Warning: the photo below will be kind of gross if you're squeamish
So, I had eye surgery yesterday. I had strabismus in my left eye, causing it to drift outward severely most / all of the time (basically a lazy eye). It was a big problem for me personally, especially socially. Most people were cool about it, but it still bothered me when I noticed people noticing it and having difficulty deciding where they should be looking when talking to me and stuff.
And of course, there have been a few people that weren't so nice to me about it. I've had teachers back in high school assume I was mentally challenged, people assume I have a glass eye, and people who just would ask awkward offensive questions. I just didn't want to deal with it anymore.
It should have been fixed as a child but my parents didn't really deal with it properly. If it's caught early enough, it can be corrected without surgery and you can recover your stereo vision, but by the time I was old enough to realize what was going on / make my own medical decisions it was already permanent and proper binocular vision would be impossible, so it was really just a cosmetic thing for me. It was a combination of general laziness and it not being too incredibly urgent that it took so long for me to get things going. I started inquiring about surgery In august of 2008, so it's taken 19? months to go through the entire process, but it really picked up in the last month or so (I had seen 5 ophthalmologists and spoke to the surgeon twice since mid february.)
I'm really happy so far. It's super red but I know that will go away. It is really strange looking at myself in a mirror though, and seeing both eyes look back generally straight. They over corrected inwards a tiny bit because it does have a tendency to drift back over time, which means it'll drift back to center, but it's hard to notice that. It'll be about 10 weeks before it's actually in it's "permanent" spot (the surgery itself isn't permanent, but will last for 5-10 years I'm told, so still worth it to me.)
There were two surgeons, and they were both really cool. I was awake and fully aware the whole time, which was scary at first, but I really couldn't feel a thing. We talked about music & photography, and also where to meet women downtown :P
There were a few scary bits, like one time they asked everyone to be quiet due to a critical point in the procedure, and another time they were talking amongst themselves, and they were concerned about puncturing the globe, but they trailed off when they realized I could hear them, heh. (do not google "deflated eye globe" whatever you do)
Anyway..here's the photo! Sorry about the novel.
Labels: eye, red, ryan, surgery
