I'm more broken than you

[Drunk Monk]

Sometimes I place the drop on the edge of my eye then turn my head to roll it in. It’s not sterile (make sure your face is clean) but it works for me. Maybe Asian eyes have a natural gutter for this…

[Greg]

I must say I am loving the way the Glaucoma Medication (Diamox Sequels) are making my finger tips and lips tingle. I knew there was going to be nausea associated with the Daimox, the tingling is a bonus of some kind. It's almost akin to a light case of pins and needles, only in my lips.

Laser blasting commences at 4pm.

[Drunk Monk]

My hands tingle all the time. I keep hoping it means I'm gonna get some money, but I know it's just neuropathy. 

Hope all goes well with the eye lasering. We'll be thinking about you today...

[Greg]

I was thinking the tingling in the hands could be the neuropathy but it comes and goes. And the lip tingling is very odd. Plus my neuropathy in my feet manifests as numbness with occasional pain.

[Greg]

First, the victim, I mean patient, places his chin in the lower part while pressing his forehead firmly against the upper part. The the doctor blasts away with laser directly into the eye. Please note the signs all around the room warning you of the hazards of looking directly into the laser.



I had a 4pm appointment for my date with the red beam. 4pm, as everyone knows is dog walking time followed by dinner time. I guess allowances have to be made to stave off blindness. We took my car and I drove. The Queen could drive us back.

I will admit to being nervous. What if something went wrong and this was the last time I could see anything properly due to some mishap? Happy Thoughts.

Check-in went smoothly except for the dumb ass ( a recurring theme in this story) who complained in his head that Kaiser was taking another $70 bucks from him. Isn't it supposed to be $35 for an office visit? Later as I ruminated about this thought it occurred to me what price would you pay to save your eyesight? Certainly at least seventy dollars.

We were about twenty minutes early. I had time to pee and them sit down in the waiting room before they were calling me in to the back room. The Ophthalmology/Optometry is hyper efficient. Or maybe that's just Dr. Wong and his crew. Regardless, I'm in the chair in the back answering questions and asking questions in return.

The first step was to see if the horse pills and the two sets of eye drops had help lessen the pressure in my eyes. They measure the pressure with this grip device with a small light attached to the top which they bring uncomfortably close to my face. To be fair most things in this process were uncomfortably close to my face. The light on the pressure measuring device switches from a hollow green circle to a hollow red circle. Huzzah! The pressure in my right is down to 12 from the original 60 and in the left eye it is down to 14 from 25. The nurse is happy.

The nurse tells me she is going to go get a consent form and then Dr. Wong will come in to double check the results and then we will head off to the laser room. 

Dr. Wong comes in while she is gone. I guess he saw me sitting in the chair and having a couple of minutes to kill decided to get started. He wants to check the pressure as well like the nurse indicated but he's going to use the stage 3 pressure checker. Stage 1 is where they do that stupid puff of air into the eye that I always fail. Don't flinch! Don't shoot air into my eye and I won't. Stage 2 is the wand/ hand held thing with the red and green circles. Stage 3 is a unit much like the laser unit above except there is a microscope instead of a laser. They numb the eyeball so they can place the tip of the microscope against the eyeball without you losing your mind. I only realized later that's what they were doing after the last visit. Hey! That thing was against my eyeball. The numbing agent during that time had worn off and I started to get twitchy so Dr. Wong added more numbness.

Dr. Wong had me lean into the head holder and started to look around. My first question was "Aren't you going to numb my eyes first" I'm sure Dr. Wong loves it when the patient helps out. He was just looking around first. He wasn't going to poke me just yet. Eventually, though he did. He put in the drops and got busy being irritating with the bright lights and the poking. But he was satisfied that my pressure was now low enough for him to start blasting away at my eyes. He walked me through what was coming up and warned me they were going to put some drops in my eyes that would give me a headache. Not might give me a headache, would give me a headache. Okay. I've had headaches before. How bad could the headache be? (This would be what the cool kids call foreshadowing)

Dr. Wong then got up and walked straight across the hall to see another patient. Gone, like Batman.

The nurse returned with the form. I signed it. She said that when Dr. Wong had finished up with me we could go. I told her Dr. Wong had just left and was happy. She checked the computer charts and sure enough I was good to go.

She put numbing agents in my eyes. And then put super numbing agents in my eyes. For good measure, because she didn't know how long I would be waiting in the laser room she gave me an extra dose of numbing agents. I'm not sure about the last drops she put in, but she said they were to keep me from vomiting. What? She also said Dr. Wong was going to put some contact lens in my eyes to keep them open. That sounded pleasant. With my eyes super numb, it was off to the laser room.

The laser room wasn't super impressive. It looked like all the other rooms. It did have a big cool chair. I couldn't use it because once they put me in it they realized I would be too tall for the laser machine. After some rearranging, they put me in an office chair. The other reason to put me in the lower chair was at that height Dr. Wong would have strained his bad back to do the procedure. I didn't want the Doctor to have anything warring with his concentration.

I had time while I waited for the doctor so naturally I took pictures and texted DM and tQ. The extra time also gave me time to worry. The nurse did come in and did apply the headache drops. She said I might be that lucky person that didn't get the headache. Fingers crossed.

Dr. Wong finally came in after about ten minutes. I finally found out what they meant about the contact lens. The lens had been sitting in front of me the whole time. It wast a contact lens but it also had a miniature lens hood attached to it. The whole thing was about a 1/4" thick. A lens hood is that plastic piece that fits on the end of a lens and cuts down glare falling on the lens.

My first thought was how was I going to keep that thing my eye. Easy. They put a whole bunch of ointment on the contact lens and stuck it to my eyeball. Since the contact lens was in place, it was laser time.

I put my head in the head stirrup. I was admonished not to move and to make sure I kept my forehead against the upper band. Dr. Wong said the first blast would probably startle me. Boy, was he right. And not in a good way. The laser fired with a little click and a blast of light. In my eye I felt the weirdest feeling. It was like a little tiny hand flicked one of my nerve endings. It didn't hurt a lot. But it wasn't a little. And he kept firing. In my head, I kept asking how much was enough of this. Some of the blasts hurt more than the others. After ones that didn't hurt so much, I hoped I was getting used to it. Then I would get a blast that hurt again. Each blast signaled by the click. Dr. Wong finally said he was done. He pulled the contact lens off my right eye. Everything was blurry. "Don't worry", said Dr. Wong "Your vision is blurry because of all the gunk in your eye" Whew. Time for the other eye.

More of the same. I think the time to do the left eye was a little shorter than the right. It still went on too long. I was ready to tell state secrets at the end. But we were done. Dr. Wong said the procedure went really well. I could stop taking the horse pills that were making me nauseous. I would continue with the drops I was currently doing plus I would be given some other drops to take for the next four days. I was to make an appointment for whenever Dr. Wong was available next. Dr. Wong washed the gunk out of my eyes and sent me on my way. I was happy I didn't have any problems with vision. My head just felt weird.

Fun fact about the drops. You can't put them all in at once. You are supposed to give a break between the different drops. I know that now.

I grabbed the Queen from the waiting room, picked up my prescription from the downstairs pharmacy and headed for the car. Since I could see fine, I figured I might as well drive us home. The headache was starting to make its presence known but I could tough it out until we got home. Yes, yes. Macho bullshit not letting the woman drive.

It's about an hour drive to the house from Fresno. The sun had just set but there was still a little light in the sky. That would quickly vanish and it would be pitch black. We took the 41 home which eventually becomes a two lane road after you leave Fresno proper with headlights coming right at you from the opposite side of the road. And there were plenty of headlights. Since there aren't any street lights on 41, those are the only lights you see. It is all contrast between the bright lights and darkness around.

My headache built and built as we drove home. It was a gradually growing spike of fury in the center of my forehead. I have never had a headache like this. To make things better, my nausea decided to fight for attention. The whole trip was hellish. Yes the bright person would have switched drivers. Yeah, no. The sign posts I look for to see how far I had to go before I was home couldn't come fast enough. We finally made the turn off the 41 onto our quaint country roads where it was even darker and I get to play the high beam game as cars approached. Whenever I make that turn off 41, I always feel like I'm just minutes from the house but it is still another fifteen minutes at least. Every minute agony.

We did reach the house. I collapsed on the couch in pain. I put my hood up on my hoody and closed my eyes. I could only listen to the TV. I couldn't open my eyes to watch it I did take some Motrin to relieve the pain. I think it took an hour for the pain to come to bearable levels. I went to be early, even earlier than usual.

I woke up in the middle of the night at the request of the tiny bladder club. My headache was gone and my eyes seemed to be functioning. The only side effect is that my night vision isn't what it was but maybe that will get better.

We'll see if this was worth it when I go back for a check up in February.

[Drunk Monk]

Well that sounds horrific. Made worse by trying to drive on drugs. You know you can get a DUI on any drug, right? And on any vehicle... a friend got a DUI on a bicycle. 

When I was in grad school, we used the same head stabilizers (my late advisor prof was all about eye research). They looked about the same, only we used a bite bar too. I was also in one of those after I caught that metal splinter in my eye at the Armoury. Never fun to be in those. 



Hope it all helps. Heal strong. 

told you to stop that before you went blind...

[Greg]

Current Thoughts: Boy it is a pain in the ass putting all these drops in my eyes.

Also Current Thought: Sure would suck to be blind because I didn't put in the drops.

[Drunk Monk]

I misread that at first and thought it said putting drops in your ass.

That'll make you go blind for sure...

Did the procedure bring any relief?

[Greg]

The Glaucoma wasn't causing me too many physical problems, if any. I just had blurriness in the right eye which was why I was going in for the prescription update. I still have some blurriness there and I hope when the new glasses come, that will make it all better. The doctors were of the opinion that we had caught it really early because I had gone in for the eye exam. The only thing I have lost vision wise is some of my peripheral vision.

I'm still recovering mostly from the side effects of the medication and from the procedure itself.

Thank you for asking.

[Drunk Monk]

There was this ancient Japanese saying that was written on the side of a medicine container shaped like a wakizashi in saya that read (and I'm paraphrasing) 'the medicine can't heal you if it doesn't make your head spin'

[Greg]

Every time I put in my eye drops, I tell the Queen the burning means it's working.

[Drunk Monk]

ouchy...

[thatguy]

'the medicine can't heal you if it doesn't make your head spin'

In the Native American Church, don't they refer to peyote as "The Medicine"...or wait...maybe that was the old ladies on The Waltons...

--tg

[King Bob]

On the Waltons it was the "Rheumatiz Medicine" if I remember correctly.

I went to the eye doctor today and no glaucoma here, plus no change in my vision from last year. I guess after Greg's post I paid more attention to the exam and noticed that due to the astygmatism (sp?) in my right eye, everything is fuzzy seen through that eye alone. So I'd better take good care of my left eye since it's doing all the work.

[Greg]

I live as a caution to others.