"How Are you?" And Other Post-Surgery Questions Answered

 (The Apparition - Sleep Token)

A lot of folks have been patiently waiting for updates from me and sending well-wishes, so I thought I'd address two birds with one post, as it were.

Actually, maybe I should take a step back since some folks DON'T know what happened.

On May 3rd, I noticed a number of unusual things happening with the sight in my right eye and went to get it checked out. That resulted in me having emergency surgery on May 5th to remove some fluid from parts of my eye that it shouldn't have been in and to very politely ask my retina if it wouldn't mind awfully reattaching itself.

"Uh...wait, back up. You had emergency eye surgery?" 

Yes. And we'll get back to that, but before we do, I need to thank every single person who reached out over text and e-mail to me and my wife with well-wishes and offers of assistance. You've all been amazing with the support and love you've showered us with and we 100% could not have gotten through this without the quiet hum of that support around us. THANK YOU.

Now, about that surgery thing...

I actually had four surgeries. Because it's me, and we all know I can be a little 'extra'.

- I had a vitrectomy to remove excess fluid from the eye.
- I had a gas bubble injected into the eye to keep pressure on the retina as it (hopefully!) reattached itself to the back wall of the eye itself.
- I had a lot of funk and scar tissue removed that had built up over time as a result of any number of earlier surgeries on the eye.
- I had a 'release valve' of sorts cut into the eye to try and keep the eye as a whole under control while the retina itself healed. (It's called an Iridotomy, if you really don't want to sleep tonight.) 

"Well, that all sounds...horrible."

More or less, yes. Fortunately, I was very, very asleep for it. Fun fact, they normally just give you a Local and a twilight drug for it but because of my centralized apnea, I was allowed to be fully sedated, which did not suck.

"So...what happened? Why did all of this happen?"

That's...complicated. The very short version is that back in October of 2022, I experienced something in that same right eye called a Posterior Vitreous Detachment. PVDs aren't particularly remarkable and they're not really uncommon in people as we age. Think of it like a hang-nail. In most cases, that little bit of skin is mildly irritating until it dries and flakes off. Occasionally though -- usually because we're stupid and chew on them instead of just clipping them... -- the hang-nail pulls and tears skin, and we all know how that ends up. A PVD is kind of like that, but inside of the eye. Most of the time, they just break off, you get some new floaty friends in your vision for about a month, and then life goes back to normal. If they do that other things though, the 'skin' that can tear is the retina.

In medical terms, this is known as 'Bad'.

"Okay, so...can we go back to the whole 'they injected gas into your eye' thing?"

This is another one of those complicated things. The (again...) very short version is that part of fixing my retina involved pulling fluid out of the eye. The eye, like any good ball, needs a certain amount of material inside of it to maintain its shape. This is doubly important when you consider that my retina was injured and I needed a way to keep pressure on it for it to heal properly. Enter: The gas bubble. Quite literally. Gas was injected into the eye to keep pressure on the retina. Over a period of about two months, the gas will naturally soak out of the eye as the eye produces new fluid to replace the stuff we took out.

"Ssssoooo, can you see right now? Out of the right eye, that is?"

This is probably the most complicated of these answers. Uh... (Scratches head...) So, picture a perfectly clear, clean, empty fishbowl. You can see through that thing without too much trouble, no? Now, VERY quickly fill it with Sprite. You can't see anything anymore because it's all fizzy and filled with gas. Gradually though, the gas escapes out of the top of the bowl though, so your ability to see through it begins to clear. Once the cloudiness is gone, you're left with clear liquid...right up until you try to move around, at which point the liquid moves around and the world gets REALLY wobbly really quickly.

Now slowly remove liquid from the bowl. Eventually, the line of the liquid's surface is going to drop into your line of sight which will do ALL KINDS of bad things to your vision. Eventually though, the bowl will be empty again and things will go back to normal.

...You'll just have a spare fishbowl. And some Sprite. Pour some cranberry juice into it and add a sprig of of mint for a lovely summer drink. You're welcome.

For the first week, I couldn't see anything but vague light through the eye because of the gas and how cloudy it was. As the gas began to soak over week two, I started getting more and more visibility around it at the edges of my vision, but things were very, VERY shaky every time I moved my head. Or breathed. Or blinked. Or moved my eye. As the bubble continues to soak out of my eye, I can see the 'level' of the gas in my eye slowly getting lower, which acts like a huge prism, bending light and distorting vision through it. Eventually, the bubble will fragment into smaller bubbles before simply going away all together and (assuming the surgery did what it was supposed to...) I'll go back to the vision I had before the issues with the retina.

"Ssssooo, did the surgery work?"

We can't say definitively for sure yet, but signs are very good that I should get the vast majority of my sight in that eye back, if not all of it. I don't care for all of my doctor's appointments but I've always known that I had to put up with them in case something bad ever happened. I have very, VERY good doctors. We'll have a much better idea about how well things went here in another two weeks or so when I go back for my six-week Post-Op. Most of the gas should be gone by then, so he should be able to get a pretty good look around the inside of my eyeball. And, to be absolutely real here, even if the surgery ends up being a complete success, there's no guarantee that this won't happen again.

"..Going to stick with, 'That sounds horrible.'"

It's not been a pleasure cruise, no. See, there isn't much space inside of the eye but what's there is still subject to physics, which means you have to make sure that gas bubble stays on top of the retina to apply the most constant amount of pressure possible. Think about where your retina is and how you'd have to orient the eye to keep gas, which floats to the top of whatever vessel it's in according to the rules of density...

"Okay, we're way outside of horrible now. Have you been sitting there with your head between your knees this whole time? OH MY GOD, HOW HAVE YOU BEEN SLEEPING?"

For the first night, I didn't. I had to keep my head oriented straight down for pretty much the first 24 hours. They send you home with this foam donut that you're supposed to be able to rest your head on but it doesn't work. At my next-day Post-Op, I was told that I could now rest my elbows on my knees, but that I still had to keep my eyes on the floor. They also told me it was acceptable to sleep on my left side or on my stomach with the right side of my face turned up. This turned sleeping from impossible to merely painful. When you're my size, you don't sleep on your shoulder without all that weight doing things to it over time. I could absolutely bolster my bedding so that I could sleep on my stomach...but that does horrible shit to your neck and back over time...but it's better than not sleeping.

Fun Fact: Maintaining proper 'inflation' of your eye is really important. If your eye is over or under pressure, it causes a number of very serious problems. I have a history of high eye pressure for reasons I won't bore you with, but it's why I had that release valve cut into my eye. When you piss an eye off, you can spike its internal pressure. We were pretty confident that this was going to happen so we prepared for it going into the surgery. I still ended up with very serious pressure problems, but they were only very serious instead of catastrophic. When I went in for my next-day Post-Op, the tech took my pressure and got really quiet. Then she re-calibrated her little tool, took my pressure again, and very audibly said, "Oh, damn." Then she went and got the doctor. We ended up managing the pressure over the next week with some of the most excruciating medication I've ever had poured into my eyes, five times a day...but that, at least is good now. 

And now, we finally get back to that question that we started with:

"How are you?"

Over the last four weeks, I've had my posture restrictions significantly reduced. I can now lift my chin up to basically level, but no higher than that. (Not only do we still need the gas to stay on the upper part of the retina as much as possible, there are issues with the gas potentially seeping into another part of the eye that it's not supposed to. That's less of a risk with me because of my surgeries, but still...) I still have to sleep on my side or my stomach, which means I basically haven't slept well in a month. (I have the sleep tracking biometrics to prove it.) I'll absolutely need physical therapy for that when this is done, but my body is strong and I know how to put the work in when the time comes. My lifting restrictions have been lifted but in that I still can't do much other than walk around and do things like move laundry. Not playing disc golf during the two most beautiful weeks of the spring was heartbreaking, but I'm back to being able to slowly make my way around a course. No run-ups, no heavy bag, no hills, but it's something. I have to be very mindful of my heart rate too, especially with the summer heat coming on. Increased heart rate makes the eye angry. A lot.

I started back to work Tuesday afternoon. My company has been 100% supportive to me and my boss made sure I had little hand puzzles and a wonderful trivia game to keep me busy when I couldn't lift my head. I owe her some sour gummi worms. I have to step away from my computer every few hours to rest my...everything, basically. Work is routine though. It's where many of my friends are, where 'normal' is, and I love what I do.

When I can drive again, I'll be starting therapy sessions, for both my body and my mind. Both are long overdue. 

"So, can you, like...have company again and stuff?"

As long as it's not too crazy, and not too mobile, absolutely. I just might need a ride if you want to go somewhere. 

If I didn't cover something here that you're curious about, drop me a line and I'll answer as best I can. And thank you all again so, so much for surrounding Kim and I with support during this whole ordeal. It's been one of the hardest things I've ever dealt with and both of us wouldn't have come through to the point that we have without you all.