Chasing Squirrels... A Medical Update

Now I might be aging myself a little bit here, but remember the round/square headlights on the older cars?

For one reason or another one would get out of whack and it wouldn’t look down the road quite right.

My dad would always ask me if I was chasing squirrels with that headlight because it was always running pretty high up in the trees. It was his subtle way of telling me to fix it.

So I kind of have a headlight/eye out of alignment. It is not up chasing squirrels in a tree out of whack, but out enough that I cannot use the eye. I have to wear an eye patch pretty much 24/7.

I have had five surgeries on that eye and have been working on setting up the sixth. Now I haven’t posted for a while and thought this might be a good time to give you an update on where my recovery is at.

Now this particular story starts with a comment about someone else.

Recently I was meeting with the surgeon who is, scratch that, was going to do the next round of surgery. The surgeon was saying all the right things and she was confident in the procedure, but then she made this comment;

“I was just talking with the lady in the next room and I was able to tell her that I was 90% sure that I could fix her problem. I am nowhere near that with you. My goal is to see if we can create a sweet spot in your vision field that you can function with.”

SERIOUSLY?

I think I will be getting another opinion. Thank you!

So I headed to the University of Minnesota and met with an eye surgeon there. Regrettably the news didn’t improve much. They ordered a new CT Scan which I had the next day. The team there that is going to review the CT scan and then let me know how they would proceed. However right off the bat they told me that they may need to rebuild the eye socket again. The concern is that my right eye is significantly lower and sunken further back than my left eye. Due to this the surgeon I met with doesn’t feel they could adjust the muscles around the eye enough to get it into alignment. He still needed to see the CT Scan and meet with the rest of the team, but that was his initial thought.

So I met with The DR from the U last Thursday and had the CT scan done on Friday. On this past Monday I met with the surgeon who did the last round of surgery at North Memorial and he concurred…… 

With the U of M….

At least kind of...

Like at the U Of M, he doesn’t feel that the muscle surgery will work because my eye are too far off kilter. His recommendation though was different. He wants to go in and put a wedge in to try to get my eye to align. A wedge?

This will give you an idea as to how tired I am of all of this, this is what popped into my mind. I picture one of those wooden leveling wedges that you use on door and window frames and the DR. with a hammer just tapping it until he thinks it’s level and then snapping off the excess.

Then once that is completed they can go in with a screwdriver and adjust the alignment screws on the sides like we did with the automobile headlamps.

It could work.

And the squirrels could rest.

 

I've always listened to your point of view

My ways I've tried to mend

And I've always been a patient man

But my patience has reached its end

(Blue Morning Blue Day  Foreigner)