Bill's eye surgery went well!

right eye ...................... left eye

BEFORE SURGERY: Tuesday, Sept 6, 2011

As promised, we are posting here a time-line of sorts of Bill's eye surgery. Above, this is one of 3 "before" photos. In this one, you can see that Bill's left eye is the one focusing on me taking the picture. His other eye doesn't quite focus, even with the thick lenses that have prisms. This type of lens helped him for many many years, but the increasing prism needed during the last lens change resulted in more distortion rather than correction. The prisms create little rainbows. Rainbows are lovely to look at in the sky, but not several of them within your field of vision all the time! So the brain re-interprets the rainbows as distortion. Without the surgery, Bill's vision would have deteriorated within a year resulting in no more driving, and other things important in his life.

right eye ..............left eye

BEFORE SURGERY: Tuesday, Sept 6, 2011

This is what his eyes looked like without glasses. What he could see is two of everything, with things sort of on top of each other, which often ended up seeing sort of 3 of some things.

BEFORE SURGERY: A last look at Bill's right eye before we went in to the surgery center. If he looks happy in this photo, he really was! He had been looking forward to having this done for a long time! He was especially looking forward to seeing better for the rest of his life!

right eye .................left eye

AFTER SURGERY: Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011

The whole surgery process took around 5 hours, although the surgery itself was a little over 50 minutes. This photo was taken about 5 & 1/2 hours after his surgery, resting at (Bill's daughter) Melina's home in Glendale. How handy that they moved so close to the surgery center! And how thankful we were that they provided a happy and restful place for Bill (and me, too!) after his surgery. Thank you Melina, Jonathan, Raylin & Kiley. The little girls brought Bill blankets and, and Kiley was a little befuddled that Bill seemed to not pay any attention to her when she stood near his right side doing cute things! What she didn't realize is that he couldn't see through that bandage! Sorry not to post photos with the cute little helpers in them---they didn't really turn out.

AFTER SURGERY: Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011

Only a little watery blood on each side of his eye, and some on the bandage, a normal amount for this surgery. His eye got a little gunky which "glued" together his eyelashes/lids, also normal. We had to peel back this bandage 3 times a day for eyedrops that kept the swelling down and prevented infection. And then gently clean the gunk away with a wet cotton ball. Then it was time to rest and sleep, and rest and try to sleep, and rest and remember NOT to rub your eye in your sleep! The stitches that are deep inside both corners of his right eye, are very "grain-y" feeling, and will get very itchy as they heal. Just Tylenol & a little caffeine is all he could have for pain. It hurt a lot, but Bill was very patient, he was obedient to what the dr. and nurses told him, even when it was hard. The stitches will dissolve by themselves as the little cut muscles inside his eye socket heals. The white of his eye was VERY bright red. Since his irises are green, that made his eye look like a scary Christmas decoration. Scary! But normal, for what his eye had been through. Kevin said that he should have waited another month, so his eye could have been part of his Halloween costume!!! If you would like more information, a good site to go to is www.surgeryencyclopedia.com, then "eye muscle surgery".

AFTER SURGERY: Wednesday, Sept 7, 2011

I took Bill to the dr.'s office, also in Glendale. She is the surgeon most often for children with this challenge, but also operates on adults. So, the office has toys for children, but the paint on the walls is in nice colors that are easy on the eyes--deep, almost navy, soft blue, and pale, pale yellow. Amazing--these are the colors we want for our walls! Bill already painted our blue wall, now we know how it will look if we sometime do the pale yellow also!

The dr. took off the bandage, and Bill got to try out using his right eye for the first time since the surgery. At first his right eye went a little too far towards the right, but within a few minutes it had straightened out and he DID NOT SEE DOUBLE!!! How exciting! He didn't have any glasses he could wear because the new lenses were not ready yet, but he could still see better than he could before. It was kind of ironic to be so happy and hurting at the same time. "I can see!" he kept saying! The dr. gave him a fold-up pair of protective sunglasses to wear home, with paper things that went over his ears. We stopped at the bank, bought ice, meat, and gas.. We had also planned to drop off a bag of things for Kris & Julie (partly what they left at our house) and a present for Ethne at Amy's house. But we were so hot and tired and Bill was in a lot of pain---we just HAD to get HOME!!! So we headed for the hills!

We got home to Show Low around sundown. Bill was NOT allowed to do any lifting, and it hurt to turn his head very much. It is hard for him to let me do things like unload the car.......he is trying hard to not do things! We were so thankful that I was blessed with the energy and strength to do what was needed! Very thankful. It was sad that we arrived home to snotty notes taped onto our door from a neighbor who complained about the 9 clumps of poop in our yard. And one of our trees has some bugs in it that make a huge web thing, she complained about that too. (The whole neighborhood is infested, as well as a nearby canyon.) We were concerned that while we were out of town, it is a security risk to have notes on your door. This neighbor used to be friendly most of the time. Sigh. Well, enough is enough. We are not quite sure if she is aware that her husband lets their dog in our yard to do his business when he thinks we are both gone, and I went out to check. Their dog is considerably smaller than our dog, so the poop is a different size. Also a different color because their dog gets fancier food. Anyway, out of the 9 clumps of poop, 2 were HoneyBear's (our dog), 2 were skunk or racoon, and the rest were their dog's. They were also all over the yard, so she must have come into our back yard and walked around to count them. Sigh. So, I cleaned it up, put padlocks on the gates. But the whole thing put rather a damper on our being so glad to be home.

AFTER SURGERY: Thursday, Sept. 8, 2011

So Bill has been resting and sleeping, resting and trying hard not to do to much, and resting and being surprised he needs to sleep so much, and resting and NOT rubbing his owie eye! He worried over me when some shingles popped up in an area I have had them before, and I had the fever, itch and pain that goes along with shingles. I started not being able to do as much then, like being able to put his eye drops in, and fixing food when he was awake and I wasn't, but by then he had a little more energy and could do those things. I wish I didn't have such a weak immune system and didn't have this happen after stressful things, but we know it is just part of who I am and what I have to deal with. Thankfully, I had prepared some food ahead, and Bill had also done some of the baking ahead of time, so it worked out. So I became the one who wished I could be doing more, and trying not to scratch and rub my owie places in my sleep! By the way, I have stuff to take and seem to be having a milder case than sometimes, so all will be fine soon enough. The hard part is being patient. We console each other and give each other pep talks. Bill is amazingly supportive, even when HE is needing support too!!! So thankful for him.

AFTER SURGERY: Friday, Sept. 9, 2011 Today!!! Hurray!

The photo below shows how much less red Bill's eye is. It is healing as it should!

right eye ........... left eye

Around the house, Bill still starts to close his right eye out of habit when he isn't wearing glasses, and then realizes he doesn't need to anymore! "I see only ONE of everything!", he has said a dozen or so times!!! So happy that the surgery has been a success! The swelling that keeps his right eye from opening up all the way is decreasing daily, and will be gone probably in a few more days.

This photo was taken when he first got back from the eye doctor's office here in Show Low, who had the new THIN lenses ready for his glasses. Thank you, Kevin (Bill's son), for driving Bill to the eye dr. That was a big help! Bill was tired, and a little puffy/swollen, but after some more rest he was able to drive over to the bus barn. There he learned how things went during this week he was off work, and let them know he thinks he will be fine to drive on Monday. This first outing wore him out a lot and he took a big nap when he got back. So, over the weekend, Bill's duties are to rest as needed, keep taking eye drop medicine & Ibuprofen & Tylenol, watch some fun movies, say "I'm so HAPPY to be seeing better", and do what he wants!!! Hurray! Mission accomplished!