More Info

No pics this time.  It's looking better though.


Anyway, looking over what I've already written, it looks like some more details of what's been done and what's to come are in order.  


As of right now, I've got a plastic ball in my socket where the eyeball used to be.  When my stitches came out, and my dr. had me move my eye around, he said "Look at that, it's moving really well."  He then told me that he'd been talking to the people at the joint where they make the prosthetic eye, and told them he doesn't really see the point in using the expensive hi tech plastic ball that the muscles (supposedly) attach to better, the cheap one works just as well.  My wallet agrees.


If I had Mary's artistic skill, I could draw some pics to illustrate what I'm gonna try to describe, but I don't. So bear with me here.  


So they took out my eyeball, and put this plastic ball in.  Then they put this thing called a 'conformer' in, I guess it's there to keep the opening of my eye in the right shape, so it'll stay open maybe?  Anyway, I can see it now, it's kinda shiny and pink.  


As I healed when the stitches were in, I made new cells that sealed off the plastic ball.  This is important, because the conformer comes out in early Dec.  The eye prosthetic place will put a new 'more comfortable' one in.  I don't know, this one isn't uncomfortable.  Before they put the new conformer in, they'll take an impression of my 'eye' (you know, the new cells/'skin?'/part of me covering the plastic ball) so they'll have the exact shape.  They'll send off to some lab in Hong Kong or something to make a piece of the prosthetic eye that will stay in contact with me.  When that arrives, I'll go back in.  By then I'll be healed up 100%, and they'll be ready to finish.  They'll attach the back part, the part that's in contact with my 'eye', to the front part, the part they paint to match my other eye.  


I know this kinda sounds disjointed.  Some of it's because I'm not sure if I've got all the details right.  Some of it's because there was so much of the 'We'll do this...No, wait, let's do this...Hmm, guess we can't, so we'll have to do this other thing."  And some of it is because I suck.  Oh well.


Anyway, that's the next step or two.  If anything doesn't make sense, ask in comments and I'll try to answer.  Or look it up on youtube, I guess there are plenty of vids of people getting this done, if you're so inclined.  I'm not, so there you go.  

Stitches are out

Finally.  They were starting to be a pain.  Not just the little hard blocks of cotton, but it always felt like my eye was full of goop, and I couldn't get it out.


Here's some pics of what it looked like on Wed., just before they took them out...

See that dark place on the lower left?  That's the one that looked worst.


The two top ones with the stitches sticking out were poking me, but not as bad; the swelling was gong down.

The bruising's gone down a lot.




























Now, here's some pics from AFTER...

With glasses...I still kinda have that "Mommy, what's wrong with that man's eye" look going on, but boy it looks a lot better than the first pics I posted.

Without glasses...


























Up close

You can see the bruising's almost gone.  I thought at first I'd lost a bunch of eyelashes, but i guess not, it just looked like it.  


The eye is slowly opening up on it;s own.  At first, when i tried to open it, it was like lifting weights with my eyelid...guess the muscles were weak after not being used for a couple of weeks.


Anyway, looking better and better.  Will post more soon.

Oct. 26

Nothing much to report at this point.  Still getting my strength back.  


The cotton balls you see in the pics below have become soaked with blood/tears, and have now hardened into these little stones with stitches poking out of them.  If I coat them in this antibiotic ointment it softens them up a little.  


The stitches come out a week from today.  I'll post pics then,.  If anything weird/cool happens between, I'll be sure to let you know...

Day four

I know I'll have to come up with something besides 'Day X', just not feeling creative today.

So anyway, I'm at this point in my recovery where I'm kinda weak, and the pain's not really that bad.  I know that I need to get some strength back, but my eye keeps leaking (as in, a combo of blood and tears run out of it) if I try to do anything even remotely strenuous.  

I guess this is the boring phase of getting better.

Plus, I look like some kind of horrific Halloween monster right now.

I know!  I'll post some pics and let you see how it looks...  

Here's a couple of how it looked before the surgery.  

You can see the grey, which was the calcium deposits which were giving me such grief. 

Well, that eye is gone daddy gone.  No more trouble with that one.  

And to be honest, whatever pain I have now is not really that big a deal.  The pain before was a lot worse.

Everybody I talked to before I had this procedure done said stuff like, "Yeah, after you have it done, you'll be wondering 'Why did I wait so long before I had this done, this is so much better...'".  And they were right.

Now for some horror show shots.

Here I'm pulling up my left eyelid...I think it's strange that there's no bruising there; maybe because it's my eyelid?

Every pic I took of myself has this thing where my face looks really long...there's certainly no satisfying symmetry, is there? 

So that's it for today.  

There will be more to come, as I get the stitches out, and get the prosthetic eye, etc.  

Day two

Okay, this was the day that I was dreading...

Based on the buffing/scraping I had back in 05, the day after the surgery was the worst as far as the pain went.  Today?  Not too bad.  It's a little swollen, but it's bearable.  Maybe it's the oxy and lortabs talking...

I realized I ought to discuss the various options they were giving me before they decided that I didn't really have any options.  

At first the doctors were suggesting I get what's know as 'evisceration'.  BTW, I love that word.  Anyway, an evisceration consists of taking a spoon, and scooping out all the insides of my eyeball. The upside to this is that I'd be able to keep my eyeball.  It would be able to move, along with my remaining good eye, and would look more 'aesthetically pleasing'.  

The second surgeon I went to told me he didn't think that would really work.  Back in '84, when they did the original work on it, they put what's called a 'silicone buckle' in the eye.  It worked kinda like a tightening a shoelace in the front of my eye, changing the shape of my eyeball, and in effect 'popping' the retina back into place, to the back of my eye.  Dr. 2 told me that if they did an evisceration, this buckle would end up working it's way through to the front of my eye, causing infection.  We could treat this, but it would keep happening, and eventually we'd have to take the whole eyeball out anyway, as a result of this buckle causing problems.

So he said let's just take the whole thing out, then he'd put a special kind of ball in my eye.  He could attach the muscles directly to this kind of ball, thereby giving me this movement discussed above.  I guess this special ball was similar to styrofoam (I know, WTF??) and they could just stitch the muscles directly to it.  

Sadly, as is my lot with this whole fucking thing, that wasn't to be.  He told us that after he got in there and started working, there was just too much scar tissue to deal with, and there ws no way he could use the kind of ball he wanted to.  I don't know at this point whether I'll have any movement, or just a little, or what.  

And you know what?  That's okay.  Maybe my vanity will come along down the line, but shit, even though it hurts today, it STILL doesn't hurt as much as it hurt before I had the damn thing out.  So there you go.  

Here's a pic I took this morning when I cleaned it up, gotta do this 2x a day.  

 

















Kinda crappy, I took it with my shitty cheap-ass phone.  When I clean it tonight I'll use a better camera, and then I can point out different things better.  The white part you see is the cotton ball they've sewn under my eyelid; that stays till they take out the stitches on 11/2.

Well, that's it for now.  If you have any questions, feel free to post them in comments...maybe other people have the same questions but don't want to ask.

Home now

Okay, home now.  Not hurting too bad, that will supposedly come tomorrow.

Today

Okay, most of you know my eye's been fucked up for a long time.  Quick background for those who've missed it...

Back in '84 I got the shit beat out of me, and I suffered a detached retina.  The only way they could control it (after trying everything else) was to put a bubble of silicone oil inside the eyeball.  The doctors at the time told me a side effect of this was 'corneal staining', which didn't sound so bad back then.  

In about 1996 or so, I started to get some pain and irritation, but nothing I couldn't handle.  

By 2002 or so, this was changing...i.e., I was becoming less able to handle it.  Lots of pain, very light-sensitive, raw and irritated...in short, something had to be done.  

After messing around with this dr. in OKC, who told me to just keep putting drops in my eye, I decided in 2005 to have them do a 'buffing' procedure.  To be honest, the word 'buffing' brought up these images of a soft pad, kinda like waxing your car.  So I had them do that.  

Hurt like hell.  They don't use anything soft, they used a metal blade to scrape off the calcium deposits (the staining) off my eye.  As my friend Doug said at the time, "you mean they treated your eye like they were cleaning a bong?!?!"  Well, yeah.  

After getting this procedure done in 2005, I kinda hoped I'd be able to hang on another 20 years or so, but this was not to be.  It came right back, and has been sucking ever since.  This fall has been especially bad, so about a month ago I went to see a retina specialist in Tulsa.  He couldn't get a pressure reading in my bad eye, the calcium was so hard on the front.  He also coundn't see inside it at all.  As most of you know, I've been functionally blind out of that eye for a long time.

So he said to me, "Well, you've got an eye that you can't see out of, that hurts a lot.  I think you should just have it taken out."  We discussed different reasons for and against.  He told me that with that oil having been in there for so long, my optic nerve was as good as dead.  He gave me a couple of recommendations for doctors here in town that could do this, and I started making phone calls...

The first guy I want to I didn't like, he wouldn't answer my direct questions.

The second guy was harder to get an appointment with.  This made me think he was busier.  I went to see him on Wednesday, and he was more personable...not necessary, but it was easier to talk to him and get more questions answered.  After discussing things with him, he told me he thought doing an enucleation would be the most successful.  Which is what I've got scheduled for today. 

'Enucleation' -  WTF is that?  That's where they take out my whole eyeball, and put a plastic one in to fill the space.  He'll attach the muscles in my eye, the ones that move my eyeball around now, to the plastic ball, so I'll have some movement.

After a couple of months of healing, I'll go to this outfit here in town that supposedly really good.  I went and visited with them in person while waiting for my appointment with my second dr.  These guys will hand paint a prosthetic eye to cover up the plastic ball, and make me look normal; considering the rest of me and what they have to work with, we'll see about that.  After that, I'll be able to go outside on a pleasant sunny day in the spring/fall, play catch with my girlfriend's boys, and actually have a life without constant agony.  At least that's what they're telling me.  I'll keep this posted as time goes on to document whether or not that is actually true, and to let you all know how things are going as far as this goes.  

The next couple of days are gonna suck, so nothing for a little while.  I'll try to post pics, so if you're feeling squeamish you might at least pause before checking it out.