Cataract Surgery

Curtis took me to the Kaiser Mapunapuna clinic where I was scheduled for bilateral cataract surgery at noon today. On the way there Kai texted that he had just landed! His plane was a bit early so it would work out really well for Curtis to pick him up right after he dropped me off. The plan was to have Kai pick me up at 3 pm when they anticipated I would be released from surgery; I sent him a photo of the entrance & the waiting area.

The entrance is to right; waiting area on left.

RN Suzanne was my pre-op prep nurse. She was very informative & pleasant. She explained everything that she was doing to get me ready for the surgery, then she explained what would happen during the surgery. Part way through the prep, Dr. Lin, who will do the surgery, came in. Scott the anesthesiologist and RN Becky the surgical nurse, also came in & introduced themselves. (My phone was locked away during prep & surgery so there are no photos.)

Scott wheeled me in to the operating room when it was my turn. Dr. Lin started on my right eye, which was the one with worse vision; the astigmatism in that eye was pretty bad & he was replacing my lens with a toric lens to correct as much of the astigmatism as possible. (My uncorrected vision was worse than 20/200 & is actually listed in my chart in diopters since it is so severe.) An instrument secured my eyelids to keep me from blinking & a bright light was shined in my eye through a microscope that aided Dr. Lin with the surgery. Because of the drops that RN Suzanne administered during the pre-op prep I did not feel any pain, only pressure as Dr. Lin cut open my cornea & removed the lens; inserting the new toric lens was just as painless. The whole process took 10 to 15 minutes & when they removed the microscope I could see the pattern of the ceiling tiles! It was amazing!

The left eye went just as smoothly. As Scott was wheeling me back to the surgery prep area, I marveled at my view of the ceiling, which now had a lot more character than when he was taking me to the operating room.

As RN Suzanne was cleaning me up after the surgery, I was looking around & able to read signs & see things that were only big blurry masses before the surgery. It was amazing! She said she had called Kai & he was on his way to pick me up; she had me text him to just have him call from the parking lot & she would walk me out to the car. That worked really well since he had forgotten his mask & would not have been able to come in to the clinic because of that.

On the drive back, Kai told me had only had enough time to change out of his dirty travel clothes & in to his shorts when RN Suzanne called. It was about 1:30 when she reached him. We went straight back to the house since my pupils were very dilated & it was too sunny for me; I had my eyes closed for most of the ride back.

After returning to the house I began administering the eye drops I had picked up earlier. One prescription is Moxifloxacin, an ophthalmic antibiotic administered 4 times each day for 1 week. The other is Diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory which is administered 4 times a day for 2 weeks, then 2 times a day for another 2 weeks. The 1st 2 rounds of drops were extremely painful; I was expecting some pain since Dr. Lin had just cut up my corneas, but not that much! For 15 to 20 seconds it was intense searing pain, it slowly subsided & went away after about 3 minutes. The next 2 rounds were less painful, that was a positive development.

I skipped my shower tonight, the only thing I really did today was the surgery. Besides, I had these eye shield I needed to keep on overnight in order to keep anything from putting pressure on my eyelids. I would have had to keep them on in the shower as well tonight. Starting tomorrow, I will only need to wear them when I sleep during the next week.

While I was waiting for Curtis this morning, I checked out the landscaping in progress that The Potential Most Favorite Roommate is doing. He removed a lot of the weedy invasives at the corner of the area in front of the living room window & repositioned the large lava rocks there. He also started trimming the kokutan (Yeddo hawthorn, Rhaphiolepis umbellata) with the help of his bonsai teacher; they are going to retrain it. 

Weeds removed & rocks repositioned for new landscaping project. (Kokutan upper right.)

This kokutan in foreground being trained for bonsai used to look like the one in background & previous photo.