I'm going in for possible eye surgery... (Uppity date-- post #7)

[ILoveMyAbbyGirl]

Thanks Deb! Your info was really helpful.

Do you know anything about the surgery? How long it takes? What recovery is like? How long recovery takes?

[Soapets]

The laser surgery is "a piece of cake". It doesn't take very long, maybe about 10 minutes or so, and there isn't a whole lot of "recovery" involved. You might have to use some anti-inflammatory eye drops for a few days to a week. And if your eye pressure goes up you might have to use drops to help control that. Your eye will have to be dilated for the procedure, but other than that there aren't any special preparatory drops or anything. Except they'll put some anesthetic eye drops in just before they do the procedure, so you won't feel it when they put the little focusing lens on the surface of your eye. That will have a clear jelly-like substance in it to help protect your cornea. It won't hurt. It helps the doctor focus the laser where he needs it to be aimed at. The laser will put a seal around the hole, to seal it off so fluid can't leak through it, etc.

You DEFINITELY want to get it taken care of before it gets worse. If you start noticing any little lightening-like light flashes in your vision, or a whole bunch of little floaters moving around in your vision, or a curtain effect from any direction in your vision, call the doctor immediately because those are symptoms of a retinal detachment.

If you do get a retinal detachment, the surgery to fix that requires general anesthesia, an overnight stay in the hospital, and then you have to keep your head in a down-gaze position for at least two weeks! You have to lay on your stomach to sleep, with your face looking down. You have to have eye drops every hour or two, which is the only time you are allowed to move your head to a position where you are facing up---just long enough to get the drops in. And you won't know for sure how your vision will turn out until the healing process is all over with.

You DEFINITELY do NOT want to go through the surgery and post-operative process that are necessary after a retinal detachment if you can prevent it by having the laser surgery to seal off the retinal hole before a detachment occurs.

I hope this was some help.

Deb