal with the front of the eye first before the retina." I'm starting to think that I should be more out of it. I see more probes and I can tell they're in my eyeball from the pressure. Then I feel some tugging and the beginning of some pulling stinging. I wait until he's done and then I say. "Hey doc, I can hear what you're saying and I can see those probes. #8 says "You're awake?"
"Give him some more anesthetic. I still felt pretty aware. I started counting the squares covering my left eye in an attempt to distract myself from what's going on in the right eye. Later they told me they had to give a 3rd dose of anesthetic.
I remember starting to have gaps in awareness as time went on. The entire operation took about 40 minutes.
During the operation, the doctor made two incisions in the white part of the eyeball, one on either side of the iris. He used these incisions to insert tools. These tools were used to scrape a part of the sub retinal tissue. A laser was used to cauterize (glue) the retina back in place. Then a small piece of silicon was sewn to the outside of my eyeball which created a buckle(ripple) in the eyeball which helps the retina adhere better. This is called a scleral buckle. Then a strap was inserted around the eyeball. The strap runs over the top and under the bottom along a meridian line on the side of the eyeball. I'm not sure if it was sewn into place or not. Finally, a gas bubble, filling 85% of the internal eyeball volume was inserted. The bubble presses up against the retina, holding it in place.
As I write this, I've now seen the doc (#8) 3 times since the surgery. Things look good for the retina. I can't see through it yet, but that's normal for this procedure. I did say I would probably be flying within 2 months. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Retinal Detachment Part IV
Moderator: Chip