Good Luck for a graft!!

[GarethB]

Rather you than me Knight.

Not sure about the classical music, I listen to Alice Cooper or the rock show classics like Rocky Horror show or Return to the Forbidden Planet.

Being a bit of a head banger, general anasthetic would be the only thing to stop my head moving

[John Smith]

[quote="Per"]I thought they all did local now, that only the dows syndrome - patients get a general because they won´t lie still on the bench.quote]Well, that may be the case in Scandinavia - and it pretty much seems to echo the USA situation too. Here in the UK though almost every graft I've heard of was done under GA. My consultant told me that it was for the benefit of the patient's peace of mind.

I'm sure that if the patient really wanted it done under a local then a UK surgeon would oblige. I think I'd rather stay blind than have it done under a local though

Maybe the Brits are just super-dqueamish when it comes to eyes? Any comments from the nursing profession?

[Sweet]

Hehe well i was just as bad then as yes i did watch it a few weeks before and then completely panicied about the whole thing!!

Knight am so glad that you are back hehe couldn't resist posting to wish you the best!! Am so happy that things went ok and am hoping to catch up with you soon!! Am just off to work but will post later!!

Take care, Sweet X x X

[Andrew MacLean]

Knight

I am lost in admiration of your courage and rapidity of recovery. Like everybody else I look forward to reading your full account of the experience, but for now well done.

me? I'm far too timid to volunteer to have surgery under a local. Sorry!

Andrew

[Knight]

I'm still somewhat limited in how long I can sit at my PC, so its taking me much longer to post and reply as much as I'd like.
Thank you all again for the support and well wishes. Once I get my act together and able to sit and write away like normal I'm actually looking forward to typing my whole experience out - having a local has helped major with recovering and getting out of hospital sooner, even the hospital staff were a bit stunned I felt well enough to go home once I was back on the ward - I only remained in hospital one more night because I'd have had to come back early the next morning to get the patch removed and eye cleaned - so remaining one night saved me the hassle of travelling back and forth.
One of the best things about having a local is that I was able to sit up in the operating room once they had finished and ask the surgeon directly how it went - getting immediate confirmation and feedback, to me personally, was a bonus - he would also pause at times during the procedure and ask how I was doing, and told me at each point what he was doing next, so that was good as I took many mental notes heh.
You do feel 'movement and pressure' in your eye durin operation but its honestly nothing to stress over - prior to the op I had 3 drops one constricted the pupil so much I couldn't see much anyway then once the eye is frozen (few numbing drops then 2 injections into the eye itself - felt odd but not painful) after it takes affect it feels like a 5lb weight on ur face, with the optic nerve anesthetized and the strength of the light the surgeon uses during the op you do get some temp blindness - so you really dont get to see much except for a bright white light in your eye the whole time.
The most extraordinary thing is that I saw the graft get fixed into position and for a brief moment when the light was moved I could see the vast improvement there and then my sight was instantly that much better - the whole thing for me was a positive experience and I honestly cannot complain on any level how it has went.
My sight right now, is still cloudy, but I can see well enough to walk around if I close my 'good eye', and yeah its even better than yesterday! As for pain, for me, its still varying from nearly none at all to rather intense sharp-stings which come and go but those have eased in the last few hours too, the only other thing that I can report is that, yesterday every now and then I was getting a 'flickering' of light in my left eye even when I closed my eye I could still see it. I had commented on it to the nurse and surgeon twice and they investigated it everything is fine - it hasn't occured today - but something I thought worth mentioning here as I don't think I ever read about that happening before, I could have but the flickering was a new one to me

Anyway I'm taking a collection of 3 sorts of eyedrops:

Minims Dexamethasone (1 drop 4x daily)
Mydrilate (1 drop [stings] twice daily)
Chloramphenicol (1 drop 4x daily)

I am also taking, as a personal choice, Vitamin C with Bioflavonoids (I have been taking them for a week coincidentally for detoxing diet I was on) to which I have now added a slow acting Vitamin B-6 (just google the benefits if anyone is interested) B6 needs to be taken together with C to help it work but can help tissue damage and recovery. I am drinking nettle tea with honey to aid in purifying the blood and detoxing any nasties out of my system as well. I suppose a multi vitamin suppliment would be ok as well, but I wanted something specific to target my recovery. I probably wont recover any faster but from what I have learned and researched, it can't hurt, and will only improve my chances of a good successful recovery and so far I really do feel good and have bounced back faster than even I had hoped.

Well I am going to go rest my eyes now, take my sunglasses off and sleep for a while.

[jayuk]

Very interesting to say that least!...not heard of the flickering thing though......

How does the actually eye feel itself?..swollen?...I guess it must be quite different to the Full Graft as theres more to re-align....can you see your hand in front of your face with the grafted eye?....thats the only test i used to do in the first 4 odd weeks....and each day my hand would get clearer and clearer...

[Dipesh]

Knight, Just catching up on this thread and OH my God, Local sounds crazy.....Glad it went well and your recovering well.

I look forward to reading your experiences soon. Although done rush it.

Jay.....are you able to send me that video link. I would like to watch it.

[jayuk]

Dipesh

I have i think three...the other two arent online and are about 300MB....

Here is a good site with decent Pics of before and after a transplant

http://www.ziobro.us/OSeye.html


And this is probably one of the best online ones I have seen, with Pics and Mpegs - NOT FOR THE LIGHT HEARTED!

http://www.wirtznet.net/transplant/



J

[Knight]

...How does the actually eye feel itself?..swollen?...can you see your hand in front of your face with the grafted eye?...

No the eye itself doesn't feel swollen just throbs, I only had a slight issue with the eyelids being a bit swollen yesterday, today they're fine. Mostly I just feel twinges of pain, like little pin pricks where the stitches are - and on the extremes, left and right (where they injected my eye) still aches somewhat.
These aren't exact but I can count 'fingers' approx 15 feet away with a fair amount of ease (before I could only see fingers held up in front of my nose) I can actually see further than 15ft but the 'cloudiness' is causing much glare (light spread) and my eye is very sensitive to that. Nothing is clear enough to read the print of regular small text but I can make out 'Normal +72pts Times New Roman text at 70cms away: I held a measuring tape from my forehead to the monitor to judge the distance and increased the size of the text until I could read it

Sorry about the crappy pic here, but this is 48hrs post op. I've misplaced the USB for my new digicam so just used a webcam to capture this for now... better ones to come

[Andrew MacLean]

Knight

That's most interesting.

I can't imagine what it myst have felt like when you saw for the first time through your new but still unattached cornea!

Well done.

andrew