I’m An Artist Recovering From A Retinal Detachment
Hello! I guess I feel the need to really introduce myself to you as not just the designer and artist of this whole sticker thing, but also the person. One of those things being that I am currently recovering from a Retinal Detachment in my right eye.
Unfortunately for me, there is the potential that this may never heal and I’ll have one eye really carrying the weight of the other eye. As someone who depends on their likelihood on their eyes this is really scary.
How It Happened
Late Summer of 2024 is when I noticed something blocking my peripheral but it seemed minor. I thought it was just the sun in my eye on my long trek to my last job. It seemed to go away, so I really didn’t think much of it. It didn’t go away and I let this sit for a while… like 6 months really. Until I got my new job (within the eye-care industry funnily enough), I finally made my way to an optometrist in Spring, and she said I needed to go to an Ophthalmologist immediately because I was showing signs of a pretty gnarly retinal detachment. I was feeling a bit confused and overwhelmed because I was not experiencing the white flashes and the floaters usually associated with a retinal detachment just the dark peripheral vision in my right eye. We think that my left eye performs so well it just took over the site for that eye. My job was extremely understanding that I needed this time to get my eyes finally right. Because I waited so long, there is a possibility that this may always be like this. This is my lesson out to whoever is reading, please go get your eyes checked.
The Surgery
Because of the nature of this kind of problem it requires surgery. Now, this did not guarantee my vision would be back to normal, but it should help make it better and it would maintain the health of my eye in the long run. The obvious answer for me was absolutely get this over with. If you are squimish, I won’t get into the gross details. I’ll share that the name of the surgery is called a Scleral Buckle, and you can do yourself the disservice of looking it up. I needed two weeks to recover from the surgery and all they really gave me was over the counter pain meds for the eye lol. I could not open both my eyes for a solid 3 days and then day 4 I was able to have my left eye open without really stressing out or hurting the right eye. It took almost a whole week before I could open up the right eye. The healing process was disgusting, so try not to look at it in the mirror as it heals. I nearly passed out.
The Recovery
Obviously it is on-going, I have been having fairly regular visits with my ophthalmologist. It is now almost past a year and I’m still doing recovery visits. This is going to be the longest waiting game I think I’ll ever be apart of. I’m usually a patient person, but this is really testing it. Because of this long recovery it is helping me really appreciate the site that I do have and that I want to make so much stuff. I think my only regret in life I will have is not taking advantage of my skills with the eyesight that I did have. I am trying to make up for it now, and really make it mean something.
