It’s ironic that my final post from 2019 was about eyes. The first thing I should report is that I got out of the eye business. In March of this year, over the course of three days I came dangerously close to going blind in my left eye.
On a Monday morning in March, as I prepared for work, I felt a little pressure or something in my left eye. There was also an itch, so I assumed I had scratched my cornea. I went on about my day.
When I woke up Tuesday the pressure had increased instead of going down. I was popping ibuprofen like a fiend but it didn’t seem to help. The eyeball throbbed and got progressively more sensitive to light. The pain steadily increased, as did my anxiety. I thought to myself that maybe it was a sinus reaction or something but in the back of my head I started to suspect that something was very wrong. Mark told me I should go see my eye doctor.
Wednesday morning the headache, pressure, pain and sensitivity were worse. I called Mark when I got to work and he made me see that my eyes should not hurt He confirmed my suspicion that something was really wrong. I called to see if I could get in to see my optometrist, Dr. Saadat at Tulman Eye Group. As luck would have it, when I called, Dr. Saadat was in the office that day (he only works a few days a week.)
I arrived at Tulman and was quickly brought back to a testing room by Kat, my favorite tech that works at the practice. We’ve got history, so we usually cut up while she’s taking readings and measurements but on this day she could see the redness and swelling so we got right down to business. I told her about the headache and the light sensitivity. She tried to hide her concern but she’s not an actress.
I read the charts and looked at the air balloon (one of the tests) and we determined that my eye was functioning properly. Then she did the pressure test. When she took the reading in my left eye the room got very silent. All joking and casual chat ceased and the air got very heavy. She stood up and walked me to the waiting room. I asked what she’d discovered and she said that Dr. Saadat would have to tell me.
I didn’t even get to sit down in the waiting room before I was whisked back to Dr. Saadat’s exam room, which had never happened. Dr. Saadat was already in the room, which again was unusual. He motioned for me to sit in the chair and started, dispensing with any pleasantries.
“You’re having a medical emergency. You have acute closed angle glaucoma in your left eye. Your eye pressure should be around ten to twelve. Yours is fifty-one. I’m getting you into laser surgery today. The doctor will need to do both eyes as there’s a 95 percent chance that the same thing will happen in your other eye.”
My head was reeling. I had developed glaucoma over a three-day period. The iris (colored circle) drains fluid into the the sclera (the white portion of the eye) through a series of channels. Internal eye photographs showed my channels totally blocked in my left eye. There was no place for the fluid to escape, forcing the pressure to build and build.
Dr. Saadat started putting drops into my left eye. Then he put more drops into my left eye. During that time the receptionist came into the office and said the first appointment for the laser surgery was in April.
“Yeah, no. I’ll call him.” Dr. Saadat retorted and called Dr. Arkadiy Yadgarov the ophthalmologist on his cell. Miraculously, he got me scheduled for a laser surgery later that day. I called Mark and my boss at the time to let them know what was going on.
Two hours later I’m at Omni Eye Services getting several more liquid fire drops put into my eyes. I was then led into the laser surgery suite. I felt like a condemned man walking to his execution. The laser machine sat on a tabletop. It had arms, braces, leather straps and made a high-pitched whine. My fear felt like a physical thing. The tech silently pointed to sit in front of the beast that was about to shoot lasers into my eyes. Dr. Yadgarov came in, introduced himself and sat at the other side of the desk. I don’t remember a word he said. I could not see his face because of a mask. I could only focus on the scary machine I was inches away from. After what seemed like an hour but was probably three minutes, he told me to lean forward and put my chin on the leather strap. He signaled to the tech, who proceeded to HOLD MY HEAD against the machine so I couldn’t move. The doctor told me not to blink (yeah, right.) Some internal device inched forward and I could feel it physically touching my left eyeball. He proceeded to fire laser pulses into my left eyeball. I received twelve or so laser beams to create the hole in my iris so the ocular fluid could drain. Twelve laser pulses into an already painful eyeball was as excruciating as it sounds.
Meanwhile I can’t move or twitch because I was being physically held against the behemoth. I honestly couldn’t tell how long the process took. It might have been two minutes or twenty minutes. The doctor tinkered with the device; the tech repositioned my head against the strap. Again, the doctor told me not to blink, adjusted the device to touch my right eyeball and proceeded to fire twelve or more laser pulses into my right eye. All the while the tech kept me immobile, her hand against the back of my head holding my face against the machine.
When it was over, I was led out of the room into a hallway where Mark and our friend Kate were waiting to drive me home.
In my naivety I assumed that I’d immediately begin the healing process. That didn’t happen. As I lay prone on the couch waiting for the pain to decrease the pain didn’t decrease. Not only did I have the pressure, but now there was burning inflammation pain. My left eye became so swollen I couldn’t close my eyelid over it. It turns out that I had a reaction to one of the fifty different eye drops that the doctors had used in attempt to decrease my ocular pressure.
Saturday morning I went back to Tulman Eye Group where Dr. Tulman checked my eye pressure. My left eye pressure was down to thirty and the right eye was at eleven. Dr. Tulman told me to return on Monday and prescribed a different medicine, another volcanic eye drop. Saturday evening, I began to feel a lessening of the pressure. Sunday I could feel the pressure reducing a little more and the pain from the inflammation decreasing. I was able to close my eye again, which was a huge relief. Monday morning, I again went to Tulman where Dr. Tranh checked my pressures. The pressure in my left eye had dropped to fifteen. The inflammation had also lessened a bunch.
I was tenuously on the road to recovery. The quick actions of Dr. Saadat and Dr. Yadgarov saved me from going blind in my left eye, my dominant eye. If Dr. Saadat hadn’t pulled some strings and asked for a favor I wouldn’t have gotten the surgery I needed that day, and while it the process was indescribably painful, I came out of the situation with the same vision I had prior to the whole experience. The inflammation that resulted was a direct by-product of attempts to save my vision.
Every morning and evening I put a drop of that liquid fire into each eye, but it’s consistently kept my ocular pressure down. It burns every time, but with every drop I am reminded of those terrible day when I almost lost the sight in my left eye.
The Wil World 