Eye - Retinal detachment

On Friday February 14TH, 2025 my left eye retina tore and detached. It started the day before. I noticed a slight eyelash-like line appear in my field of view and I thought it was related to my new trial contacts I received the day before. I figutred the line wo0uld go away with a new set of contacts, but on Friday it was still there in the morning. As I left Bardo after a coffee visit with Brian I noticed the line change to more of a sphere as I stood up from the high-table chair I had been sitting in. I still kind of thought it might be related to the new lenses so I headed off to the Botanic Gardens. Once there I noticed the sphere change to more of an opaque coloring and contacted Optique to get a quicjk diagnosis before theuy closed. Once I arrived there they took a look and concluded that my retina has torn - probably through the Macula. They immediately contacted Kaiser for a surgical consult and by Tuesday I think I went in for surgery. Here's a nasty photo of my eye after surgery! YUCK!!
The surgery had me conscious, but I was drugged so I wasn't super aware of what was happening and it didn't really hurt as far as I remember. (They used a bit of Ketamine). The surgery had a gas bubble inserted in my eye to push the retina back into place. I had to stay down with my head down for an entire week which was not fun. Lots of neck and back pain and it was hard to find a comfortable position for that time. Now over 6 moinths later the eye is doong okay. I think I've lost some vision in the eye that may never return. I have a cataract consult in mid-November to see about getting a new lens for that eye. My surgeon Dr. Dixon said the surgery accelerated oxidation on the lens and the cataract development which was already present has formed more now. The interesting thing about this detached retina was how vision returned slowly to my eye. Losing vision is a bit of a scary thing to experience, but I kept a positive attitude about it as there were slow, but steady changes every day from that surgery. At first I had a patch over the eye and could only sense vague light on the first day or so. After 3 days I had my eye tested and could only make out shades and movement, but couldn't even see the eye chart or even the wall the eye chart was on! By about a week I could start to see things like my hand up close but not much detail. I was wanting to capture some way like a photograph on each step as my vision started to come back. It was interesting how this was happening and the emotions I had while recovering. Once I had some vision up-close I noticed a stitch or jag in text that ran across horizontally. Dr. Dixon explained that in a few more weeks/months my eye would be healed mostly and then my brain would "fix" it so that the weird jag would go away. And now I would say that that's true. Probably my mid May/June the jag started to disappear. Now in November I can say that it is gone, but noticed that when I'm really tired or sleep deprived that the jag sort of comes back in some situations. The challenges with my left eye extends to photography - mostly in that I have a problem switching to up close viewing (like with +2 reader glasses) and them looking through my viewfinder or rear monitor... It seems to slow my work flow down while shooting, but I will say the camera and focus are still really good. I can see quite well through the viewfinder when shooting with my RIGHT eye, so at least I still enjoy doing the photography!

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