Pucker Up!! - Eye Surgery

On Wednesday I finally had surgery for my macular pucker.

A macular pucker is scar tissue that has formed on the eye's macula, located in the center of the eye's light-sensitive tissue called the retina.

The macula provides the sharp, central vision we need for reading, driving, and seeing fine detail. A macular pucker can cause blurred and distorted central vision.

Here is an animated video of the procedure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQDQ-SiXg7I&feature=youtu.be

Mark took a picture the morning of my surgery: 

We left the house at 11:00 a.m. to arrive at the surgery center in San Antonio by 1:00 p.m.  With very little traffic on the road we arrived at 12:30.

We had our temperature taken at the door and were told to go upstairs.  After handing over my credit card and filling out a little paperwork, we settled in to await my turn.  About 2:15 an aid came to get me but told Mark he had to wait upstairs.

I was taken down to the same area we had entered the building and was told a nurse would be coming to get me.  About 40 minutes later I recognized my doctors nurse and asked her how much long it would be.  I was told it would be a while because I was the 4th surgery and they had just finished the first surgery. 

Apparently, surgeries 2 and 3 went a lot faster than expected and I was called into pre-op about 3:15 p.m. The pre-op nurse was very nice and told me pre-op would take longer than the surgery.  After many eye drops, vitals, more eye drops, IV, and more eye drops I was wheeled into surgery about 4:00 p.m.

I had the fun experience of watching the nurses set up many syringes that I was told would be put in my eye.

Surgery finally started at 5:00 p.m. and I will say it wasn’t fun.  I was awake.  The pain of having needles stuck in my eye was unbelievable.  I was told they had to keep me awake so that I could move my eye when needed.  The anesthesiologist finally gave me something to make me more comfortable and then the real surgery started. 

It was pretty interesting that I could see the instruments inside my eye pulling out the floaters and scraping the macular off.  This part of the surgery took about 30 minutes. 

After the surgery I was given some apple juice and instructions for the night.  Since I had only had to take off my t-shirt (I even kept my tennis shoes on!) it didn’t take any time before they were wheeling me out to the front door.  I think everyone was ready to go home.

We got home about 7:00 p.m. My first night wasn’t too bad.  A couple of Tylenol every 4 hours took care of any pain.

 

Thursday morning I had a doctor appointment in Kerrville.  The patch was taken off, my eyes dilated. The only letter I could see on the eye chart was a big fuzzy E.  It was discovered I had a little leakage in my eye.  

After some very painful pushing on my eye to close the hole, I was told to come back the next day.

I have a clear plastic eyepatch that I have to sleep with for the next few weeks.  I had a very comfortable night and woke up feeling great. 

On Friday morning I went back to the eye doctor.  Not only was I able to read the great big fuzzy E on the eye chart but I could also read about 3 lines under it.  My eye wasn’t leaking any more and I was told to come back next week.  By the time I left the doctor office my eye was hurting pretty bad!

I look horrible!  It will be several weeks before I’ll know how clear my eyesight will be.