My Eye Has Seen the Glory

Of a world in focus. Another brief update on the progress on my recovery from the retinal detachment, reattachment and vitrectomy surgery I had 4 weeks ago Thursday. When last I posted, about a week ago, the affected left eye was still completely blurry due to the bubble of Freon 12 they put in it to hold the retina in place, but that bubble was obviously shrinking by absorption, as it was expected to do over approximately 6 weeks. The evening after I made that post, I began to get narrow glimpses of focused (or at least, much better focused) reality as the bubble shrank to the point of exposing some of the pupil to eye fluid, allowing a normalish light path through the pupil, the liquid, and to the retina. At first, I wasn't even sure, and I had to hold my hand over my eye to make sure I wasn't blinking and catching the image with my OK right (and dominant) eye.

Over the course of the last week, that window has expanded. The bubble now occupies the lower half of my vision in that eye excluding apparently the macula, and a broad band above it is in approximate focus on the world. I can read text on the computer with it, better using my glasses, which are almost certainly not the appropriate prescription. However, the text looks as if it was typed on a piece of paper which was then crumpled and mostly re-flattened and tilted to the right, like Fox News. If I use both eyes simultaneously, it seems somewhat better, but it's a little disconcerting. I'm hoping more healing will fix that, or that my brain will somehow learn about the distortions and apply a software patch.

Colors seem to be correct, although yesterday, in the dark waiting for Pete to pick me up, it seemed white lights or areas of low light (like a gray house across the street), were brighter in the left eye. There might be a residual area of slightly darkened vision in the lower right, where the retina first detached, but I'm not convinced. It has improved drastically since I could see a little dark animal in that corner. 

The bubble continues to shrink more or less as advertised, which means I have a couple of more weeks until it's completely gone and I can cut off the green tag on my wrist which warns first responders not to airlift me out, or drive above 2000 ft for fear of the bubble expanding and bursting the eye, not that the wrist band is still legible.  If I look down, the circle of the bubble has visibly shrunk. I have a retina doc appointment at Wilmers about then, and I'm hoping for continued good news, and continued, albeit slow improvement until then.