Some Good News for me

In July I started on a long medical journey to save my sight when I started to lose vision in my right eye and I called Kaiser Permanente on a Saturday for an eye appointment, which it gave me within the week, with an optometrist. By Monday I determined that I needed more immediate assistance and I called back and after describing my deteriorating eye condition, it gave me an appointment for the next morning.  Kaiser called me back that evening and told me not to eat or drink anything after midnight, never a good indication for an upcoming appointment.

Thank God I have excellent insurance, a byproduct of working for a quarter century for the federal  government, one of the few so blessed people in this great, rich country where lifetime beneficial health insurance is so niggardly given out.  The next morning, after my $20 co-pay, I was seen by a surgeon ophthalmologist who scheduled me for eye surgery that very day because I had several tears in the superior region of my retina and was losing sight in that eye rapidly as the aqueous humor fluid got behind the retina through the tears and was shutting my eye sight down.  I paid a $75 copay and was rolled into vision saving surgery.

That surgery didn't take and on my week-after visit, where it was determined that my retina was "rolling up," I was slapped back into surgery that very day after paying another $75 copay and they surgery filled my eye with oil (which would have to come out later in a third surgery, another $75 copay) to keep the retina in place during the healing process.  That third surgery to remove the oil was last week, and I went to the doctor's office today for the week-after checkup full of trepidation that I would be slapped into a fourth surgery if my retina was still "rolling up."  As I silently sat as the doctor examined the inside of my eye with his lighted magnification helmet, I heard him say, "Looks good, the retina is still adhering full."

Relief flooded over me, because eye surgery and its onerous recovery (google Face-Down Recovery) sucks bigly.  The doctor cautioned me that I'm still "not out of the woods yet" as I face two months of sedate living without lifting anything over five pounds and then another two months of non-strenuous activity.  But I am so encouraged that finally I might be on the road to recovery in trying to save my sight, at least in one eye, no matter how diminished the sight in my afflicted eye comes out to be (right now it's 2400/20).