Welp, I can see, which is good…
I had an 1130 check in at the OKC VA with nothing to eat, drink for 12 hours, except enough to ‘swallow’ my pills in the morning. Friend went with me as the duty driver to get me home.
Got there a little early and checked in, friend got his packet of info and my post surgery care packet with the joke that I’d probably forget them…
Went back to a prep room, and started the Q&A with a prep nurse who did the vitals, IV started, started the numbing of the eye, and three pages of questions that I had to answer. Got through all that, got me reasonably comfortable on the roll around bed/cart/whateverthehell that was…
And the anestheolgist/his resident, surgeon/her resident came in, went through the whole three pages again with each of them, and finally the OR nurse came in and did the whole thing again! But it was nice to know that they were ALL on the same page/eye, etc.
The VA does teaching for residents since OU School of Medicine is adjacent to the VA, and practice on old farts like us is probably as good as it gets… probably… unless they’re going into pediatrics!
Got rolled back to the OR, they did a head count, and all verified that ‘I’ was the patient, which eye was being done, and they started the IV and positioned me on the ‘bed’ (and I use that term loosely). I did get them laughing when I was asked if I was comfortable… My reply might NOT have been PC…
Surgery took about a half hour, and it is truly ‘odd’ to watch your vision suddenly go blurry with the ultrasound breaking up the old lens. And yes, you DO see red when the lens is removed (no idea why)… They did have to ‘chase’ one bit of the old lens that didn’t want to be vacuumed up, but they got it eventually. It was also ‘odd’ to have the new lens unfold and suddenly ‘see’ the bright light more or less in focus again.
The surgeon kept me up to speed as to what was going on, including when I would feel ‘pressure’ as they did various things. And of course my nose started itching about 10 minutes in… sigh… But they scratched it for me…
Post op was with a different nurse, and she had COFFEE!!! Post op was interesting with her making sure I could function and was coherent. She helped me get dressed, was very careful to make sure I didn’t try to do anything by myself (yes, there was some disorientation and loss of depth of field, which made hitting the wheelchair ‘interesting’).
A little over an hour later, I was out and on the way home with the ‘drops from hell’ as some people have called them, and the pirate patch over the eye.
And yes, my eye was STILL dilated 8 hours later!
I have to give kudos to the OKC VA team! They did an excellent job, and I can see! There was a ‘bit’ of double vision when I finally took the patch off after 24 hours, but that was expected and explained, and it’s nice to see bright colors with no ‘film’ across the vision in that eye!
Many thanks to Jonna for turning the patch into a ‘pirate’ patch so I don’t have to tape the patch on every night for the first week!
Now I just have a month of drops to do… sigh…
