Probably the best place for this I think. This gets a bit grim so only read on if you don’t mind sort of gory stuff.
So Rachel had her eye operation yesterday morning. Right off the bat I’ll say the surgeon says the surgery itself went perfectly. She was home the same day and all things considered she’s fine.
It’s a tough deal. She was losing the sight in one eye, a partial hole in the macula that was getting worse and had started to deteriorate quite rapidly. She was having to hold her hand over her bad eye to see close detail more and more. So they had to go in through the front of the eye, fix the macula, and while they were there they removed cataracts in their early stage ( apparently most of us start developing these at our age, they’re normally very slow to become an issue if ever, so this was just a pre-emptive “while we’re here” thing).
Going in the way they had to means that they also had to replace the cornea. Unfortunately the way all this internal work gets supported is via putting a substance in the eye that pushes everything outwards and then disappears over time. If you’re unlucky you get an oil substance, if you’re lucky it’s a gas bubble. Rachel was lucky. But the thing is, she has to remain face down parallel to the floor, for 50 minutes in every hour, only being allowed 10 to get up and move around, do what needs doing, including a whole regime of eye drops. She has to sleep like this too, which is problematic for air flow.
Luckily we only have to do this for three days. It’s tough but there’s an end in sight. Another woman in the recovery ward had three kids under 18 months, and was told she needed to do this stuff for six weeks.
I’m going to seem a little churlish here, but really I’m 100% grateful, and hopeful that Rach will get her sight back better than before. It takes about a month for the bubble to dissipate apparently. But Rachel’s consultation said nothing about any of these post operation implications. She was told she’d be off for a week, and then yesterday, just matter of fact, they said six weeks as if that was standard. I got ambushed over the phone as she came out of the theatre ( which was why this is in this thread really. I wasn’t allowed to be with her, because covid isn’t over, and you wouldn’t think it by the way people visiting were ignoring signs and tannoy messages to mask up and distance, not to mention the difficulty of avoiding idiots because she had to pass a covid test before the op).
Thankfully we got that down to 2 weeks and then a phased return as Rachel’s work doesn’t have to involve travelling to an office.
But still, I had 30 minutes before I had to leave and pick Rach up, and that’s when they told me what I had to do to get things ready for her, and exactly how strenuous the next 3 days would be. It almost feels like a fait accompli. This way you can’t back out, and so you’ll just have to get what needs done, done; but speaking as someone with chronic fatigue I could really have done with being forewarned.
None of this is pleasant but it could have been much better with a few days of preparation. I had to go out and buy and build an adjustable table this morning for example, so she can sit on the sofa and rest her head there, instead of being stuck at the kitchen table. We could have had that ready before we left yesterday. Not to mention they said that the hour long journey on a dangerous motorway had to be done either with Rachel face down on a flattened passenger seat or leaning fully forward with her head on the dashboard. That journey was deeply stressful for both of us. A few days warning and we could have done something much safer. Maybe even just book an airbnb near the hospital until she could travel upright.
I had a difficult op a few years back, and I’d thought it was maybe a one off thing, but similarly I’d been told just a couple of weeks off, but after the operation it turned out that it was very common to be off for 8 weeks. which is what happened to me. My employers weren’t happy with the change in my expected return to work and by the time I got back to work, I was being managed out because the bean counter honcho was also the HR honcho.
It seems like there’s a systemic issue, or possibly surgeons don’t want to frighten people away from having an operation that will help in the long run. whatever it is, both Rachel and I came away pretty shocked by how different the reality is from the expectations that were set last week. The poor woman who got six weeks, she got ambushed as well.
None of that is to say that I’m not happy though. She’s home and gritting her teeth through a really shitty regime, and I’m just about managing to get everything done. Given that yesterday was Friday the 13th and the only thing that went badly wrong was we lost our internet for an evening ( didn’t help with the regime as Rachel couldn’t listen to jack all on the one bar signal we get here), I’ll take it gladly.
I’m being pretty strict with her as she often tries to get as close to off-axis as she can get away with, and we have a pomodoro timer tweaked to keep her on track. Every time it beeps we’re a step closer to the end. I’m pretty sure I could work in some sneaky pavlovian training there, but I won’t. 😉
edit: and the nurses, as always, were fab.
