Good God, not my eyes! Part 3

Ok, last time I left off after the surgery on my left eye. The surgery for my right eye was done a week later on April 30th.

I was able to return to work the following Monday, after my left eye, while Bob and mom returned to Dallas. My mom came back on Tuesday and we hung out until my surgery Thursday afternoon. Bob couldn't skip class, so he came Thursday evening.

The surgery was pretty much the same, except that we had to wait a lot longer to get back in there. It didn't help much, just waiting around, but I was eventually led into the same room I'd been in the week before. After much protesting, my mom was kicked out of the room. The biggest difference between the left eye and right eye was that 1) I sort of blinked, only a little, but it was really hard to resist because she was applying so much pressure to my eye and 2) after they'd injected my eye to numb it, the doctor didn't stand there for 5 minutes rubbing it in, so it took a bit longer for my eye to completely numb and become stationary. I tried to rub it a little myself, but I know I was being more gentle than the doctor had been the previous week.

My mom was allowed back into the room while my eye was numbing, but then again, after much protesting and telling of stories I didn't want to hear, she was kicked out again while they performed the laser treatment. The laser itself was over in a couple mintues and we were soon on our way.

As with the left eye, I didn't really feel much immediately after the surgery, just a little beat up, so since we hadn't eaten all day (it was around 5pm), we decided to stop by Olive Garden on the way home. We had a nice dinner, and as we waited, the pain from my eye slowly started to seep in. Afterwards, we stopped by the pharmacy to get the pain medicine and we went home so I could rest.

The amount of pain I had after we reached home and I was able to lay down was significantly worse than the previous iteration. To the point that I would just shudder and squeeze my kitty, George, who had come in to keep me company (he's such a good cat). It took my longer to get to sleep, but eventually I was able to and I rested until Bobby showed up that evening. I was still in a lot of pain, after he got there, so I rested until it subsided enough that I could watch Star Trek. The next day the pain was almost gone, which was really different from the previous eye which took days for the pain to subside as much as it had by day 2 on the right eye.

And, that was pretty much it. At least that was what I thought. I continued to have a dull ache, and when I completely came off the steroid drops (in my right eye) looking at my computer was becoming increasingly difficult and light caused such a sharp pain my my eyes that I would have to nap when I got home from work just to alleviate some of my headache. Not to mention that by the end of the day I couldn't read, and finishing the history class I was taking had become a major chore because I had such a hard time reading the computer screen. So, I returned to the eye surgeon to see what was the problem the following week. They couldn't see anything, and suggested I try rewetting drops for awhile to see if it would help (that was Friday May 8th).

By the 11th, I was in no mood to play with eye drops and decided I needed to go back to my opthamologist to get a second opinion (really a third since my eye surgeon was in surgery and another doctor saw me). He did a full exam to rule out possible eye diseases and to check my vision. He told me that the light sensitivity was a side effect of the surgery and that he thought a lot of the pain was due to a major change in my near field vision (I had had a vision test 2 months before, so the change, for the better, in my near range vision was very sudden). He suspected my allergies could have also been causing some of the problem and in addition to ordering me some reading glasses, he suggested I try Sudafed.

The Sudafed helped, wearing sunglasses over my glasses helped with the light sensitivity (outside, inside is still a problem), and the reading glasses arrived the other day and I can actually read again. Small print is still an issue on the computer, but in most places I can increase the font size so I'm doing ok. 8 hrs staring at a computer screen still leaves me with a headache, but I'll only be doing this for a couple more days and after Thursday my computer usage time will drop off significantly.

So, that's where I'm at. I have a follow up appointment in August and two pairs of glasses, one for reading (and working on the computer) and one for everything else.