Buckling Up and Learning Patience

November 26, 2012: First appointment. I was referred to Katzen Eye Group, and had my first appointment with Dr. Grodin. This was the biggest blessing I could have received. You’ll learn all about them as this goes on. I went in, feeling normal, like any other day. Nervous, but normal. Long story short, their office is amazing (I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you of that). The receptionist took my info, and shortly I was escorted back to an exam room. They dilated my eyes after doing the usual tests to see what my vision was, pressure, etc. For those of you who have never had your eyes dilated, it doesn’t hurt but it makes you hyper sensitive to light, so darkness is really where you want to be. I explained my symptoms: floaters (little black web-like things or specs), flashes of light in the dark if I moved my eyes left, right, up or down, and a dark-ish veil or shadow in the upper periphery of my vision in my left eye. Dr. Grodin came in and introduced himself, took a look, and gave me news that I did not want. He told me that I had a detached retina in my left eye, but to make matters worse, he then told me that I had lattice. Let’s start with the lattice; this is basically the thinning of the outer edges of your retina that resembles a criss-cross pattern, and can have holes in it. I had this in both eyes and was born with it. Just didn’t know it until now. This made me more prone to a retinal detachment. Which leads to what is occurring in my left eye: the detachment. In optics, everything is reversed, so my detachment is occurring on the bottom periphery of my vision, however I see the symptoms in the top periphery of my vision.

In what seemed like slow motion, we were told what options I had. Now it isn’t life or death, but it certainly was blindness or vision. I was told there are two treatments- scleral buckling or a vitrectomy. Here are links to them: Scleral Buckle and Vitrectomy. After careful thought (as careful as you can be when you have to make a fairly quick decision) we opted to do the scleral buckle alone first. There is an 80% success rate with this, and it does not require going into your eye. We decided that based on a few factors- my age, health, location of detachment, and the fact that it had not reached my macula. Now I have a lot of random knowledge about the eye’s anatomy at this point, so I’ll keep it simple and not too long-winded. The macula is what controls the center part of your vision, which enables you to see detail. It has blood vessels connected to it, which allow it work. If they are severed (in the event of retinal detachment) the blood supply is cut off creating a high risk of permanent vision loss (from what I’ve been told). Back to the surgery- we decided to go with the scleral buckle. That only addressed part of the issue at hand. We now had to discuss the lattice that was present in both eyes. In my right eye, I had no detachment, but run the risk of a detachment because of the lattice and the fact that there is one in my left eye. Long story short with this- they used a laser that is shot through my eye through a contact lens that is placed on my eye. He lasered around each little perforation of the lattice. Some areas had more holes than others, and let me tell you- the areas with more perforations, they hurt. And they hurt bad. But obviously a far better alternative than surgery. Which at the time I had no idea would be as hard as it was. Lasering the lattice is a good preventative measure, so hopefully I won’t have to go through a surgery for that eye, ever. But it’s not a guarantee, however if you catch the retinal tear before it is a detachment, the tear can be repaired with the laser. All of this is getting rather technical, so I digress. 

Fast-forward through being sent to Doctor’s Express for a pre-surgical physical, and spending Tuesday laying flat in bed to not disturb the detachment and that brings us to the day of surgery, Wednesday November 28, 2012. I arrived at 10am, and by 3pm I was heading home with a silicone buckle surrounding my eye. This would be the start to a very long, slow process of healing, one for which I did not think would take so long and require so much patience.