My Vision Progression and the Bubble After Vitrectomy Retinal Detachment Surgery

I'm writing this blog to try to help fellow retinal disease patients who are undergoing retinal detachment and repair surgery to gain from my own experience some idea of what one patient experienced as his recovery progressed.  I am not a medical professional and this blog is not intended to serve as medical advice or as a substitute for appropriate counsel from a doctor or other licensed professional. I am just one patient and my experiences may not be typical or representative of what other patients can expect.  I advise you to consult a licensed and trained medical doctor for medical advice. 

I'm going to change the way I write these posts from now going forward.  Instead of reporting the details of my surgery recovery experience each week, I'm going to focus (pun!) on the reason why I'm really writing this blog: To give fellow patients an idea of the changes in my vision as the weeks after surgery went by. 

First of all, I found out that I had been given the longer acting of the various gases that are used in vitrectomy surgery.  The gas is called perfluoropropane or C3F8.  My doctor told me that it would take about eight weeks for the bubble to disappear.  As I said before, there is no way that a person can see anything but light and dark with a big gas bubble in the eye (except that I was able to see things held directly below the eye a few inches away).  But as the bubble gets smaller over time, we are supposed to be able to begin to see again.  But since the shrinking of the bubble is such a slow process, especially with C3F8, I think it is natural to be impatient and to wonder what we should be seeing and what we should look for and where in our field of vision we should look for it.

As the bubble shrank, the edge of the bubble showed up as a dark line in my vision, near the top of my visual field.  Strangely, even though the bubble sits at the top of the eye, it looks to the patient like the bubble is in the bottom of the eye.  That's hard to get used to at first.  When you start to see the dividing line near the top of your vision, it looks like a bubble is floating on the surface of liquid in your eye.  But what looks like a bubble at the top of your vision is really the liquid in your eye.  And the blur that you're still seeing in most of your vision is because you are still looking through a gas bubble.

My doctor told me that I should look above the line to see my returning vision.  He said that I would see a sliver of good vision and that sliver would get larger and larger as the bubble shrinks.  Web sites I read said much the same thing.  The problem was that when the line first appeared for me, I still couldn't see anything over the line.  I just saw a blur.  Nothing I was told and nothing I could find online explained this adequately.  So I worried if the blur that I saw above the line was an indication that the vision that I'd get after my recovery would be poor.  This wasn't the case, but I didn't understand what was really going on.  With my slow-acting bubble, this uncertainty took about two weeks, between the third and fourth weeks after surgery.  The dividing line between the bubble and the liquid in my eye slowly got lower, but when I looked above the line, I still only saw a blur.  Eventually, as the bubble shrank further and the line got lower, I was able to start to see some detail above the line.

Here's what I finally concluded.  When the bubble was still fairly large, like still taking up about 70% of my vision or so, when I looked upward above the bubble line I was forced to look up at too high an angle to be able to see any detail.  The dividing line was still above my macula, the part of the retina that sees detail, so I was forced to look upward to see around the bubble.  And though the bubble looked to me like it was at the bottom of my vision, in reality it was still up there.  So I think that I was still looking up through the gas bubble.  So I still couldn't see anything.  But by the fourth week after surgery, the bubble line had dropped lower, about half way down through my visual field and opposite the macula, I was excited to be able to see some detail.  I was able to see the tops of words on a movie screen.  I was able to see the tops of the picture frames on our walls. Everything still looked like I was looking through a whitewashed window, but I could actually start to see some detail.  I was very relieved and excited.  As more time went on, the lower on TV and movie screens I could see detail, until by the sixth week, I was able to see the entire screens.  My vision wasn't, and still isn't clear by seven weeks after surgery.  It is blurred and small details shimmer so that small letters are hard to read, but at least I'm seeing almost an entire visual field above the shrinking bubble line. 

So one of my main messages to other recovering patients is not to get too concerned when you start to see the bubble line get lower in your vision, but you still can't see anything above the line.  If your recovery is similar to mine, as time goes along and the bubble line drops lower, you may be able to start to see some detail.  Of course, there is no guarantee and each patient's visual progress will be different.

At this time, seven weeks after surgery, I can read the second or third line of an eye chart.  The bubble sits as a sphere at the bottom of my vision so I get some peripheral vision and I can merge the vision from both eyes, with some difficulty and some double vision.  I can't read newspaper print easily, mostly because we usually read by looking downward, and the bubble is still in the way of my downward vision.  But I seem to be seeing slow improvement in my detail vision as the days and weeks go by.  

I've read and I've been told not to expect to be able to know my eventual vision improvement until at least six months after surgery. But I'm encouraged at this point that I have a full field of vision and I can see the detail that I can see at this early stage.

Retina Surgery Recovery, Second Week and An Altitude Problem!

I'm writing this blog to try to help fellow retinal disease patients who are undergoing retinal detachment and repair surgery to gain from my own experience some idea of what one patient experienced as his recovery progressed.  I am not a medical professional and this blog is not intended to serve as medical advice or as a substitute for appropriate counsel from a doctor or other licensed professional. I am just one patient and my experiences may not be typical or representative of what other patients can expect.  I advise you to consult a licensed and trained medical doctor for medical advice. 

Friday afternoon of the first week after surgery I had another follow-up visit with my retina surgeon.  Things looked good but my eye pressure was high at about 49.  The doctor gave me some diuretic pills to take and asked me to come back in 90 minutes to see if the eye pressure had dropped.  It hadn't dropped enough, so the doctor used a needle to remove some fluid from my eye to reduce the pressure.  It wasn't painful, though it sounds like it would be.  He used some numbing agent drops so I wouldn't feel anything.

He did give me a prescription for the diuretic pills and I took them for two days, but I got some pretty severe abdominal pains.  I had to keep getting up to try to clear the pains, which made it hard to keep my positioning as directed, and I had a hard time sleeping.  So I stopped taking the pills, hoping that it wouldn't cause a problem with my eye pressure.  And I had an appointment with the doctor on Monday morning, so I didn't worry too much.

My Monday morning with the doctor went well.  The eye pressure was still low enough, and he said that I didn't need to worry about taking the diuretic any longer.  He did reduce one of my drops from four times a day to twice a day, which he said might help with the eye pressure.

My second week of recovery was very much like my first week.  I needed to keep up my left side positioning while trying to get decent sleep through Friday afternoon, the 12th day after surgery.  I alternated between sleeping in bed and sleeping on the sofa, but neither was completely comfortable, and my left hip and shoulder continued to bother me and keep me from getting really comfortable.  I caught up on my lost sleep by napping during the day.  I had something to look forward to that kept me excited and positive:  I had a chance to do one of my favorite things on Friday night, to preview a new concept luxury electric car at a focus group, and I was really looking forward to it.

My vision in my surgery eye stayed about the same, by which I mean just a big blur, but by the end of the week I was able to see the glare from passing lights when I rode in a car.  There was one encouraging change.  I had read online that some patients found that they were able to look down through the bubble and see objects or print held a few inches from the eye.  I tried it and it worked!  I was able to read headlines looking directly down on a newspaper held three inches from my eye.This was pretty exciting for me.  This was the first actual object or really anything that I'd seen with that eye since the surgery.  I had read that the quality of returning vision after surgery is quite variable and that it is by no means guaranteed.  So being able to see something, anything, clearly, even three inches from my eye and through a gas bubble was so reassuring and it gave me reason to be optimistic.  Since I had had no other clues yet about how my vision would turn out, this was so encouraging.

Friday afternoon arrived, finally, and I was able to be upright while awake for the first time in two weeks.  I still had instructions to sleep lying on my left side for the next three weeks.  I got to go to my concept car focus group on Friday night, and I really had a good time.  My wife drove and waited while I took part in the focus group. And the next morning, friends stopped by and drove me to one of our electric car group breakfasts and I had a great time with them.  Then, that evening, I had a big surprise, and not a positive one.

Saturday night, a holiday party at our kids' house was planned.  We arrived about 6 pm and it wasn't long before I got a headache.  My vision changed so that I could no longer see my hand held close to my eye when looking straight downward, and even when I looked at lights, I couldn't even see the glare that I was seeing earlier in the evening.  I got concerned and the headache wasn't getting any better, so we left early.  Surprisingly, half way home the headache went completely away and my vision in that eye, which you wouldn't really call vision, just a blur, returned to what I was used to.  It didn't take a genius to realize that since the kids' house was generally uphill from our house, we might well be dealing with an altitude issue!  

We went home and checked Google Earth and yes indeed, our kids live at about 1,100 feet elevation!  We had listened carefully when the doctor said that I couldn't fly or go to the mountains, but who expects that their family who lives fourteen miles away live at 1,100 feet?  The kids live in a normal suburb, not on a mountain.

Anyway, we got back to our own home at elevation 100 feet!  And I was feeling completely fine.  I did decide to call in and get an appointment with the doctor, just to check and make sure that everything was still okay.  And it was fine.  The doctor checked my eye pressure, did a visual check on my retina and said it looked good.  He did mention, with some humor, that I'm the very first patient he's had who has had an altitude issue with a bubble in the eye, while remaining within the County.  He was very surprised.  He asked me to come see him in three weeks.

At one of these doctor visits, I'm not sure which one, I asked the doctor if the macula had become detached.  I was confident that it hadn't because from my perspective, only the upper left part of my vision had been affected and I could see the eye chart and everything in the center of my visual field.  His answer wasn't what I wanted to hear.  He said that the macula had detached, but not the fovea.  From my online reading, visual results are better after surgery if the macula had not detached than if it had.  We'll see how my vision turns out.  

The other ominous thing that the doctor said is that I have some blood on or under the retina that could cause scar tissue to form like a scab, and that could cause the retina to detach again.  He seemed rather concerned about that, and it has me concerned as well.

Retina Surgery First Follow-up Visit and Week One

I'm writing this blog to try to help fellow retinal disease patients who are undergoing retinal detachment and repair surgery to gain from my own experience some idea of what one patient experienced as his recovery progressed.  I am not a medical professional and this blog is not intended to serve as medical advice or as a substitute for appropriate counsel from a doctor or other licensed professional. I am just one patient and my experiences may not be typical or representative of what other patients can expect.  I advise you to consult a licensed and trained medical doctor for medical advice. 

Nine AM Monday morning found us in the retina surgeon's office for our scheduled first follow-up visit.

As instructed, I had kept wearing the eye patch that the doctor had taped into place after the surgery.  I've read that the eyelid and the eye are somewhat paralyzed during the surgery, so it is important to keep the eye patch in place to properly protect the eye for the first day after surgery.  My "vision" in my right eye during the night and that morning was like a colorful abstract painting.  I remember some bright blues and greens and some moving shapes, and that's all.  I really had no idea what to expect in terms of vision in my surgery eye after the surgery.  When the technician removed the eye patch, I was able to open my eye and look around.  I basically saw a big blur in my surgery eye.  I couldn't see the eye chart. I couldn't count the technician's fingers.  I couldn't even see him waving his hands around.  I could just see light and dark.  I was a bit disappointed, but the doctor said that this was completely normal for anyone with a gas bubble in their eye.  He said that I was trying to look through a gas bubble and our eyes aren't designed to see that way.  He said that it would take about eight weeks for the bubble to disappear, and that I shouldn't have expectations for my vision until the bubble is gone.  The internal pressure of my eye was measured and it was apparently within the expected range.

The doctor reminded me again of what he had mentioned at our first visit, that with the bubble in my eye, I couldn't fly on an airplane and I couldn't go to the mountains.  The reason is that the bubble will expand in the reduced pressure, and that will cause the pressure inside my eye to increase drastically and that would be very dangerous.  I had no concerns about this because we had no such travel planned.

The doctor told me that he was now asking me to change my positioning from looking downward to lying on my left side, and that I needed to position myself that way almost all the time for the next 10 days, not just the 5 days that he had mentioned at our first visit before the surgery.  He said that my retinal detachment was on the lower part of my retina on my right side, toward my right temple.  Because the function of the gas bubble is to push gently against the repaired part of the retina, when I lie on my left side, the bubble will rise to the right side of my retina and provide the required pressure to hold the retina in place as the laser scars heal and complete the re-attachment of the retina.  He said that the very best positioning would be with the top of my head pointing a bit downward on my left side, but that that isn't practical because it isn't comfortable enough for people to maintain that position.  He said that I should use as small a pillow as possible or no pillow at all in order to keep my head flat on my left side.  The doctor said that he wanted to see me in a week.  

We went home and I set myself up on the sofa to live on my left side for ten days.   Reflections on the first week:

- My lovely wife is my helper and my partner in my recovery.  She was amazing throughout my recovery, but never more so than during the first two weeks, when I had to lie on my side almost all the time.  She has a full life, including being an active grandmother and helping to take care of our little granddaughters, and she also has a big responsibility to take care of her elderly mom who needs to get to lots of doctors' appointments.  I was pretty self-sufficient, but I couldn't have done as good a job of taking care of myself without my wife's help.
- The doctor prescribed lots of eye drops.  I was taking some drops up to four times a day.  It was very helpful to have my wife put in the drops.  With no vision in my surgery eye, I couldn't see the dropper tip, so when I tried putting in the drops myself, I would often miss and it could take up to four drops to finally get one in my eye!  The others were wasted on my eyelid or my cheek.  The drops were antibiotics, dilation drops, steroids and some others.  The antibiotics were stopped after a couple weeks, then the steroid was reduced from four to twice a day to help keep the eye pressure lower.  The Atropine dilation drop was stopped after 5 weeks.
- Our living room sofa is a sectional with a chaise section that has an open end with no arms or back on it.  This made a great place for me to position myself on my left side facing the TV and a coffee table.  Friends could come by to visit while I was lying on my side and we could visit.
- I was reasonably comfortable most of the time.  But after a few days, I noticed some pain in my left hip and shoulder, the pressure points as I lay on my side. For most of my positioning time, I was always trying to find ways to reduce the pressure on those pressure points and relieve that discomfort. 
- My iPhone and Facebook were my link to the world.  I tried reading but it wasn't comfortable lying on my side and I wasn't sure that it was okay to read during that period. (The doctor later said that it was fine.) 
- I watched TV some of the time.  I watched the entire Fawlty Towers series, a favorite of mine, and some movies and other TV.  But I didn't really enjoy watching TV lying on my side.  It was hard to read words on the screen while lying in a horizontal position.
- I was able to nap and when I'd had a bad night trying to sleep, I would nap for several hours to catch up on my sleep.
- Sleeping on my left side was difficult for me at first.  I bolstered myself with pillows and I thought that I'd wake up if I tried change position, but that didn't always work.  I was used to sleeping on my right side or on my back.  I would wake up often, and my wife would notice that I had rolled during the night and she would remind me to roll back to my left side.  I wasn't very comfortable in bed and I often had nights without much sleep.  I tried sleeping on the sofa some nights, thinking that I might be able to keep myself into position better using the sofa's back as support to help me to stay on my left side.  That seemed to work pretty well, but the firm sofa cushion was hard on my painful hip.
- Overall I did a good job keeping my position as prescribed.  I was a diligent and obedient patient.
- My vision during that first week was a complete blur.  I was able to see light and shadow.  For the most part, it looked like I was looking through a whitewashed window, but there wasn't any detail, just light and shadow.  I could look up to the high windows in our living room and I imagined that I could see the lacy branches of eucalyptus trees.  But then I checked with my left eye and found that I was imagining the trees.  I couldn't see motion or any detail at all.
- I had a few headaches that I didn't worry about too much.  The headaches responded well to Tylenol ES.


I did a lot of reading online on my phone about retinal detachment surgery and recovery.  I found that I had gone into this surgery with a poor understanding of how serious and significant the surgery was.  I had a pretty light hearted view of the surgery at first, probably because of my very positive experience with the laser repair of my retinal tear three years earlier.  From my reading during my first week of recovery, I learned that retinal detachment surgery is a very serious thing, and that the recovery of good vision is by no means guaranteed. I also learned that the return of the best vision possible after the surgery is a slow process, taking several months, and that some improvement in vision after the surgery can take a few years.  I also learned the difference between the several types of retinal repair surgery.  Because I had a gas bubble in my eye and because I had heard for pneumatic retinopexy before, I thought for a while that that was the surgery that I had had.  But I realized that I had had a vitrectomy with a gas bubble, not a pneumatic retinopexy.  I read that a vitrectomy is usually reserved for more complex detachments than retinopexy, which doesn't involve the removal of the vitreous.  After learning more about the surgeries, and especially about the recovery of vision, I found myself sobered and hungering for more information about how and why vision recovers after these surgeries.

Detachment!! Symptoms, Sunday Surgery

I'm writing this blog to try to help fellow retinal disease patients who are undergoing retinal detachment and repair surgery to gain from my own experience some idea of what one patient experienced as his recovery progressed.  I am not a medical professional and this blog is not intended to serve as medical advice or as a substitute for appropriate counsel from a doctor or other licensed professional. I am just one patient and my experiences may not be typical or representative of what other patients can expect.  I advise you to consult a licensed and trained medical doctor for medical advice. 

On a Friday afternoon in early December 2014, I noticed something strange in the vision of my right eye.  There were no new floaters.  There were no flashes of light.  But up in the top left corner of the vision of my right eye, I saw what looked like an after-image from when you look at a bright light too long and then you look away.  I couldn't be sure that I was seeing anything for sure.  I'd look up to the left and sometimes I'd see something there and sometimes I wouldn't.  We were headed out to babysit for our granddaughters, so I didn't think much about it.  While we were at the kids' house I kept looking for the spot and I still didn't always see it.  We got home late and I went to bed and didn't worry about it.

The next morning, I had a social breakfast out planned with some friends. I got up early and drove the 25 miles to the restaurant and I had a nice time for three hours or so.  Throughout the breakfast I kept looking up to the left to see if I could see anything there, but I still wasn't sure.  I drove home and took a nap.  By the time I got home, there was definitely a blank spot in the upper left corner of my right eye's vision, but for some reason I didn't do anything about it.  I think that it was because it was a Saturday, I didn't have a regular ophthalmologist and the eye wasn't changing much.  So I took a nap.  When I woke up around 3 pm the spot had gotten bigger and had elongated into a strip.  I got pretty concerned and I realized that my optometrist was open on alternate Saturdays, so I called him on the chance the office was open and it was.  I asked if I could come in and have him take a look to see if something was going on or not. He looked at my chart and told me to call the retina surgeon's office who had done my laser surgery.  He realized that I had had a retinal tear three years previous and cataract surgery as well, and I needed to get hold of a retina surgeon right away and that there would likely be a doctor on call.

If there is one message that I want to pass on to everyone reading this, it is DON'T WAIT!  It doesn't matter what time of day or night it is, and trouble often happens on weekends and holidays.  Retinal detachment is always a medical emergency and nobody will doubt you on that.  Don't wait because you don't want to bother the doctor on his weekend. Don't wait because your insurance won't approve a specialist visit without a referral from your GP.  This is an emergency.  Don't wait because it'll just be 24 hours and the office will be open on Monday morning.  Call your ophthalmologist or your retinologist on call or go to the Emergency Room, but get going!  Hours count and days definitely count.  This is your vision and the only vision that you'll get for the rest of your life.  Surgery can repair most of the damage, but while the outcome in terms of the quality of your vision is uncertain, the sooner you catch it, the better.  The only thing that is certain is that the longer you delay, the outcome can potentially be worse.  And if you do nothing, it is very likely that you'll go blind in that eye.

I called the answering service and the retinologist on call called me back quickly.  He is a partner of the doctor who had done the laser repair of my retina three years earlier.  He had me describe the symptoms and told me to call him on Sunday or if it changed.  Later Saturday night I noticed that the spot was getting a bit bigger and the color was changing from grey to yellowish. It was late, so I didn't bother the doctor again that night.  I went to bed and the doctor called around 8:30 the next morning.  He asked how the eye was doing and he told me that he was going to be in the office at 10:30 and that I should meet him there.  He dilated my eye, looked around in there and he told me that I was going to have surgery that afternoon.  

He had me read the eye chart and since the center of my vision was still just fine, I was able to read the chart well, probably at 20/30 or 20/25 corrected by my eyeglasses.  With later reading, I realized that this meant that I needed emergency surgery because I still had good central vision, and if I waited for surgery, the macula could detach and that the visual results of the surgery might not be as good.  I also read that the most important determinant of the quality of the visual outcome of the surgery is the quality of the vision right before surgery.

The doctor asked if I'd eaten anything that morning and I had eaten some cereal and coffee.  So I needed to wait until around 3 pm to have the surgery.  I was lucky that my doctor has surgery privileges at a small hospital and that he could get surgery scheduled for that afternoon.  

The doctor told me that I was going to have a vitrectomy where he would remove the vitreous humor of the eye, use a laser to repair the detachment and that he would put a gas bubble in the eye and that I would need to position myself looking at the floor for five days or so.  

I checked in to the hospital. I found that the doctor had called ahead, so after a bit of a delay, the admitting staff knew what to do.  I was briefly seen by an ER doctor who confirmed the diagnosis of a retinal detachment.  This was key because insurance won't deny the reimbursement for the surgery if it is an emergency.  I was put in an ER bed and told to change into a hospital gown.  An IV was started and I met the specialty nurse who would be helping with the surgery and I met with the anesthesiologist.  He told me that they would be using managed sedation.  I would be awake but I wouldn't be aware of much that was going on.  He said that he would be monitoring my heart rate and if I became anxious, he would be able to tell and would give me more sedation to keep me comfortable.

I was relaxed and chatty as they wheeled me into the OR.  I remember being lowered onto a reasonably comfortable operating table and my head was put in a cup shaped support.  I remember a drape being placed over me with a cutout for my eye.  I don't remember much else and I wasn't uncomfortable except for a brief period when I woke up.  There was no discomfort from my eye, but my back was a bit sore from lying still, and I had a strong need to readjust my back and my head!  I knew that I shouldn't move a muscle, but I knew that I had to.  I tried to use calming imagery, but I was way too anxious for that.  I finally moved a bit, and my surgeon immediately said "Don't move!".  I said that I was trying but that I was having trouble keeping still.  I asked for more sedation and I felt a warm sensation and then nothing else but waking up when they were done with the surgery.

I was awake and alert when I went to the post-op area.  The nurse said that the doctor wanted me face down or on my left side, so we settled on my left side.  Then my doctor came by and firmly told her that he wanted me face down, so we readjusted with pillows and I settled into a face down position on the gurney.  I had an eye patch on my eye and the doctor told me that he wanted to see me the next morning in his office for a follow-up visit.  I was to remain face down at all times and to sleep face down. I could take Tylenol ES for pain.  

My lovely wife drove me home around 6 pm.  I sat looking down in the car and I went straight to the sofa to lie face down once we got home.  I had a light dinner of chicken soup and crackers, all eaten sitting up while looking downward.   When I needed to go to the bathroom, I walked with my head facing the floor.  Sleeping was difficult.  I had plans to make a nest for myself with pillows, with a space for my face to look downward at the bed.  But I just couldn't get comfortable.  I'd say that I got about two half hour sleep stints that night.

I'll always be grateful to my optometrist and to my retinal surgeon for getting me moving and getting me into surgery on a Sunday afternoon, and giving me a chance to keep my vision.

My Right Eye History and My Retinal Detachment

I'm writing this blog to try to help fellow retinal disease patients who are undergoing retinal detachment and repair surgery to gain from my own experience some idea of what one patient experienced as his recovery progressed.  I am not a medical professional and this blog is not intended to serve as medical advice or as a substitute for appropriate counsel from a doctor or other licensed professional. I am just one patient and my experiences may not be typical or representative of what other patients can expect.  I advise you to consult a licensed and trained medical doctor for medical advice. 

On Labor Day in 2011, not long before my 63rd birthday, I had a Posterior Vitreous Detachment with a retinal tear in my right eye.

As I was driving that day I noticed a flickering of a dark cobweb-like structure in the right edge of my vision in my right eye.  I wasn't sure what it was but I knew it wasn't normal.  Later that day I noticed that there were a lot of new "floaters" in my vision in that eye.  When I looked up at the sky, the floaters looked like a shower of round dots that looked like blood cells to me.  I later found out that was exactly what they were.  Concerned about a possible retinal detachment, I called my ophthalmologist.  She was out of town for Labor Day weekend, but she took my call.  She listened to my symptoms and she told me to go to the closest Emergency Room.  The doctors at the ER examined my dilated eye and determined that I had a Vitreous Detachment with some bleeding, and they arranged with my ophthalmologist for me to be seen in her office the following morning.  At my office visit, she saw some blood inside the eye and she was able to see what she determined to be a torn retina.  She arranged for me to see a retinal surgeon later that day.

The retinal surgeon confirmed the diagnosis of a retinal tear and he used a laser to make a great many burn scars around the torn area to "weld" the retina to the back of the eye.  The procedure took only a few minutes and wasn't terribly uncomfortable, but I was surprised that I did feel some pain, and it took some determination on my part to sit still and endure it.  I went to a couple of follow-up appointments with the retinologist and I was released as the tear was healed.  I had no further problems with my retina until three years later.

About a year after my laser retina treatment, I had cataract surgery in my right eye.  I was having difficulty reading road signs with my right eye and my optometrist said that I needed cataract surgery if I wanted to improve my vision.  Both my retinologist and the ophthalmologist said that enough time had elapsed after my laser therapy and that it would be safe to do the cataract surgery.  

A routine cataract surgery was done on my right eye in 2012.  The standard phacoemulsion surgery was done, in which the clouded lens of the eye is liquified and removed, and then the lens is replaced by a new plastic lens of the proper prescription.  The surgery was short and not uncomfortable, since I was anesthetized, and I don't remember anything about it.  After a day of recovery with a patch on my eye, I was delighted with the improved vision in my right eye.  I found that colors were more vibrant and that my left eye in comparison had a yellow tinge to everything. The lens that the surgeon put in my eye corrected my nearsightedness to some degree, so I needed a new eyeglass prescription that was much less strong.  After I got my new eyeglasses, I was very pleased with my vision.  The only problem was that there was now a large difference in the prescriptions between my right eye and my left eye.  The optometrist said that it was something called "unequal adds", so I might have a problem with double vision.  It turned out that I did have a bit of a problem with that, but my brain adjusted to it quickly.

I spent the next two years enjoying my improved vision and I didn't think much further about it.  I did notice that my vision in my left eye was getting more blurry and that, surprisingly, I was getting a bit of blur in my right eye even though it had had cataract surgery already.

In general, my vision seemed to be in good shape and I didn't think much about it.  I realized that I probably now needed cataract surgery in my left eye, but my right eye vision was plenty strong enough to meet my vision needs.  I didn't know that a problem was developing in my right retina that would become a detachment two years later.

Why I'm Writing This Blog

I'm writing this blog to try to help fellow retinal disease patients who are undergoing retinal detachment and repair surgery to gain from my own experience some idea of what one patient experienced as his recovery progressed.  I am not a medical professional and this blog is not intended to serve as medical advice or as a substitute for appropriate counsel from a doctor or other licensed professional. I am just one patient and my experiences may not be typical or representative of what other patients can expect.  I advise you to consult a licensed and trained medical doctor for medical advice. 

As I went through my recent recovery from repair surgery for retinal detachment on my right eye, I often found myself wondering what I should be seeing through my surgery eye at certain times.  The internet has many sites that describe the symptoms of retinal tears and detachments and that discuss what patients should expect as their recovery progresses.  With regard to what to expect as far as vision is concerned, most sites are understandably very vague and they just say that if a gas bubble is present, vision will be quite blurry, that the quality of returning vision will vary significantly from patient to patient, and that the best vision will take months to attain.  

At times during my recovery, as the gas bubble in my eye reduced in size and I could see a dividing line, I thought that even though I still had a good sized bubble in my eye, I should be able to get an idea of how good my vision would be when I recovered.  But I didn't know which side of the dividing line to look on, and what I should see when I looked there.  As the weeks progressed, I learned the answers to those questions, and I wanted to let others know what I had learned so that I might be able to help them understand what they might be experiencing. 

From what I have learned, my current retinal condition may not be the end of the story of my vision issues.  I have several of the predisposing factors for possible retinal tears and detachments in my currently healthy left eye, and my doctor has told me that scar tissue on my repaired right retina may cause that retina to detach again.  My intention is to use this blog to chronicle my experiences as a help to others and help myself to cope with the challenges I may face. 

About me

I'll just start with a brief post to tell you something about me.

As I start this blog I'm 66 years old.  I'm a retired, married grandfather of two little girls.  My wife and I are lucky to have our son and daughter-in-law living close enough to us that we can be actively involved in babysitting for our granddaughters, an activity that we truly love.  

I've been retired for almost eight years.  My career was in health care.  I am a licensed clinical laboratory scientist.  I worked my entire career at a large university hospital where I eventually became Administrative Director for Pathology, a position in which I worked for the five years before my retirement.  My career was highly technical and steadily increasing management responsibility added a good deal of stress.  I suffered from high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol which are now both treated successfully with medication.  I recently discovered that I have a dilated aortic arch, a condition that is called an aneurism even though the dilation isn't large enough to require surgery. My personality tends toward anxiety and obsessiveness, as you'll see from the detailed nature of my posts. 

The previous eight years of my retired life have been liberally flavored with a very pleasant, busy and relaxing mix of travel, consulting work, helping my aged mother and other family members and friends, and babysitting and helping raise our granddaughters and their cousins.  My wife and I enjoy films, attending theater and dance productions, and local and regional travel for sightseeing and to visit friends and family.  I've long enjoyed bicycling and walking, and I started using an electrified bicycle two years ago for exercise and fun.  

My wife and I are environmentalists and we installed solar panels on our home's roof eight years ago.  Four years ago we started driving a Nissan LEAF electric car which stimulated in me an avid enthusiasm for electric cars.  I spend a lot of time online reading news and information about electric cars, I'm active on forums and Facebook groups focused on the topic and I regularly meet up socially with other local EV enthusiasts for meals and discussion, as well as planned events.  I write a blog http://drivingelectric.blogspot.com/ about our experiences driving electrically.  I'm also interested in digital photography, with focuses on photographing children, wildlife and landscapes.  

As you can see, I lead an active, enjoyable and fun life and I have a lot to be thankful for.