Is it healing?

[Vickymau5]

I got a gas bubble put in my eye on July 5th. I had to posture on my left side (for the detachment was on my right side) for a week. I am now off work for 3 weeks and still taking it easy. When I close my good eye, I see a wave of clear in my upper right side. Is this a good thing? Isn't that where i want the gas bubble to stay and heal more? And why after a week do they say you can move around etc? The bubble just bounces arpind. Is it actually fixing anything

[MrPresley]

It might take a month or so for the gas bubble to completely dissipate.  Have patience when it comes to recovery, it took my vision around nine months to recover to essentially pre-surgical acuity following a vitrectomy/ERM peel.

[Vickymau5]

And I am being extremely careful. No laundry or cleaning (My husband's doing all of it.)
But I keep reading on people that are healing that start seeing little bubbles of clear vision. When I lie on my left side, I see a streak almost a wave of clear vision and not the "unserwater" vision, though I can see more clearly when it comes to shapes and making things out.

[kingofvarden]

Sounds to me as if the gas bubble is exactly where it should be from what you say. If you see the murky vision (ie. the bubble) on your left and the clear vision (ie. no bubble) on your right, that means the actual position of the bubble is on the right and the clear bit is on the left. This is because light rays cross at the pupil so everything in the back part of your eye is projected 180 degrees away from where it actually is. A bubble seen on the left will therefore actually be on the right side of your eye, so will be covering that detachment well. (And at the time your detachment happened, if you got a shadow or curtain obscuring part of your vision, you would have seen that shadow also on the right-hand side of your visual field, not on the left where the detachment actually was).

[kingofvarden]

Correction to last sentence - you would have seen that shadow on the LEFT side of your vision - not on the RIGHT where the detachment actually was. Everything is a bit topsy-turvy where the eye is concerned!

[Vickymau5]

The detachment was on the right side, where I am seeing the clearness. Before I got the surgery, it was effecting my left perferal (about a quarter of my vision.) I'm worried about the clear vision that I'm starting to have is on my right side where the initial detachment was.

[kingofvarden]

As I say, that sounds exactly correct - you WANT the right side to see clearly and the left to be all murky with that gas bubble. What you've said confirms the bubble is in exactly the right place. If you SEE it on the left, it is ACTUALLY on the right!

In some ways it's almost better to forget about where they told you the detachment was. Just visualise the bubble pressing against where that peripheral "shadow" was that you saw. You should be seeing the bubble just now just about where you saw that shadow earlier. If the bubble is where that shadow was, it is pressing against the correct area of the retina.

[Vickymau5]

Thank you for clarifying! My surgeon didn't really blonde it down for me. Now I understand and makes me feel a lot better. Thank you! That's why I'm trying not to move around a lot because the clear spot keeps moving when I move my head to the right.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

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[Vickymau5]

I am getting very worried now. I have been taking it easy (after I was given the okay with the surgeon to stop posturung) but am still sleeping on my left side and relaxing (it's better for my unborn son anyways.
When I lie down sometimes I still see floaters on my right side where I am starting to see the clear vision. May I add I gave third nerve palsy and pstosis. The surgeon said it was because of how many surgeries I had done when i was an infant is the reason for the detachment.
Anyways, should i worry about the floaters? They don't stay long.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

The only person that can really tell you "don't worry' is the surgeon that knows your eye and can look in an examine it. If she/he said not to worry unless something big changes than take that advice to heart.  By age 50 more than half the general public have floaters.

[kingofvarden]

I had new floaters virtually every day for the first six months following my vitrectomy for RD. Mostly they were just single dots, but if they appeared in showers (or if I noticed anything else unusual or changing in my vision) I always went in for a checkup. This led to me asking for exams virtually every three weeks for the whole of that first six months. None of these exams led to anything new or worrying being found, but my consultant said I was right to be asking for them and said I should keep on doing so, since it was impossible to tell without an exam whether everything was going as it should, and any changes could point to something going wrong. She said she thought all the floaters I was seeing were probably residual vitreous breaking away and/or capsular debris, so for me they didn't signify anything harmful.

Everyone is different, though, and the message I'd give (other than "You're probably going to get floaters - they're pretty much par for the course after these surgeries") would definitely be "If in any doubt at all, at the very least give the docs a call to talk it over, and almost certainly they will suggest that you go in for a checkup if what you describe sounds at all worrying". They don't mind you doing this and asking for lots of exams, and you and your doctor learn to work as a team in all this. This is particularly important during the early post-operative period when you're really not going to have any real feeling for what is your "new normal" and what isn't - so it will be more difficult for you to tell at this stage what is a harmless / benign artifact from the surgery and what is a symptom that needs serious attention.

[MrPresley]

I didn't have any floaters whatsoever following a vitrectomy/ERM peel in my LE, but did have several clear-dot floaters following subsequent cataract surgery that I had in that eye after 18 months. They disappeared in fairly short order, but to this day one tiny one remains.

[xltjim]

I have a couple black dot floaters in my vitrectomy eye and more noticeable since cataract was removed.  That eye had lots of floaters all my life.  I guess one "benefit" out of all this for me is that's all I have now in that eye.  The right eye...well, going through a PVD right now...lots of junk floating around in there but I seem to be tuning them out while watching for anything out of the norm.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

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[Vickymau5]

Thank you all for the prompt responses.
I just reviewed what the sheet that my surgeon gave me and the floaters are completely Normal. Phew. I'm just so worried that i have to go through this again.

[John C Hagan III, MD, FACS, FAAO]

Enjoy the weekend.