I didn't even realize how long it had been since I posted in here. I knew it had been a while, but not a year!
With my eyes, my right eye has so much scar tissue that I have not had an injection in it for about 6 months now, roughly. We check it every month, but it has remained stable. The vision in it looks resembles a Christmas stocking, with the toe pointing to the right. It is grey, 95% opaque, and has tiny holes of blurriness. Very tiny, not enough to read or see, but I can see distortion through it and sometimes that makes my head hurt. My left eye ( the "good" eye ) has remained somewhat stable, but I still receive Avastin injections every 4-5 weeks to keep it stabilized for the most part.
In December after my injection, I had quite the horrific experience, and let me tell you I don't wish it on anyone. This is not to scare you, of course, but to let you know if it happens to you, do NOT wait it out like I did.
I had everything as routine. I was leaned back in the chair, they put in numbing drops, waited, sterilized, and gave me a Subconjunctival injection to numb the eye, and let it soak in for a few minutes. Then they came back, more numbing drops, numbing gel, and then they inserted the speculum into my eye to hold back the eyelids. I got my shot, and everything was all numbed up and peachy. It was freezing cold outside, and then the cold air touched my eye, the sight went foggy and weird. Like looking in a fogged up mirror you can't just wipe away. But, THAT wasn't the horrible part.
When I went home, I laid down to rest my eye to see if the "fog" would lift. It did and I dozed. While I slept, the numbness wore of and when I got up and opened my eyes, I was in pain! I thought it might just be the soreness from the shot, but as time passed it didn't do anything but get worse and worse. I wouldn't open my eye without a surge of sharp intense pain! So my hubby was obviously beside himself at this point and had no idea what to do. I told him to call the doctors, and he did. They told him it was just a small scratch if anything and they had him go get intense eye gel for severe dry eyes to use on me. He rushed to the store and I stayed put at home with my eyes closed.
He came back and let me tell you, when I opened my eyes again, I fell over backwards in so much pain. I had to pull my lower eyelid down to try and get that gel in, but it did NOT help. I had to use ice packs wrapped in towels to ease pain, and by this point, when we called ( meaning he called ) the doctors again, they had closed and the on duty physician was no help, and I knew that the ER wouldn't help either. All they would do is dig around in my eye and cause me more pain...
So I "slept" on the couch with my ice packs and as soon as the Ophthalmologist was open I was making my eye in to see my doctors. Of course, they had to make me open my eye when I was in the screening room, and I ended up screaming a little and sobbing a lot from the pain. The poor nurse apologized and went to get my doctor immediately, who bless him had numbing drops with him and ready to go. The relief I felt from those drops was amazing.
When he inspected my eye, he found that the eye speculum had scraped my eye and created a sort of skin flap, or skin bluster on my eye, and that my eyelid was causing the skin to pull and tear every time I blinked. Lovely, right/. So he got a pair of the daintiest and most delicate tweezers and just tore the flap off. He gave me an antibiotic prescription and a large contact to cover my eye while it healed, and to keep the friction from blinking to a minimal.
All in all, it took 3 days to heal and I could have saved myself a lot of pain if I had just went back in immediately when it started hurting. But I tried to tough it out and ended up in pain for over 15 hours. My doctor said that if I ever experienced pain, just to go in and ask to see my doctor immediately, since the ER wont be able to help and there isn't much OTC products can do for that.
Isn't that a great story?? :P Lesson? DON'T WAIT! And after that, the pain from the shot is like nothing at all.
-Sharon
