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.
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