In the blink of an eye... part 3

final installment of the saga. And grab a coffee or a beer. It's a longer one. I encourage you to read part 1 and 2 if you are new here.

Part 1 and Part 2

Returning home after the surgery I had no idea how difficult the month of July would be. My surgery was on July 7 (in case you forgot) and these were the instructions for the next 2 weeks.

Assume a face down position for 50 to 55 minutes of every hour. You may temporarily stop positioning to eat and use the restroom.

• Sleep on your right side

• Do not lay flat on back

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, if you know me I kind of like to be moving. I also like to sit up (I mean who doesn’t, right?). And what was I going to do for the 50 minutes? Lots of experimenting would be happening.

Michael needed to get back to work. (Luckily his employer was wonderfully understanding about the situation and he was able to take time for my surgeries and 8 hour car trips, and now he got to come home on his lunch hour to put in the 3 different eye drops that I required. ( I wasn’t ready to try that yet on myself.) Regarding my work, prior to the accident I had been mostly self employed teaching cooking classes, personal cheffing, catering. So that came to a grinding halt… along with my income.

I finally sent word out to some friends what happened and the news spread. Food showed up, flowers, visitors (who got to stare at the back of my head for most of the visit.) I remember one friend coming to visit and she brought me beautiful flowers which she put on the floor so I could see them. I tried listening to books on tape but kept falling asleep. A friend lent me a massage chair which was a little helpful to be able to change positions and get up off the couch. My appetite was still non existent but I tried (which was not great, since I had already lost 10 pounds!) I had to time my eating, bathroom and showering to the 10 minutes I could sit up. Phone calls were so appreciated. Yes! Old school “talking on the phone” as texting was not gonna work for me and since it was 2017 people still made phone calls. I also was able to listen to music and the radio (NPR felt like a friend chatting with me. My stepbrother, (who used to make me mix tapes back in the day) made me a beautiful playlist of healing songs that I listened to on repeat. I got my mala beads out and chanted along with a Sanskrit healing mantra. I was pulling out all the stops. I also would torture myself by covering my right eye with my hand and trying to see out of my left eye. Blackness. And then after a full day of this I got to go to sleep. Well, you can imagine that after a day of not much activity my sleep was not great. At least then I could get off the purple couch and go into bedroom. I remember a lot of tears and frustration and incredible patience by Michael.

10 days went by in a flash….not really. And I had to head back to Ann Arbor for a check up. I am incredibly grateful to my buddy Rob (if you remember him from part 1) who was able to give me a ride down to my check up and give Michael a break. We arrived at the office and I got to see Dr. Z feeling proud on how I was crushing my recovery. He examined my eye and then gave the news.

“I can see you’ve done a great job with the recovery instructions. Things are looking good, but the gas bubble hasn’t dissolved so I’ll need you to continue with what you have been doing and come back in a week.”

I felt like crying. Rob was in the waiting room and was going to be taking me back home. Another week. You can do this I told myself.

The next week continued with the same pattern And it was time to head back down. This time Michael took me, as we figured their would be good news this time and maybe we could celebrate with lunch and my head up. Again we saw Dr. Z and he gave me the news.

“Great job with the recovery instructions. I can see that you are taking this as serious as you take your endurance training. The gas bubble has dissolved but the retina is not fully attached, so we will need to go in and reattach it again. It is not totally uncommon for this to happen as your injury was quite severe. Unfortunately that means that you will need to repeat the recovery after the next surgery.”

I felt like I was holding my breath for 3 weeks and was hoping to finally be able to breathe today. But instead I was just given another challenge.  We scheduled the surgery for 4 days from now. Enough time to head home and then head back down.

The next surgery went well. We got the same hotel and on the follow up the next day I felt much better than the first time. This time they gave me something for the nausea with the anesthesia. I got my pillow, folded down the seat and made the 4 hour drive back home.

Arriving home and realizing I had to do this all over again was harder than I thought. But I’m good at this I told myself. It was July 29, a little more than a month since the accident and summer was half over. And I still had work to do.

I went back down for the recheck on August 7 (thanks to another wonderful friend, who was also a driver and escort to my recheck appointments, giving Michael a break. and waited patiently to see Dr. Z with fingers and toes crossed for good news. (I would have crossed my eyes too….. but you know….) He called me into the office and examined my eye again. He asked how things were feeling and how the 10 days went.

“It was hard. Really hard. But I’m feeling okay, I guess. Not too uncomfortable. (But then again I’m a runner so take that as you will.) On a scale of 1-10 I’m at a 4. I can see a little bit with my left eye when I’m looking down, everything looks like a funhouse mirror, all wavy.  I think I can see the gas bubble.”

“Well, I have good news. The reattachment is looking good. And yes, the gas bubble hasn’t fully dissolved yet. But the really good news is that you can sit up now.”

Well, you would have thought that someone just handed me the keys to a new car, a new house or a check for a million dollars.

“I still want you take it easy. And I will see you in a month and hopefully the gas bubble has dissolved and we can begin to plan for the next part of your recovery. Your vision will remain distorted for a while but that is normal.”

I left the office feeling hopeful or as Dr. Z called it “cautiously optimistic.”

My vision would still be wonky. I now could sit up so I was a little more fun, but my eye was still extremely uncomfortable, especially around light, so I lived in sunglasses with tape over the inside of the left lens to black out the distortion and the light. It was August so full on summer in Michigan. We went to the beach and while I couldn’t get my head in the water I could still get my legs in and wiggle my toes in the sand. And most importantly I could NOT be on the purple couch. At home I spent time on the back deck in a zero gravity chair soaking up the sun and watching the hummingbirds at my feeder. I had always loved hummingbirds (and felt that if I were to be any animal that would be my spirit animal… always moving and eating.)

(Side note: my first ever tattoo a year later would be a hummingbird.)

At the end of the summer my mom decided to come for a visit mostly to give Michael a break with things and to give me a distraction. She was there when we went back to Ann Arbor in September for another recheck to see if the gas bubble finally dissolved and more surgery could happen.

September 5 we headed down for another 1 month recheck. My mom got to meet Dr. Z and got to find out more about the eye than she ever wanted. The gas bubble was still around 25% there but Dr. Z said things were looking much better and that he would see me in a month as well as have me see another surgeon the same day who would perform my next surgery. Apparently there are real specialties for the eye. As Dr.Z let me know, he deals with all the back of the eye (retina) issues and the next surgery would be for the front of my eye (the lens).

(Side note I may have not mentioned that during the first surgery they needed to remove the lens from my eye (which is part of why my vision was blurry) and the next surgery would be to put in a new lens.

I remember asking him about wearing an eye patch.

“Would that be helpful or not since my left eye vision was so distracting? “

He paused for a minute and then said. “Sure a patch would be fine. But make sure you get a parrot too.” Mom and I laughed pretty good at that one and I went home and ordered the funnest, most colorful eye patches I could find on Amazon.

For the next month though I was allowed to start walking as exercise! Well, you better believe that I became the walking queen of my neighborhood. I remember the first walk around the block. It was probably a half mile but I came back to the house and the next morning was sooooo sore. You would have thought I had run a marathon. Turns out that if you don’t move your body for 2 months the comeback is rough. But I worked at it each day, going out for neighborhood walks doing laps and picking up the pace. No running. But that was really fine. I was just so grateful to be moving my body at all. I remember going to races that month and cheering on friends and feeling kind of normal, well as normal as you can feel sporting an eye patch.

(Side note: When mom got home she ordered a stuffed parrot on Amazon and had it sent to the house for me to bring to my next follow up visit.)

Well it was now October and I was heading back to Ann Arbor for hopefully my finally recheck with Dr. Z and my first visit with my new surgeon. The nurse brought me into the room and I put the parrot my shoulder as I waited for the doctor. He opened the door, took a look at me and had the biggest smile and laughed out loud. This was the first time I had seen him not be the “serious surgeon. “ He took me out into the hall and showed Dr. T who was also part of my surgery team and she laughed heartily as well. The good news was that the gas bubble was gone and I would meet with Dr. L to talk about the lens surgery. It was bittersweet saying good bye to Dr. Z. He even let me give him a hug.

Me with Zach (I named him after my surgeon)

Turns out my new surgeon Dr. L was wonderful as well, but in a different way. Before I was introduced to him one of he nurses told me. “Oh everyone loves Dr. L. He kind of reminds us of a super hero. You’ll see.” And she was right. He was really tall, had the biggest smile and just the gentlest but confident way about him. He explained what was going on with my eye now that the retina was reattached, but it was still missing the lens. (He used the analogy of a camera where if the lens is not there you can still see but nothing is in focus. I had options. Doing nothing was one. Putting in a new lens and hopefully gaining some vision in that eye was the other. I opted for my 4th surgery.

Here’s the medical jargon from the doctor’s notes….

On exam, she was found to have an attached retina with an iris sphincter defect at 10:30 in the left eye. Presenting visual acuity was  in the 20/250 in the left eye. We therefore recommended a vitrectomy with secondary intraocular lens fixation and pupilloplasty for visual recovery.

We scheduled the surgery for Oct 30, so the pirate costume would continue just in time for Halloween. The surgery went well. And the next day I was given some new recovery instructions, but nothing as severe as the retina recovery.

Here’s the instructions:

Please avoid rubbing or pushing on your eye.  It is normal to have a red eye after surgery. It is also normal to have a scratchy sensation like sand is in the eye for several weeks after surgery. This will improve over time. The discomfort is normally greatest for the first week after surgery and will continue to get better as time goes on.

Tape your eye shield over the operated eye at bedtime when you go to sleep so that you do not accidentally rub the eye while you are half-asleep. You only have to use the eye shield at night for the first week.

Do not swim or submerge your head in a bath for 2 weeks total after surgery. Starting today, you can shower, but please try not to let the water directly hit the operated eye. Either have your back to the shower or have your eyes closed.

On the bright side, after my one week follow up I was given to go ahead to resume other normal activities!!! I could do yoga, I could run. I could continue to wear the patch if that was comfortable but was encouraged to actually start using that eye. Even though the vision was blurry the brain would slowly learn to retrain the eye. I could drive if I felt comfortable doing so, although would not really have peripheral vision on the left so needed to turn my head all the way around to see. Another side effect from the surgery was that my pupil was what they called “fixed” so imagine that your pupil stays dilated. All. The. Time. So bright lights were always very bright. Sunglasses were a non negotiable and driving at night even more of a challenge.

A month later (December) I returned to the office for the stitch to be removed (stitch in the eyeball sounds worse than it is…ha!) It was done in the office and then I was cleared to go home. Live life. And come back in 6 months to make sure all was still well.

The accident happened on June 25 and now it was December and I would run my first race in 7 months. And it was a 5k. My least favorite distance to run. But was I excited to get out there, with my eye patch and my sunglasses and see what my body could do? 100000 %. I remember crossing that finish line in tears as my friends stood around cheering me on. It was truly a big finish.

It’s now been almost 7 years since the accident. (Hard to believe!) People still ask me. How is your eye? Has it gotten better? And I usually say. It’s just my new normal. It is amazing how the brain can relearn to do things as natural as seeing. I still have no peripheral vision on the left (so don’t sneak up on me!) And I am still VERY sensitive to light. And I do my best to really protect my right eye (the good one.) But what is truly amazing is how my brain has learned what is really important in life. And I really try not to take moments, things and people for granted. Because it all can change in the blink of an eye.