Ghosts and Halos

It's now five days since my cataract surgery. I've had that uncomfortable "new glasses" feeling -- where your eyes and brain are working hard to adapt -- only I can't get relief by taking the glasses off. My new acrylic lens is built-in and will (hopefully) be there for the rest of my life. The vision in my right eye has drastically improved. I don't get blinding glare from the most meagre of light sources; I read the 20/20 line at the optometrists; the world is a brighter and sharper place.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows though. The new lens is set for distance vision, and unlike a natural lens can't give me focus at multiple distances. So my near vision is shot, permanently, in that eye. Still, I was damn near blind in that eye before the surgery so I am grateful that I can see again. I also have ghosts and halos in my vision, probably from my brain and eye getting used to a new lens that's still healing into place. Occasionally a partial halo from something bright will arc across my vision. Sometimes I can feel something dancing just out of my peripheral vision that vanishes when I try to work out what it is -- ghosts.

Regardless, it's a good thing to have done. My uveitis hasn't gone anywhere, and it kind of looks like my cystoid macular edema is coming back, but I'm set for better vision over the next 5 years than I've had over the last three. Just so long as there are no unexpected turns for the worse. So how was the experience of cataract surgery?

Almost everyone will get cataracts at some point, if we live long enough, so almost everyone knows someone whose life has been impacted by cataracts. Mostly these are older folks, but it can happen to anyone. For that reason I want to "review" my cataract surgery.

My surgery was done by Dr Ford, who runs the Pacific Cataract and Laser Institute. The consult was professional, informative and the consulting doctor was friendly and helpful. The techs did a good job and the office staff were great.

Now, if you don't want to read details, you should probably skip the rest of this post...
(1 line summary: short process; no real discomfort; eye is doing well)


...


Still with me? Okay. So the surgery prep started with being given a numbing eye drop, and a dilating eye drop. I was also given a giant tablet to manage my ocular pressure post-op. There was some allegedly foul-tasting liquid on offer to reduce anxiety, but I declined. Finally some electrodes were stuck on the backs of my hands.
The next step was the anaesthesia - PCLI use a technqiue called "retro-bulbar block", which involves insertion of a needle into the muscles behind the eyeball, before injecting a lidocaine mixture. There was a little pain on the needle entering the muscles, but it quickly disappeared and it was only a couple of minutes before half of my head went numb. To be honest, the numbness was the most disconcerting part of the whole thing for me.

Once that was done I was hooked up to a machine to monitor my blood pressure, heart rate and blood oxygen saturation. The latter two are done with just a clip that goes on your fingertip, so nothing to fret over there.

I can't report anything about the surgery, as all I felt was occasional water running down my cheek (from the nurse irrigating the eye) and a slight pressure on my forehead (from the surgeon's hand?). I couldn't see anything and mostly I distracted myself listening to the musical tones made by the suction machine. Apparently the level of suction is indicated by the pitch!

The whole thing felt like it took less than five minutes, and then I was led out to the waiting room by a nurse who took my blood pressure. Now, as the youngest patient that day (by a good 25 years) I wasn't expecting to need to be helped anywhere by a nurse -- I must confess though, my knees weren't as steady as usual after the surgery. A feeling that passed in a minute or two.

After about three hours I tried removing the tape that was keeping my eyelid closed, since I could feel the eye trying to open and I could sort of blink. Apparently that was too early! I could see fine through my refurbished eye, it's just that everything was tilted by about 30 degrees. With both eyes open that made for crazy double vision, so I had the eye re-taped. I eventually untaped the eye and could see without double vision nearly 6 hours after the surgery. Since then, I've been on a regimen of three sets of eye-drops, four times a day.

PCLI get a big thumbs up from me for their awesome staff and for the successful surgery. One more thing: I was given a complimentary DVD of my surgery, "through the microscope". I have not watched it yet.