Just a short update on the the saga that began a little over three weeks ago, when I perceived I was getting a retinal detachment in my left eye, and we started the three part journey to Wilmers Eye Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where they re-attached the retina, removed the vitreous humor from the eye, and put a bubble of C3F8 (perfluoropropane) gas in the eye to keep the retina in place while it healed.
The gas is reported to be absorbed over a period of six weeks, and based on what I'm seeing, it's about on track. When I look horizontally I have a visible fluid level mark in the middle of my vision, that sloshes when I move. If I look vertically, particularly down, I can actually "see" the edges of the bubble against the sides of the eye. So now I can at least track it's progress as it shrinks.
The big question of course, is how good the vision in the eye will be at the conclusion of the healing process. Right now, when I look forward at any distance it's very blurry, but it turns out having air in the eye makes it very nearsighted. I can see my stray eyebrow hairs and dirt on my glasses in great detail. When I look straight down now at my hand (or text), the focal distance is about 2 inches. It's a lot like looking through a dissecting microscope. But the good news is that the image is clear and highres, so it doesn't seem that the macula has been damaged (much). So I believe, once the bubble is completely absorbed, the vision will be pretty good, although my current glasses prescription probably won't be very good.
In the first days after the surgery, there was a black spot in the lower right corner of my vision, shaped a bit like an animal, with odd legs, tails and a head, and it was surrounded by a colored aura of bluish purple. In bright light I could see a bit through it, so I knew it wasn't totally defunct, but I was worried that it might remain that way. Well, the animal disappeared a few days ago, and while some of the colored aura remains, it seems to be fading day to day. I'm down to two different eye drops once per day, which is a substantial improvement over 4 types on a complicated schedule 4 times a day. One more week and I'm done with them altogether.
Overall, things are looking OK. Having one blurry eye that sloshes is a little unsettling, and it tries to give me a headache if I try to use that eye too much. I don't like driving much because my depth perception is fubar, and glancing left is useless, but driving locally, to the water company or the beach is fine.
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