Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Lattice Degeneration surgery follow up appointment

Last Thursday was my one week follow up appointment with the eye surgeon. He said my eyes were healing better than he’d hoped, given my prior poor wound healing experiences. He cleared me for wearing my contacts again, as long as they felt comfortable to me, and told me to take them out periodically to check and see how my eyes felt without them in. Apparently having them in disguises aches and the like from your perception of them, odd but okay. He also told me to slide back into life as I felt I could. I did ask him about my left eye, which I seem to be having more issues with. Prior to the surgery I was Myopic, or near sighted, with great vision for up close things like reading. Since the surgery that has not been the case with my left eye. He said he wouldn’t worry about it yet, that he had to do “an extensive amount of repairs’ to my left eye and it would likely ‘work itself out’ as it healed. I return to see him in six weeks for a recheck.
So, I have started wearing my contacts again, not full time like I did before, but moving back into it. I seem to notice the vision change in my left eye more when I have them in than I do when I am wearing my glasses. I haven’t attempted driving yet partially because my truck has a bad tire and I do not really want to drive it until I can afford to have them replaced. They all need replacing, but the one has a bad spot that could get nasty should it blow. My vehicle is already some what off balance thanks to the wheelchair and wheelchair lift. For now, my husband is doing all the driving in his truck. It’s older and clunky and huge, and incase you missed the drift….I don’t care to drive it. It means, however, that I either don’t get to use my wheelchair or that he has to manually lift the thing out of the back of his truck bed. Since the chair itself weighs a lot, I’ve been going without it. Luckily, I don’t have to go many places. Some places, like the grocery, have the little carts available so I use those. But over all my hip has gotten a bit more use here and there, causing extreme pain and ache. On the upside, however, with me not having to leave the house daily for work my husband brought the chair into the house and I have been using it. That is something I couldn’t do before because I needed the chair in the truck to go back and forth to my job, and our home wasn’t set up in a way for me to be able to get the chair in the house by myself. I was using an office chair to push myself backwards from room to room.
Today I need to go to the grocery, but will wait for him to be done working and come home so that we can go together. I think, honestly, that I am still a bit put off about driving myself anyway, even if it’s just a jot down the road to the grocery. Not because of the tire, I can drive slowly enough on side roads that it shouldn’t be an issue for so small an errand. No, it’s my eyes. Not only for the driving, but you have to read labels in the store. I really hope my vision returns to what it was pre-surgery, but I suppose if it doesn’t I will adapt to this also. Still, it is nice to have some measure of comfort knowing that the repairs to my eyes, so far, look successful. It will probably buy me a few more years of good vision before rearing its ugly head again. Hopefully, it will do as we hope and prevent a spontaneous retina separation.

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