Monday, January 19, 2015

Glaucoma Surgery

I've been having trouble with my left eye for over three years now.  In January 2012, I went for a normal yearly visit to the optometrist and he found that I had inflammation in my left eye.  He put me on a regimen on Pred Forte drops (which is a steroid) for several weeks and then said the inflammation was gone and he weaned me off the drops.  In May 2012, we went to see our regular doctor for our six month checkups and I was telling him about the problems with the eye because some of my tests from him had came back showing I had some type of inflammation.  I asked could the eye have been the cause of the reading in the tests he ran.  He suggested I see an opthamalogist to check on my eyes.  The long and short of that visit is the inflammation was back with a vengeance and I was back on the steroid drop.  Each time the doctor tried to wean me off the drop the inflammation would come back.  One of the side effects of the steroid drop is that it increases pressure in the eye and also it gives you cataracts.  So three years down the road, guess who has glaucoma and a cataract in her left eye?  I'm lucky to live in the day and age that I do, several years ago if you got glaucoma you went blind.  Today, they can do surgery and fix it.  So, on January 19, 2015 I had glaucoma surgery done by Dr. David Brodstein at the Mount Ogden Surgery Center in Ogden.  The surgery itself was not bad.  I didn't have hardly any pain.  The worst part of the whole thing was the recovery time.  I couldn't lift anything heavier than a milk jug for over a month and also I couldn't bend over and have my head lower than my heart.  Brian took the whole week of that I had surgery and took care of me.  Now I just need to recover from the glaucoma surgery so I can have the cataract removed from my left eye and then I just might be able to see clearly again.  He is telling me that could take 3-6 months to recover before I am ready for the other surgery.

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