Jett had cataract surgery on both eyes in December. This was a major accomplishment because we have been trying to get it done for over a year, but a series of screwups and changes in plans made it far more difficult than it should have been. We were going to have it done during the summer of 2012 with her regular eye doctor, but his schedule didn’t permit it before we were planning to leave in September that year. So we then switched to a plan to get it done in San Jose where we planned to stay the winter. But we didn’t like the park and didn’t like the weather so we moved down to Temecula. She picked a doctor there and did everything that she was asked to do, but when she went in for her pre-op checkup she was told that she was supposed to have had her contacts out for a week – a little detail that they never communicated to her. They offered to push the surgery back a week, but that would have put the post-op schedule too close to our planned departure date. So we switched to a plan to get it done back in Boston last summer. I can’t remember why that didn’t happen, but it didn’t. Our fifth plan was to get it done in Ft Myers and – hallelujah! – that actually happened.
I expected that the actual surgery – once we got past all the scheduling hurdles – would be a piece of cake. My mother had both eyes done 10 years ago and I can’t remember her complaining about it at all. Everyone shudders at the thought of a root canal (which I actually thought was pretty painless), but no one talks about cataract pain. Well, just her luck… Jett’s pain the night after the first surgery was so severe that she got no sleep at all. It took nearly a week for the pain to subside and that got her to the surgery on the left eye. The doctor said her right cataract was far worse than the left one and he “had to dig deep” to get it out, so we assumed that the second surgery would be a piece of cake. Wrong! The pain wasn’t quite as bad as the first time, but it was bad. And this one didn’t heal right. The checkup a week after the surgery revealed that the “flap hadn’t closed” and she “had a hole in her eye”! Ewww!!! Makes my spine tingle.
In any case it has been an unexpected ordeal. I think she is on the mend now, but still hasn’t gotten a prescription for new contacts so she is still pretty blind. Hopefully it will all be worth it once she is fully recovered.
Just her luck
Jett had cataract surgery on both eyes in December. This was a major accomplishment because we have been trying to get it done for over a year, but a series of screwups and changes in plans made it far more difficult than it should have been. We were going to have it done during the summer of 2012 with her regular eye doctor, but his schedule didn’t permit it before we were planning to leave in September that year. So we then switched to a plan to get it done in San Jose where we planned to stay the winter. But we didn’t like the park and didn’t like the weather so we moved down to Temecula. She picked a doctor there and did everything that she was asked to do, but when she went in for her pre-op checkup she was told that she was supposed to have had her contacts out for a week – a little detail that they never communicated to her. They offered to push the surgery back a week, but that would have put the post-op schedule too close to our planned departure date. So we switched to a plan to get it done back in Boston last summer. I can’t remember why that didn’t happen, but it didn’t. Our fifth plan was to get it done in Ft Myers and – hallelujah! – that actually happened.
I expected that the actual surgery – once we got past all the scheduling hurdles – would be a piece of cake. My mother had both eyes done 10 years ago and I can’t remember her complaining about it at all. Everyone shudders at the thought of a root canal (which I actually thought was pretty painless), but no one talks about cataract pain. Well, just her luck… Jett’s pain the night after the first surgery was so severe that she got no sleep at all. It took nearly a week for the pain to subside and that got her to the surgery on the left eye. The doctor said her right cataract was far worse than the left one and he “had to dig deep” to get it out, so we assumed that the second surgery would be a piece of cake. Wrong! The pain wasn’t quite as bad as the first time, but it was bad. And this one didn’t heal right. The checkup a week after the surgery revealed that the “flap hadn’t closed” and she “had a hole in her eye”! Ewww!!! Makes my spine tingle.
In any case it has been an unexpected ordeal. I think she is on the mend now, but still hasn’t gotten a prescription for new contacts so she is still pretty blind. Hopefully it will all be worth it once she is fully recovered.
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