Day 5 - Sandpaper on the eyeballs

Monday, 20 July 2009
I woke up Monday morning not being able to see at all out of my right eye. My left eye still looked ok, but my right eye was all jacked up. Not only was my vision terrible, but I was seeing four of everything. The strain and confusion of trying to piece four images into one gave me some big headaches. Tylenol and Alleve got me through.

I wasn't too worried about my recovery until today, when my second post-op visit to the optomotrist showed that my left eye was seeing 20/20, but my right eye had regressed to 20/100. Right about then, full-scale panic began to set in. This was not in the plan, and I had not mentally prepared for the event that my right eye would not be keeping pace with my left. I had been counting on recovery following the schedule that the surgery center had given me post-op, which had me seeing well enough to drive and use a computer by Tuesday. That was most certainly not going to happen. I was in no way cleared to legally drive, and I couldn't even look at a computer for more than 10 seconds without my world splitting into four images.

The optomotrist drew me a picture of what was happening inside of my eyes. She had looked at the cell growth in that microscope that they have, and was able to tell me what was going on. She wasn't very concerned, but that didn't help me much. Evidently, my left eye was regrowing in patches. Some parts were dense, other parts were sparse. So while there was spotty vision, it was spotty in patches, not all in one place. My right eye was a whole different story. A layer of epithelium had regrown over the cornea and formed a tight seal. The rest of the epithelium then proceeded to regrow atop this seal from the outside in. The result was a four-way split in my vision where the layers converged.

The doctor decided to try removing the bandage lenses and see how my eyes felt. We had the hardest time getting the lens off of my right eye. It turned out that there was not one, but two lenses stuck together in my right eye. The doctor conjectured that this probably formed a nice seal that allowed the epithelium to regrow the way it did. Wonderful. Once the lens on the right eye was removed, the left eye easily followed suit. There was only one lens in that eye, so no more surprises as far as that was concerned.

I sat for about 5 minutes with the lenses out of my eyes. For you folks who have never had your corneal epitheliums removed before, they perform a very useful function: Keeping the outside environment out of your cornea. Because my left eye was progressing more rapidly than my right eye, it didn't feel too bad. My right eye felt like someone had pasted a piece of gritty sandpaper on it. With each blink, that sandpaper was rubbing against my eyeball. It was more than uncomfortable--it hurt. The doctor decided to put the lenses (just one per eye, not the original count) back in my eyes for one more day and then reevaluate. That sounded like a fantastic idea.

I e-mailed my supervisors and let them know that recovery was going more slowly than expected, and took the rest of the week off to let things run their course. It was not a fun day. I was pretty unhappy and beginning to wonder whether the surgery had actually worked.