Eye Surgery

In the first part of March I started having some weird eye problems. More than just the dryness. When we would drive at night, the street lines on the far edge of the road would appear in the middle of the road. So I couldn't really decifer where the lines were. Also when watching TV the images wouldn't line up. Most of the time i'd have to drive or watch shows with one eye closed. It got scary at points. But it also got worse. It went from being just at night to all day every day. I thought it was just a crazy pregnancy thing and I needed to see the eye dr to get my prescription changed. Well I made an appointment and got a new prescription and that worked for a week and then the same thing happened again. So I went back to they eye Dr. and he ran some more tests dealing with my field of Vision. He was a newer guy and so he wasn't 100% sure what was going on. He sent me to my family Dr. to get some testing done to make sure I wasn't Diabetic or having Thyriod problems (they both run in the family) they also thought about sending me to have an MRI. But we decided that since I wasn't having any other problems that we could rule out a Tumor without the need of an MRI.

The Eye Dr. finally consulted with the other Dr's in the clinic and they all said that I had Strabismus. (also known as heterotropia, is a condition in which the eyes are not properly aligned with each other. It typically involves a lack of coordination between the extraocular muscles, which prevents bringing the gaze of each eye to the same point in space) But they couldn't get me into a specialist for 6 months so I'd have to deal with it. So they said contact them in Dec and we will get you into see a specialist. I was driving 40 minutes twice a day(one time at night) only able to use 1 eye. I also could only use one eye to see single images at work. I ended up getting an eye patch to wear all the time because it was making me so sick squinting all the time!! My mom told my Aunt and she had the same thing happen to her and she got into a Dr. 2 weeks after it started and had the surgery done 3 weeks later. I was really annoyed when I found this out! I'd been dealing with it for about 9-10 months already and was told I had to wait when I could have already had surgery to fix the problem.

I called around and it was quite a wait to get into a Dr. especially one that would take my insurance. I finally got a hold of Rocky Mountain Eye Clinic in Murray. I explained what was happening and the lady said oh dear we can see you in 2 weeks and if we get a canellation before then we will be sure to let you know cause that sounds miserable! So we went in and had a consolt with the Dr. I had to have an MRI to be completely sure it wasn't a brain tumor because having Strabismus is very very rare in early twenties. It usually appears in older Adults, or in infants and toddlers.

Dr. Peterson was great!! My left eye was slowly turning in towards my nose. So the first thing they did at the first appointment was put a prisim on the outside of my left glasses lense. It made it so I could see single images and I was sooo grateful! (You can kind of see in the picture below that my left lense is a bit cloudy.That's due to the prisim) My MRI came back normal. So we went ahead and scheduled a surgery date. They worked well with my schedule and they got my surgery scheduled for December. Which is what I was hoping for since I had Kaylee earlier in the year and had meet my insurance deductable! LOL

They day came for me to have surgery. I was really nervous cause they were dealing with my eye and it wasn't a lazor surgery, they actually had to go in and cut the musle off my eye. So when I found that out I was worried that it would mess up my vision completely and I wouldn't see again! I was having all the problems with my Left eye and they did surgery on my Right eye. It's easier to weaken the muscles to match my left eye than to try to strengthen the muscles in my Left eye. So I went in to surgery. They removed the eye muscle closest to my nose and reattached it further back on my eyeball.

After the detaching and reattaching part, I had to go back to the Eye Dr office and as you can see he didn't tie the sutures. While in the Office I looked at Images and told him if they were still double or not. If they were he layed me back adjusted the Sutures and sat me back up and tried it again. After it was where he wanted it he tied the sutures down and sent me home. Joey thought it was pretty great that he got to see all of it!! I was going to go back home after I had the surgery, But I got to thinking about it and trying to take care of the girls and recover just didn't sound like fun, so we stayed at my parents house for a couple days. It was hard being away from Joey! But it was nice having help with the kids!

My eye was blood shot red for a couple of months. and now I just kind of a grayish spot on my eyeball where they detached the muscle and were the stitches were. My vision is good, and it was amazing to see kaylee clearing for the very first time ever!! I'm so grateful for the medical advances they have now! I couldn't imagine having to live my life that way. I guess I would have gotten used to it eventually, but it was not fun! Thanks for all the help with the girls, love and support from all those out there we survived that time!!