Looking Back: My Bubble and Eye Part 2
If I could save images in my bubble,
The first thing I’d like to do.
Is to save every one.
Till eternity passes.
Just to have them to see me on through
(with apologies to Jimmy Croce)
I believe I left off two weeks ago, in my bubble story, with the fact that I was finally on my way home from Calgary, courtesy of my dear friend Herald Kane, overseer of my eyeball surgery journey, with all its tricky twists and turns. The edict from the Mitchell Eye Centre, on leaving there, was that I was not to ride in the passenger seat in case there was an incident with an airbag. Really? Well, I can tell you that riding head down with my face planted in that foam doughnut, in the back seat of his Nissan was pretty damn uncomfortable. When you are able to see ahead while travelling you mentally and physically adjust to the small nuances of a rocking car. But when you can’t see, you don’t know what is coming at any given moment. It is kind of like getting thrown around in a stagecoach. It didn’t help that Herald was used to driving in Los Angeles traffic so weaving in and out is normal.
Pinhole glasses are a bit tricky. John Kinnear photo
Mercifully, on arriving home that day, I was greeted by my lovely granddaughter Christie, who had taken time off from work at the shop she manages in Saskatoon in order to oversee my first week of incapacitation. The face planting equipment was set up and thus began the eyes to the floor element of my recovery. One instruction was that the plastic eye shield, applied after surgery, had to be kept taped on at night, for the first couple of weeks. Ugh! There was a lot to adjust to, being face down that is, but I had a team of dear sweet friends who pitched in and set up a kind of schedule of who does what and when. They, along with my granddaughter, helped me through the slow transition to being upright.
Once Christie left, the team took over meals and household chores. That amazing soul, Jasmine, from The Pantry, even got into the act by organizing a few delivered dinner meals for me on the second week. Talk about spoiled. I guess it takes a village to help resurrect an eyeball. A big thank you to all who pitched in with those lovely evening repasts.
The Calgary follow up check-up, two weeks après surgery, went okay with the OCT imagery, shot through the bubble, revealing that the repair looked like it was holding. We returned the equipment which I had held onto for an extra week just to keep my sleeping/napping comfort zone. An interesting side note on that equipment was that I didn’t realize when I first came home that a collapsible massage table was included in the package. At one point, when all other options for sleeping were just too uncomfortable, I lay face down on the table with special waist and ankle supports and pulled out the head plug and settled my face into the hole. I had just finally dropped off when I felt something wet touch my nose. When I opened my eyes, there was George, my tuxedo cat, standing on his hind legs, checking me out. Incidentally, I rode to Calgary for that two week check-up in the back of my Murano but decided that was enough of that backseat bullshit coming home.
Anti Snore Shirt. John Kinnear photo
The orders from the Mitchell Centre this time were, somewhat like before, no heavy lifting, no water in the eye, plastic shield on at night and sleep on your left side only for another month. Good grief! Well that’s where it got a bit tricky. It required piling pillows against your back to keep from rolling over. But to the rescue, once again, came my friend Herald. He showed up with a special t-shirt that said ANTI-SNORESHIRT.COM on the front. But what was on the back was killer good and funny as hell. Just below the shoulder blades it had three pouches, each containing a wiffle ball. You know, those lightweight, perforated, hollow plastic balls used for indoor baseball. I gotta tell yah, you won’t stay on your back for long with that thing on and it worked like a charm. Herald was also kind enough to order me a pair of pinhole glasses which help you focus. If you like looking at the world through a few hundred tiny holes at once that is.
The no flying edict kinda triggered my ADHD brain again. I got to thinking, “so you’re saying if you fly, the gas will expand in your eyeball and….. ? Ten-four on that one Mitchell Centre. I am not getting airborne anytime soon.
I stuck with the face mostly down regimen long past the recommended date because that’s what an ADHD person does. Anxiety and over thinking rule my game and I wasn’t about to mess this show up. I have to say those damn multiple eye drops, one two and three times a day for a month got pretty tedious. They were administered, in the first two weeks, by the “team,” who always insisted that I might poke my eye so best they do it. Team member Yvonne was the funniest, as she would pretend the drop was coming in like a missile for a landing via her guided hand. Once I moved to self administration with my iPod sounding off the assigned drop times, it was fine.
The dreaded eye drop tracking sheet. John Kinnear photo
Probably the most difficult thing about the whole process is getting used to the black sphere (aka gas bubble) in my eye and its slow devolution. In the beginning it pretty much blocked or blurred most of the eye’s vision but as the weeks went by it began to shrink and I could look over top of it a bit, It blocked two thirds, then half and then one third of my eye. Right now, it is a small black sphere at the bottom of my vision. When I am looking straight ahead it is at the bottom of my vision and when I look down it centre’s its annoying little self dead centre in my eye.
Like I said last week, to me it seems like the bottom part of the eye is obstructed but it is in fact actually the top because of the eye’s natural image inversion process. And when you think about it, gas is lighter than air and rises. There is a bit of inside humour going on with my eye, in that the vitreous humour that was removed in order to do the repair is now slowly being replaced, by the eye, with aqueous humour. The eye needs that fluid to equalize the pressure in it. I have been trying to find humour in this entire journey and I guess my eye is beating me to it.
How it looked sometimes. John Kinnear photo
A couple of weeks ago an unusual phenomenon began occurring with this mysterious bubble. I am not sure of the exact physics of it but first one small, satellite bubble appeared on the perimeter of the main one. Then there were three the next day and then there were none and then four. These moonlets, as I call them, appear to be attached but rotate at will around the bubble’s perimeter. They sometimes cluster together in a line or just wander off on their own. It’s hard to think of analogies here but things like soap bubbles clustering around a larger one, a planet with many moons or a brood of ducklings following a mother. If you’ve ever worked with mercury (back when we thought it was cool), droplets of it gather around the larger bead. The smaller bubbles seem to want to trace the circumference like tiny explorers mapping the shore line of a floating planet.
The right eye macular disruption - bad news scan. John Kinnear photo
Mercifully the bubbles have disappeared but that little black monkey in the middle is still hanging around and will continue to for some time. In my journey with macular, as I mentioned in my last article, I receive injections in my left eye every 7 weeks. Last Friday’s appointment with the OCT image revealed that the right eye has now developed into wet macular and so both eyes will now have to get the treatment. It was hugely disheartening to learn that my so-called good eye, that had undergone a treatment that would bring it back on line in that important role, is now impaired. It is a struggle to focus and stay in the game but I am eternally grateful for the processes available to give me and many others an extended time of vision. I have had huge support from Rocky Mountain Optometry and Dr Mann. My message in all this is. “ Look after your eyes, they are your windows into the world around you.”
Authors Note: Creating a column has become very onerous and frustrating so if my composition and punctuation are off you now know why.