I had surgery on my right eye on Tuesday, October 18. The jelly material that fills the eye is called the vitreous. For most of our lives, it's attached to the retina, but in us older folks, it separates from the retina as it did in my left eye. My problem was that the vitreous separated from the retina in my right eye everywhere except around the macula, the central vision point of the eye. This caused the vitreous to pull on the retina so hard that it created a macular hole, a hole in the retina around the macula.
Soooo, they made an incision in the white of my eye through which they inserted instruments and a laser to separate the vitreous from the retina and repair the hole in the retina. They watched what they were doing through my pupil. That was the easy part! They filled my eye with a gas bubble that is intended to put very slight pressure on the macula/retina to hold the repair in place so that it heals correctly. Since the macula is on the back of the eye, the only way to make the bubble put pressure on the correct area is to remain face down so that the bubble "floats" to the top and presses against the macula.
So, for the next 7 days I was face down 24 hours a day. I was told that I could straighten up for a maximum of 10 minutes per hour to do things like eat or take a shower (no water in or near the eye). Marsha put 3 kinds of drops in my eye 4 times a day and that was the most time I was not face down. I figured the more face down time, the better. At my second checkup, 9 days after surgery, the surgeon confirmed that my extended face down time contributed to the eye's healing exceptionally well.
I have one more (hopefully the last) checkup 4 weeks after surgery, but for now, everything is going well. My only restriction is that I'm not supposed to bend over or lift over 10 lbs. Right!
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