The surgery itself went well. However the Dr. put a small air bubble behind my layer of tissue in order to sandwich it up to the donor tissue and the air bubble was too big! The pain from the high press was unreal… immediately after the first surgery I was drifting in and out of consciousness and began to vomit. My core temperature was also fluctuating rapidly (sweating like crazy one second then freezing the next). The Dr. took me to an exam room and poked a needle in and removed the bubble and it was immediate relief. Along with a few flashing black vertical lines, this is basically what I saw before he took the air bubble out: http://teedhaze.com/images/public/tv-snow.gif
The next day (Tuesday) the Dr. examined me and said he needed to put the bubble back in immediately. The numbing drops didn’t work at first so the pain was unreal when the needle went in. He apologized and put other types of numbing drops in and they worked. He got the bubble in and it was all over within 5 minutes.
Unfortunately the air bubble he put in disappeared somehow over night. He said the body may have absorbed it too quickly. He also said he has only ever had this happen to one other patient he had out of the hundreds of DALK procedures he has done. So he said he needed to put the bubble in again. I begged him to put me to sleep for the procedure! He agreed to and the next day (Thursday) we went off to the OR.
This time he put a large air bubble in and let it sit for 15 minutes while I was still knocked out. He then released some of the air before allowing me to wake up. To our relief it worked! When I woke up things were pretty stable but then started to go down hill. I had that splitting headache feeling like I did the first time I woke up and I was in extreme pain- 10 out of 10. Then for some reason it miraculously dissapeared and the pain was back down to about 2-3 out of 10 which is normal. Personally, I believe that God performed a miracle at that time.
The next day I came back for the followup visit and the doctor said ‘now THIS looks like a cornea transplant!’ and said the bubble was still there albeit a little smaller, but that the donor tissue and my native tissue had become attached as they were supposed to. He also said he was surprised how quickly my eye was healing. I was very relieved!
It is now day 4 since the surgery and I will be going back to Rochester on Wednesday (3/5) for another followup. At this time I can see better than I could see before the surgery. It is still very blurry but I think that’s normal for only 4 days. I have a very slight headache but I attribute that to the eye drops. My primary concern is the redness of my eye. There is also a strange bubble that you can clearly see in the center of my eye, I am not sure what that means. Here are some pictures:
