Good news… again! Just had my 6-month appointment with Dr. Opth and he’s declared my eyes clear of any problems. Yea! I’m now 2.5 years “in recovery.”

I thought we’d move into annual appointments at this point but Dr. Opth has decided he’d like to keep the 6-month appointments going for now. Since we caught the melanoma early originally, we’ve had good results. He’d like to make sure that we stay on top of it since recurrence rates aren’t really known.

Dr. Opth dilated my eyes to “see behind the eyeball” since this cancer can also appear on the backside of the eyeball (weird, huh!). I don’t mind him looking but it takes a long time for my eyes to get back to normal. Sometimes the dilation feels like I’ve been keeping my eyes really wide open and it ends up making my eyes feel so tired. Oh well, he only does the dilation once a year so I can’t really complain. However, I am careful to make my appointments late in the day so I don’t have to worry about going back to work.

I know several of you have made comments on this blog about my situation or your own. For those of you still going through this, I hope your results end up being as good as mine have been thus far!

It’s true that you don’t hear from me often these days but that’s because nothing new has been happening. Yea! Today I had my six-month checkup with Dr. Opth. Well, actually it’s been closer to 8 months because I was slow to make the appointment.

I got the drops in my eyes that make them appear yellow and, somehow, make it easier for Dr. Opth to see into my eyes with his machines. Once again, I got the all-clear! Dr. Opth told me that he wants to see me again in six more months and, if my eyes are still looking good, we’ll move to annual checkups.

Since Thanksgiving will represent two years from my last surgery, Dr. Opth plans to do some research to see if he can find any statistics about the chance of recurrence once someone has gone past the two-year mark. I don’t know if there have even been enough cases to create reliable statistics but we’ll see what he can find.

I hope all of you out there that have been going through something similar are doing as well as I am these days!

I’ve now passed the one-year mark from my second surgery. Whew! I had this strange thought a couple of weeks ago when thinking about this anniversary. Normally, you’d say things are positive for me since everything’s been good this past year. It dawned on me that the research and medical communities are structured to consider finding a disease as a positive thing. This is why it’s bad news when your doctor says results are positive. So, here’s hoping for a negative 2010! ha!

Had my checkup with Dr. Opth today and he’s happy with the way my eye looks. In fact, he’s stretched out my next appointment to 4 months so it’ll be 2010 before I see him again.

I mentioned to him the theory of my eye watering because it was dry and that using eye drops (even though it’s watering) helps cut back on the watering. He’s like, well sure. Hmm, I don’t remember him mentioning that during my last appointment when I told him my eye was watering. Perhaps he thought I was using the drops (as directed) rather than foregoing them because my eye was already “wet.”

Stopped by my optometrist’s office today to get a new prescription for contact lenses. While there I updated on everything my eyeball had been through since the last time I’d seen him. He was very curious about it and asked a lot of questions. He actually knows of Dr. Opth and even has Dr. Opth’s business card taped to his wall to refer people to him. Imagine… if I’d gone back to him about my eye he might have referred me to Dr. Opth instead of me happening across Dr. Opth on my own!

Now, I know I said that Dr. Opth isn’t worried about my eye getting watery but I’m not a happy camper. I may actually have to switch to waterproof mascara! And every once in a while (at least every few days), enough tears build up where I’ve suddenly got a stream flowing down my cheek.

This is not good for maintaining my makeup! Geez. Plus, the skin below my eye is drying out from the regular blotting with a kleenex… and I really, really don’t need anything to add to the below-eye-aging-thing already happening! Frankly, it’s embarassing to have my eye watering or one-eyed-tears running when I’m trying to talk with a client! I either have to give them too much information about why it’s happening (like I actually know!) or have their imagination run wild about why I’d be crying during our meeting.

Had my checkup with Dr. Opth today and everything looks good. He checked my tear duct(s?) and couldn’t find any blockage that would account for my eye getting watery. He seems to think this is a good thing since I’d have to be using drops a lot otherwise.

I have noticed that my eye waters more first thing in the morning or when my eyes are overused or tired … which is often lately. We’ll see what my eye does once I can get back to sleeping more regular hours. Of course, my sleep is rarely uninterrupted because I happen to have a “morning” cat who doesn’t like to sleep after sunrise! It’s really the question of whether or not I’ll actually fall back to sleep once he wakes me up or if I’m just keeping my eyes closed because they need the rest (while trying to fake my cat into thinking I’m still asleep as he runs back and forth over me in bed!)

The appointments are stretching out! My next appointment  with Dr. Opth isn’t until September.

My cold lasted longer than expected because within a week I had developed a nasty cough that has taken forever to completely go away. Okay, it’s not absolutely gone but barely noticeable anymore. I thought it was gone at one point, then 2 days later it was like it started all over again. I ended back on the cough syrup.

Last night I wore my contacts for the first time in nearly a year. Not a problem wearing them!! If you’ve been following this blog, you already know that Dr. Opth was worried there might be too much scar tissue that would prevent my contacts from fitting properly. In a certain light I can see the slightly rough surface he’s talking about but it must either be outside the range of my contacts or not rough enough to bother them. Yea!

I also wore them again today for a lunch meeting. Again, no problem. Well, one little problem … the watering eye. Today my eye watered enough that it got my upper eyelashes wet and I found myself blotting off some of my mascara.

I meet again with Dr. Opth next week so I’ll see if he has any ideas about why this has begun … and how to stop it. Of course, the irony is that Dr. Opth’s been worried that my eye would be drier than before due to what was removed during the surgeries. Definitely not a problem lately! ha!

I haven’t been able to figure out why, but for about a week now my eye has been watering throughout the day. Not to the extent that I look like I’m crying or anything but I often notice it. If I’m laying down and reading, I often need a kleenex to blot my eye every hour or two.

Believe it or not, trying to remember to put one eyedrop in every other day is a real pain! Even leaving the bottle on the kitchen counter only means I think about it daily and try to remember if I need to do it or if I did it yesterday. I was trying to remember to do it on even-numbered days because that’s when I started but then got messed up when I forgot one morning. My schedule’s not perfect but it’s working fairly well. However, this was somehow easier to do when I had a more frequent schedule.