3 posts tagged “eye surgery”
I would've posted yesterday but sedatives and painkillers don't mix well when it comes to forming coherent sentences.
I digress...
7:30am, Dylan drags my grumpy (since I had to wake up sans coffee) ass to the hospital. Once up in the correct floor I get whisked away to some procedure room by a young nurse named Cory. She allows me to gnaw her ear off about nursing school and her career choice while another doctor and another RN introduce themselves as participants in my case today. Dr. On finally arrives and promptly asks if I am a one or two martini person. Without hesitation I say two and ask that it be a little dirty and dry. I guess that means I am a drunk and need more sedation than normal people. So while they start the sedation drip, we wait. They ask me questions to gauge my sedativeness (is that a word?). After another dosage and another 45 minutes, they come to the conclusion that I am not responding to sedation but they have to do the procedure anyway. After I watch them administer a local anesthesia shot into my eye, the procedure begins. Since I can't really see what they are doing I can report: a good use of q-tips to clean up blood, some scissors to make incisions, talk of their next case, what their sleeping schedules are like, how mobile my tumor is, how far back behind my eye they think it starts, and how they won't be able to get a lot out. Fascinating, huh?
9:45ish, Dr. On tells me that my tumor is pretty fibrous and they weren't able to remove too much. He thinks it starts really far back and that there isn't much we can do. He told me that what they did remove they are sending to pathology for a biopsy and we should know more about the tumor for our follow up next Wednesday. After this, my sedation starts to kick in and I feel a bit drunk. After this, I remember very little. I remember Dylan coming in and getting discharge instructions.
10:30ish, I stumble out of the car. I notice I feel a bit nauseous and Dylan gets me ginger ale and saltines because he is the awesome.
12:30ish, I wake from my codeine stupor to a call from a florist. I stumble outside and start to snort from laughter because my friend Tracy and her family sent a beautiful bouquet with a card that says "Dear Eyeball - Looking good! Have you lost weight?"
The rest of my day is a blur between trying to play Animal Crossing (despite doctor orders of not watching TV or reading or anything to strain my eye - WTF am I supposed to do?) and sleeping.
If you saw my before photo and would like to see an after, here you go.
Thanks again for all the well wishes and flowers.
Thanks to everyone who sent me happy thoughts. They were received and cherished and probably molested a little bit. Perversity aside, the doctor brought me in at the last minute because apparently what I have is pretty rare for a young person so there is some risk that this tumor is on my actual eye rather than coming from behind it. If the tumor is actually on the eye then they won't remove it because they don't want to puncture my eye or interfere with muscles, which I appreciate. Otherwise, the procedure is still going forward with the intent of removing the fatty tumor from above my eye socket. I calm myself by thinking this is like liposuction for my eye. It's such a hefer.
And for those of you that are not squeamish and brave, here is a photo of my tumor. I am including this not because I am TMI girl but because a few of us are medi-nerds and are into this stuff....
So off I wander to painkiller and bloody eye land. This should be fun.
I have a eye tumor removal surgery scheduled for tomorrow. Bright and early and under anesthesia they will be extracting a tumor from above my eye and test it to make sure I don't have head cancer or something and they will push me towards the apartment where I have my new pink Nintendo DS lite and many movies to keep me company for the three or four days of recovery.
Or rather, that was the plan.
I received a call from the surgeon this morning, while at work, telling me that he thinks my case is more complicated and that he needs to see me today. He suspects there might be something more than fat in the tumor (?!) and that if this is the case we will most likely cancel the surgery.
Why he waited until the day before to review my case is beyond me. And why he is out to ruin my bloody eyed vacation is just cruel. Mean, mean doctor.
So I'm off at 2:30 to find out if I have surgery tomorrow or not. Wish me luck. Though I don't know what I'm wishing for at this point.
