Eye Surgery Recovery

Day one – March 18th:  Surgery scheduled for 2:30PM.

My buddy, Jen took me to the surgery center. She was able to come and chill with me in the back while they prepped me with an IV and waited to go.  I despise needles. Just my luck, the first IV didn’t work in my left arm, so the nurse had to stick the right arm too.  That made me sweat a bit, but it’s cool cause she was nice.  Moving on…
Everything seemed much more laid-back and “fun” if you will, but that’s probably because I got a little bit of sleep this time and I was more alert and saucy.

I had the same nurses and gas guy as last time and yet, I still don’t remember any names. They all came by to chat with me about everything beforehand. I felt like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz saying “and you were there and you were there “ LOL
Jen and I were laughing like crazy looking at Facebook Memes before my surgery and all the nurses looked over us and said, “We didn’t even give you any drugs yet!” LOL

I was in much better spirits this time, so when they wheeled me into the OR, I was laughing and joking around right up until the point they were counting down from 10 with a gas mask on…“Count down is starting now 10, 9, 8,…”

…and then I was waking up in darkness.

Everything felt better than last time! I’m pretty sure I got more happy gas this time because I felt much so better, more alert and aware of what was going on around me right after coming out of surgery. Maybe the nurses would say differently. Ha  Last time I was just miserably in pain and wanting to crawl back into the womb. Look what happens when an Insomniac gets sleep!!

Surgery is so strange. One minute you are laughing and having a good time joking around and getting gassed and the next minute you’re waking up in pain.

Last time when I came out of surgery the lights were on and the nurses were asking me to open my eyes which was the last thing I wanted to do right after eye surgery. Just attempting it made my eyes water because of light sensitivity and pain.  BUT this time, the recovery area was dark and I had cold compresses on my eyes and they were bandaged shut. Ahhhh…. Seriously, that made a world of difference! It helped with the pain of waking up after just having your eyeballs out of your head, but I think the ice helped with swelling and redness later on. Dude, doc…keep doing this! 😀 After the coolness wore off, the nurse took off the bandages and immediately put on dark wrap-around old man shades. Amazing. I wore them pretty much most of the day and evening afterwards. Yes! Nurses never once asked me to try to open my eyes this time, but just popped out the IV, fed me some crackers and water, got me dressed and I was on my way… in style.

Discovered I bled lots with the IV when I took the bandage off Eek!

When I got home I was shocked to be able to open my eyes a tiny bit…Not fully open by any means, but enough that I could look out of the bottom portion of my eyes and see enough to not be completely miserable and with less intense pain than last time. Don’t get me wrong, I still had a massive headache and my face hurt, but I felt better than last time. Thanks, Percocet. It doesn’t take away the pain entirely but it took the edge off and that was everything. My recovery was much better on day one than it was last time around. I was a little nauseous from the gas (was not last time), keep burping up the taste of it and smelling it but I’d much rather have that than the pain. Everyone that knows me knows that I hate taking any sort of pain pills. Because of that, I didn’t take any pain meds last time I went through this, but I’m really loving them right now.

Bloody tears are a real thing. I had quite a bit of bloody goo the first 2 days after surgery.

Much of my evening after surgery was spent dabbing my eyes, hanging out with Jen, waiting for my mom’s flight from FL to land at 8:30PM, and drinking water. I couldn’t drink enough water after my surgery this time (last time I couldn’t care less). Right after waking up and all night I felt super dehydrated…then I drank so much water, I was peeing until  2 AM. I then took my Percocet and drifted off to sleep.

My baby, Gingi

Day Two – March 19th: Just hung around and talked with mom most of the day. Breakfast in bed is nice. Basically, I had every meal in bed. I’m OK with that. I tried to sit in the sun and drink coffee, but the sun ran away behind a cloud. A cold rag over my head worked wonders for talking away some of the intense headache pain that was still continuous. I listened to TV with mom. Still taking Percocet on this day, but I didn’t feel like it worked much because my head was throbbing like someone ran over it.

Day Three – March 20th:
Listened to some of my yoga audio book on itunes with mom with a cold rag over my head again. That is the only relief I felt I was getting because I didn’t think the drugs were doing much for my pain. Nevertheless,I took some medicine and took a nap when mom went to my brothers. She still was not back when I woke up, so I took a bath.

Before bed, I listened to a podcast with 2 Percocets in. That helped me relax and fall asleep.

Day Four – March 21st:
Napped twice. My head was still pounding and I didn’t want to be awake.
When I put the Antibiotic cream in my eyes (has to be done twice a day), I realized that the redness was mostly at the bottom. I also noticed that my eyes were really wide open. I figured that when the Dr said that he was doing both vertical muscles in both eyes that it was going to be in the upper lid and hurt like crazy like my left eye last time did. But, I believe he did only my lower lid vertical muscles this time just based on where the redness was and the lack of more severe pain. The vertical upper lid muscles being cut hurt like broken glass was sewn under the eyelids while under anesthetics and every time you try to open your eyes once awake, you get cut up.  I think I saw this in a horror movie once. They are the muscles that are used to open the eyes, so it makes sense that it would hurt more.

Basically,  It is a lot less painful this time – all around.