My Eye Ordeal

Back to the Grindstone

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grindstone

Having an eye scraped, nay dremeled, at 9 o’clock on a Monday morning is a crappy way to start the week. No breakfast. Early start. Light sedation. 30 minute op.

I have had another round of the old Corneal Epithelial Debridement. This time to accelerate my already impressive recovery. The opthalmo is pleased with my progress, and last Friday declared my eye free of infection. The cornea is clearing nicely, and he felt that he could hurry things along by performing today’s procedure.

Dallas picked me up at midday and I felt like this…

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I have had a bit of a snooze and the odd whimper. Six hours post op and we have just been for a romp in the orchard and I’m starting to feel a lot better. More in focus…

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Next appointment isn’t for 3 weeks. I will keep you posted.

 

 

Feeling alot less ruff

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Just back from the ophthalmologist, who was very pleased with my progress. He put a stain in my eye, and could see that the affected area had diminished quite a bit in 3 days.

neon green - on trend, but not really my colour?

neon green – on trend, but not really my colour?

So, the Good News is that I am on the mend, and ….  drum roll …. I can lose the collar. Hurrah! Andy and Dallas said they found it tiresome that I kept crashing into furniture, misjudging doors and bashing into the backs of their legs.

Huh – THEY found it tiresome – what about me!

Question now is what to do with the hateful lump of plastic. I’d like to destroy it, smash it to smithereens. Brainiac-style. Dallas thinks we might be able to re-purpose it (dreadful expression). But what could it be used for?

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Please let me know if you have any eyedeas (thanks Uncle Graham)

Love, Bloggie the Free

My Eye Ordeal : the first six weeks

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Its been a long haul, so I won’t bore you with the details. And we’ll gloss over the gory bits. But its worth noting, as a cautionary tale.

Six weeks ago. A small granule of swimming pool chlorine. A serious chemical burn to the eye. Numerous visits to the vet. The first lot of surgery. Two setbacks, and any number of eyedrops, injections, pills and pomades. And that blessed silly collar.

I was ‘helping’ clean the swimming pool – it needed transforming from a dark, greeny-black duck pond into something clean, transparent and sparkling. It had been well dosed with tablets of strong chlorine, and it was whilst hosing down the filters the following day that a bit of this solid chlorine went into my eye.

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We dashed off to the emergency vet as soon as They noticed my eye all red, closed and swollen. Over the phone the vet had told us to do nothing, in case it was a detached retina. But with hindsight, a really, really good dowsing with water immediately may well have been beneficial. The vet checked that it wasn’t a grass seed or other foreign body. Gave me a pain killing injection. Diagnosis : chemical burn.

Setback No 1 : You know that little claw on a dog’s wrist. Think its called a dewclaw. That must have caught in my eye, during a particularly vigorous rubbing. Did even more damage. That’s when the collar came in.

Setback No 2 : To be technical, the corneal epithelium had become detached from the stroma. The cornea is made up of several layers, and these are two of them. Having become unglued, it was healing back all rucked and irregular.  An operation under general anaesthetic was needed to to scrape away the affected tissue. Corneal Epithelial Debridement if you care to Google it. Eye sewn shut to help healing. Bloody marvellous.

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Thats when I was told to wait 2 weeks, cross my fingers (difficult) and hope that all would heal and be hunk dory… (see preceding post)

Hopes Dashed

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feeling a little ruff

No, No, No! Talk about having my hopes raised, only to be sent hurtling back to Earth. We are back to Square One. Make that Square Minus One Hundred.

That Dallas has been counting down the days – only 4 more Sleeps, only 3 more Sleeps and so on. Counting down until my appointment yesterday morning, when I could not only have my eye unsewn up, but also get rid of this stupid lamp shade that I have been forced to wear for weeks.

Anyway, it was Bad News. I was ever so brave and kept still whilst the stitches holding my eye shut came out. The lady vet frowned. She called in the man vet. He frowned and talked about granulation and degradation. Dallas has a look and saw that my cornea was still ulcerated – purply red and milky. Not a pretty sight. Not for the faint hearted.

An appointment was rapidly made to see a doggie ophthalmologist. We whizzed over there, and he used a more complicated looking contraption to peer into my eye, and thankfully didn’t need the fluorescent eye drops. He said there was a procedure to halt the degradation – he sounded positive.

As I had been nil-by-mouth for almost 24 hours (add starvation to the list of mediaeval tortures I am currently subjected to), he could operate immediately.

So, I have now had Corneal Cross Linking – where riboflavin (vitamin B2) is activated by being illuminated with UV-A light for about 30 minutes. This is to stimulate strengthening of collagen strands in the cornea.

Dallas picked me up a couple of hours later – I was still very woozy from the general anaesthetic. In fact I felt pretty rubbish all evening. The procedure was painless and I have a temporary contact lens. I also get to keep the lamp shade for at least another 3 or 4 days 😦

This morning, I am back to my Bloggie self and had a big bowl of Bloggie Flakes for breakfast. We go back to see my specialist on Friday – I will keep you posted.

At least I’m not alone…

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wonder why Peter Gabriel had to wear his collar?