Chris's Fabulous Vitrectomy

I know, you have no idea what that word means and you will want to google it, but I'll save you the time. The vitreous is the gel-like substance that is inside the centre of the eye. Its the first thing that gives the eye its shape before birth. So during a vitrectomy, the vitreous gel is removed and temporarily replaced with an aqueous fluid while the vitreous replaces itself. Yuk. Chris had to have this surgery to clear scar tissue that had formed over time from burst blood vessels. The scar tissue was causing blurred vision because it obscured the light from getting through the eye to the retna. Lovely, eh! He was admitted to the day surgery ward of the hospital where they put him in a silly blue suit, with a silly blue shower cap and gave him some really cute little blue booties.

The surgery was about an hour. I was very glad it wasn't me. That's what I was thinking because I just get squeamish when it comes to eyes. When they told me he was done and back in his cubicle, I popped in to see the groggy guy but the nurse was still working on him.

I came back to find that he had survived the procedure but was still a bit woozey.

He told me the surgery was not painful, just odd sensations. There was some conscious sedation, and a needle to numb the eye. A bit of novocaine above his cheekbone underneath his eye as well, so this numbed the eye and kept it from moving and also seeing. He described some kind of stretch plastic wrap covering his whole face so he couldn't even see anything out of his other eye. I read that the surgeon uses needles and scrapers to remove the scar tissue from the eye and then drains the vitreous liquid and fills the eye back up with another liquid which eventually is absorbed away somewhere. His eye was patched and shielded and he was told to return to the doctor the next morning to get the patch off and have the eye dilated and checked. The doc said the surgery was 100% successful, gave him antibiotic drops and anti-inflammatory drops and sent him on his way. So getting to see the unpatched eye was cool. He had a big bruise on his face below the eye and a huge patch of blood on the white of his eye which I later learned was the bruise from where they put the freezing needle in. Yuk!! The poor fellow could not see through that eye. It was like he was looking underwater through that replacement fluid which moved like waves when he moved his head.

It has been one week now since the surgery and the fluid has mostly gone and his sight is pretty much back unless he looks down. If he looks down he still sees the water. His pupil is still more dilated than the good eye but I assume that will rectify itself as well. He goes back to the doctor in another week but I think all is well, or it will be well.