Hi!!!
Since you last shared my story, some things have happened…
January I was fitted with a clear scleral shell, the process for fitting and obtaining the scleral shell is pretty much the same as the prosthetic fitting for someone who had an evisceration or enucleation. However, there is a “getting used to it” period. Once you get through this period of about 3 weeks, you go back and get your custom-painted scleral shell. During this period you would wear the shell for 2 hours the first day and then increase the time by 2 hours each day until you can wear it all day.
Unfortunately for me, the damage to my eye, multiple surgeries, or something else was causing my eye to get soooooo irritated every time I tried to wear it. I could only wear it for about 20 minutes, then my eye would start turning red, tearing up, and my good eye would become so sensitive to the light that I couldn’t even open it no matter how dim the lights were. I had gone back to the ocularist
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A hand full of time to have it adjusted, and a new impression is taken. After about 2 months of back and forth, I’ve given up on it for now.
At the beginning of April, I was at work and started feeling this intense pain in my damaged eye, as well as a horrible headache and nausea. It was so bad that I couldn’t even function, and the anesthesiologist and surgeon I was working with recommended that I leave and go to the Emergency Dept. One thing that my retina specialist had told me before was, not to go to the emergency room, but rather call his office first. So as soon as I got out of work I called the office and explained what was going on and they were able to get me in right away. The medical assistant did the usual eye tests and took my eye pressure, my normal pressure was usually 6, and when she took it it was 45. I knew something was wrong! They had me take a Diamox medication and put my head between my legs. The Dr came in and told me that I have
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What’s called acute angle closure. Because of the silicone oil that is in my eye to keep my retina push up against the back of my eye, it was migrating to the front of my eye and blocking off the drainage area between the front and back of the eye. So fluid was building up in the front of my eye. The Dr. also prescribed some glaucoma drops, and at my follow-up appt the next day I was scheduled for surgery to remove the oil from my eye. Glaucoma is a risk of having silicone oil in the eye. On April 18th I went in for the silicone oil removal, during the surgery the surgeon removed the oil and had hoped to just put expanding gas back in, but there were some areas where my retina was getting fluid under it, so she just put new silicone oil in. In addition to replacing the oil, she also did an iridotomy, which is a small hole in my iris, to allow fluid to more easily pass between the front and back of the eye, and hopefully not have any more acute angle closures,
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And also removed my lens. The silicone oil is damaging to the natural lens and causes to become cloudy and contact. So I no longer have a lens, not that I really used mine anyways…After the surgery I started experiencing lots of different flashes in my right eye (bad eye) that are like a strobe light, some are like black flashing blobs that come and go, and then there are the constant glitter flashes. I went back to the Dr, but she couldn’t see anything that could be causing what I’m describing, and thought it could be coming from my brain… fed up with it, I made an appointment with an ocular plastic surgeon.
In May I had my appointment with the ocular plastic surgeon to discuss my enophthalmos, and possible eye enucleation or evisceration. I explained to him that I hate that my eye is totally sunken in and uneven from the other, and I hate the flashing that I see constantly and would like to have it removed. We had a long conversation and while he didn’t say he wouldn’t
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Do the evisceration, he wouldn’t recommend doing it at this time, because I can detect light in my bad eye, any sight is better than none…😒😩 I don’t think that he or my other retina Dr understands what i “see” each day. That perception of light is useless to me, and it’s just causing me more annoyance with the flashes than anything. So we discussed how he can repair the sunken uneven eye. He recommended an implant that goes under and behind the eye, to bring it up and move forward. He explained that even if we were to go forward with the evisceration, he didn’t think that there would be an implant that would be big enough to make my eye look symmetric to the other, so he would have to do the eye lifting implant surgery separate from the evisceration anyways. So we agreed to do the eye-lifting surgery first to see if that would give me the results I am looking for, and then we can discuss the evisceration if I’m still interested. So, I am scheduled for surgery on July 15,
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I am hopeful that it will make my eyes more symmetrical and give me back my confidence.
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