about floaters and vitrectomies to tell the story of my son, who had a vitrectomy.
Four years ago, my son who was 7 at the time, had a vitrectomy to correct a condition where he had fluid leaking behind and slowly detaching his retina. After the surgery, he had his eye filled with an inert gas mixture. He had to stay face down for a week as the eye refilled. When I looked into his air-filled eye, I could see his retina, magnified by his lens. Let me re-state that…
I COULD SEE THE BACK OF HIS EYEBALL!!!
:eek::eek::eek::eek:
We just had another post-op appointment. His vision is 20/50 corrected in that eye. Dr. Alan Wagner of Virginia Beach (whose wife, Jody, ran for Lt. Gov of VA a couple years ago) performed the operation, and he is a miracle worker.
Well, a properly-functioning eye keeps its own internal pressure in the proper range, so yeah, eventually an eye that’s undergone vitrectomy will set itself right again.
(Another disgusting fun fact about the eye: If you’ve ever had a bad taste in your mouth after using eyedrops? That’s not a weird side effect. That’s drainage.)
So, how did you manage to keep him face-down? Did he imitate Igor when he walked? Did you have problems finding child-sized appliances to rent for sleeping and reading?
A friend’s sister recently had the same thing done, and similarly had to keep her face pointed more or less straight down. She’s an adult though, so it wasn’t necessary to duct-tape her face down on a bed. She just had to go through her day literally keeping her chin on her chest while walking/standing; she had horrible back and neck pain the whole time.
Here, if you have an eyeball, and I have a straw. There it is, that’s a straw, you see? You watching?. And my straw reaches acroooooooss the room, and starts to drink your eyeball … I… drink… your… eyeball!
A friend recently suffered a detached retina, and after her eye doc re-pressurized her eyeball, she was doomed to several days of staring at the floor. Her son put a small TV flat on the floor next to the couch, so between that and an iPad, she was able to pass the time decently well.
Yes, it took a week for the vitreous humor to refill. The doctor told us to keep him looking down “as much as possible”. So for a week, he played games on his DS or PSP, and read books while lying on the sofa or off the side of his bed. AaronX It was very similar to a red eye photo, except that I could see structures on his retina.
Incubus I think that the point of being face down is to make the eyeball fill back up evenly.
My surgeon said that the eye refills with water (or saline) not with the vitreous humor that has no known function. I was supposed to stay face down for three weeks (there are two different gases they use depending on the seriousness of the detachment. The first SF6 (did you know that sulfur could have a valence of 6?) and the second is C3F8 (propane with all 8 hydrogens replaced by fluorine). The first dissipates in a week, but the second takes three. And the reason for face down is so that the gas bubble presses the retina against the back of the eyeball. Again, according to my surgeon. Eventually, a second operation was needed and this time he used an oil drop instead. Now face down for only a day, but yet another operation will be needed to remove the oil.
