Okay, so maybe I spoke too soon about that whole “no pain” situation. I woke up about midnight with my eye really hurting. What was strange is that, although the eye hurt, most of the pain seemed to come from the fact that my eye was tearing up and it was the tears making my eye burn, which caused more tears. Vicious circle!

I actually laid in bed for quite some time trying to relax so my eye would quit tearing. In my sleepy state I believed if it quit tearing up, I could handle the pain. Evenutally I realized it wasn’t going to stop without help so I finally got up and took a Vicadin. Slept really well after that and woke up after about 9 1/2 hours sleep.

The big pain was gone but it still hurt. I decided to take half a Vicadin to dim the pain but not knock me out. That worked and I did pretty well all day. It was interesting taking a shower and washing my face around the patch that took up half my face but Dr. Opth had told me it wasn’t a problem if it got a little wet. I managed and it didn’t even loosen the tape.

My follow-up appointment with Dr. Opth was at 3:30 so my friend picked me up to take me over there. He removed the patch and I was assaulted with pain from the light. Ouch! Wasn’t expecting to be so light sensitive. It didn’t help when he used his machines to check out my eye due to the light that aims at the eye.

I mentioned that I didn’t have any pain until last night and he said that the anesthesia lasted longer than he expected. Bummer, I guess that deflates my illusions of having a high pain threshold! ha! Since I already had my prescriptions, I was now told to use the medicated drops 4 times a day and he gave me use some medicated gel to use in my eye at night and to use the patch over my eye when I sleep to protect it.

Since the melanoma has been confirmed, Dr. Opth says it’s time to schedule a full physical and other tests to make sure I’m otherwise healthy. Admittedly, I’ve only had one physical in the last 11 years … it’s that usually being healthy thing again! However, I agreed to make an appointment.

It wasn’t until I got to my car that I got the opportunity to look at my eye. Wow! Really, really swollen eyelid! Wasn’t expecting that either. My eye teared up all the way home even with my sunglasses.

Once I got home I was able to take a better look at my eye. You can actually see the 2 stitches in my eyeball and that side of the eye is mottled-looking from the follow-up treatments. I found I was letting my left eye close more often than I kept it open. My vision was so bad with that eye that it was making it hard to look at anything.

I decided to take a Vicadin before bed to avoid that midnight pain.