Althought I knew Dr. Opth went to a different office on Fridays, I spoke with his admin and explained what happened. I just told her that he could call me if he had any questions. I mean, let’s get real … it’s not like I can just stop by his office and get another stitch or butterfly clamp put on it. I had no expectations but just wanted to let him know.

My eye is hurting more, almost like right after surgery. Plus the underside of my eyelid is more irritated. I decided to use my medicated drops throughout the day instead of the Refresh drop. It seemed to help somewhat.

Speaking of pain, I had my mammogram today. Actually, it didn’t really hurt (unlike the last time I had one!). The woman doing it took a couple of extra scans to try to get my lymph nodes included once she found out I had been diagnosed with melanoma.

Yesterday I attended a Chamber of Commerce Business Exchange because I know several people who were exhibiting in it. We went out for a drink after it was over. Although we sat outside, within a couple of hours most of the tables were full of smokers. I’m usually quite sensitive to smoke anyhow, but my eyes were really burning so I left.

Today my eyes were still burning but, since it was both eyes, I figured it was just the residual sensitivity to the smoke last night.

Around 5:30pm I did my usual peek at my eye’s condition. Yes, the eyelid is still somewhat swollen so I have to lift the eyelid up to see the surgical site. Well, tonight I got a nasty surprise. It was easy to see that one of my stitches had broken loose and the pulled together eyeball had opened up. Now this only took me a couple of seconds to figure this out … and then I got really dizzy. It seems that an open eyeball wound doesn’t like fresh air! Fortunately I could feel a faint coming on and was able to lay down before my dizziness got any worse.

Of course, I could resist another look prior to going to bed that night. Mistake! Got dizzy all over again.

By now I’m used to pulling out my credit card to pay my $35 co-pay as soon as I arrive at Dr. Opth’s office. Dr. Opth’s admin tells me I have a balance but I told her I want to pay until I receive the Explanation of Benefits (EoB) from my insurance company.

After examing my eye with the machines, Dr. Opth informed me that the eye is drying out. He gave me a couple of choices of OTC (over-the-counter) eye drops to get. They were a thicker formula than the standard tears-like drops. He wants me to add a drop every hour, every day to prevent any further drying. Okay, one more timer for my countertop! I already have a timer for the medicated drops.

I stopped on my way home at the drug store but only found one of the two recommended drops, Refresh Gel.

I made it over to the clinic to get my blood work done by 10:00. Again, more forms to complete. They actually give you a buzzer thing to hold onto to know when it’s your turn. Felt like I was waiting to get called into a restaurant!

The blood guy wanted to put me into a chair to draw my blood. That might have worked but I have a long history of fainting when it comes to being poked with needles. (I used to have very low blood pressure, so fainting was a part of my life for years.) The last time I mentioned this to a person wanting my blood, they felt they were good enough at their job that I wouldn’t faint. I bet she was regretting that decision when she was trying to keep me from completing sliding out of the chair!

Anyhow, this guy actually listened and let me lay down instead. He only took 2 vials, so I might not have fainted … but why take the chance!

I was out fairly quickly but he wrapped the bandage around my elbow so tight that it felt like a tourniquet. I cut it off as soon as I got to my car.

Have I mentioned that my eye is STILL really swollen?

Don’t you just love physicals?

So first I had to complete this 4-page questionnaire. However, I got called into the exam room before I was even half done. Had the joy of disrobing and putting on one of those lovely gowns.

Dr. Opth had given me a form to give to Dr. PCP that described my diagnosis and what he’d like to have tested. Dr. PCP gave me the exam (I’ll leave the details up to your imagination!) and gave me some paperwork for further appointments and testing.

Once I was dressed, I went over to the scheduling area. One of the forms had a bunch of stuff checked off and that was the form I was to take with me to get blood work done. That doesn’t require an appointment but I can’t eat for 12 hours prior to the testing. Today’s Friday so I’m going to try to do that Monday morning.

The other form was for the scheduler to set me up for a bone density test, mammogram, colonoscopy, and a consultation with an oncologist. We scheduled the mammogram for next Friday. She gave me instructions on how to call and schedule the bone density test. She wanted to get authorization from my insurance company before scheduling the oncologist consultation but told me I could still call them to get on the schedule since it would take a couple of days to get the authorization.

She also gave me a sheet with two options for calling about the colonoscopy. First, I have to schedule a consultation. Then they schedule the actual test. Why do you have to have a consultation when you already know you need the test?? Hmm.

I called my primary care physician’s (Dr. PCP) office to schedule an appointment. Now I don’t know about you, but in the past I distinctly remember having to wait a couple of months for an appointment. So imagine my surprise when, during a 4pm call, I’m told Dr. PCP can see me at 9:30 tomorrow morning! I had a conference call that conflicted with that time but I did schedule a 1:00pm appointment.

Today was my first public outing since the surgery. I had lunch with a business associate. I have to admit to being very self-conscious because my eyelid is still so swollen and I can’t wear eye make-up. Gee, I don’t even go out without eye make-up when my eyelid isn’t swollen! This isn’t the first time I’ve envied brunettes for having visible eyelashes!

Had my follow-up appointment with Dr. Opth today. He got the pathology report from the biopsy. Definitely melanoma. Rats. I didn’t realize melanoma is always malignant. I guess that makes sense because any time I’ve heard of someone having skin melanoma, they always talk about removing it.

Dr. Opth explained that the biopsy results showed no clear margins. This means that the cancer cells went right to the edge of the whole section he cut out. When he did the surgery, he removed the bump plus an area around it. The point is to try to get it all plus show that healthy cells were showing up on the edges of what was removed. Since my biopsy showed no clear margins, Dr. Opth said there was a good chance I’d have to have another surgery to try to get it all.

Before making a decision about surgery, Dr. Opth wants to speak with the pathologist to better understand the biopsy results. He said he’d like to know if the cancerous cells were only at the edges or if they were also underneath what he had cut out (meaning it went deeper than expected). However, the pathologist was out of the office that week so he needed to wait to make any decisions.

I asked him about my swollen eyelid since it was causing so many problems in trying to get back to work. He suggested using ice packs to help reduce the swelling. He checked out my eye again with the machines and felt pleased with the way it looks. I don’t have to use the patch anymore when I sleep.

I went home and started using the ice pack.

Okay, my eyelid is still really big and I’m not able to get back to work like I expected. Between the light bothering my eye and the eyelid affecting my vision (I think because the swelling puts pressure on the eye), this is a pain in the neck (and lower).

Patience, patience.

I find I’m needing to sleep a lot … averaging at least 9 hours a night. Even then it takes about an hour in the morning before that medicated gel gets out of my eye.

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.

I’m not a morning person … never have been, never will be. So you can guess how excited I was to have to get up at 4am so I could be at the hospital at 5:15am. They told me not to expect the doors directly into the special eye surgery place to be open that early so I should park near it and then walk over to the hospital. The hospital staff would admit me and then send me to the eye surgery place.

When I got to the hospital and told them I had the eye surgery scheduled, they pointed me down the hall and said take a left to the end. Guess where I ended up. Yeah, the eye surgery place! And, yes, staff was there ready to admit me.

They ran me through a questionnaire and put a couple of different eye drops in my eye to start deadening the feeling in it. Then they took me to the pre-op area where they had lockers and I removed my clothing and put on the gown, socks, and hair cover-up. I was then put in a bed and covered with warm blankets … they keep these surgical areas really cold.

A nurse asked me if I wanted lidocaine or just the IV needle in the back on my hand. Since I didn’t know the difference, she used the lidocaine. It’s supposed to numb out the area so you don’t feel the IV needle as much. The lidocaine created a short-lived sharp pain but I didn’t particularly feel it when she inserted the IV needle so it must work. Then I waited. A couple of people came to check on me occasionally, but mostly I waited until it was time to head out.

A guy came to wheel my bed down the hall to another waiting area. This was a much larger multi-bed area where the nursing staff was moving around their centralized area. I guess this was the true pre-op area. We were waiting for Dr. Opth to show up. Meanwhile they put this strange blanket on me that was plastic-like with internal pockets. They hooked it up to a machine that filled the pockets with warm air. Then they covered that up with more warm blankets. Did I mention that they keep these rooms cold?

Dr. Opth was late. However, it seemed the hospital had changed it’s rules and he was expected to show up in that pre-op area to “mark” me. Apparently, the old rule was that he could do it in the operating room and that’s why he hadn’t shown up in the pre-op area. When he appeared, he used a Sharpie pen to write something above the left eye. Plus they asked me what I was there for. This is their way of making sure surgeons are operating on the correct thing, I guess. He even had to include his initials in what he wrote.

Finally my bed is wheeled down a long hallway to the operating room. It’s even colder in here. Now all these heated blankets make sense! Once the anesthesia began, I was out cold (no pun intended!). When I woke up I could hear everything but I could only see dim shapes. Dr. Opth was just finishing, I think, because he told me to close my eyes and I could tell he was putting a patch over my eye.

They wheeled me back to the original room and let me get up and change back into my clothes. It felt really strange because I was expecting to feel lightheaded or something but I didn’t. I’ve never had a local before so I didn’t really have an understanding of what I would feel like.

A friend picked me up and dropped me off at home. During my pre-op appointment I had been given a list of things not to do after surgery. I wasn’t supposed to try to read but I could watch television. Once I got home I realized the irony of that. I couldn’t get my glasses on over this patch. It’s a big oval shape that has a curve to it so it doesn’t touch my eye at all. Then, of course, there’s a bunch of tape keeping it on my eye. Bottom line, the only way I could use my glasses was to turn them around and hold them backwards to my right eye. Not a great solution. I ended up reading. Since I’m nearsighted, it actually worked quite well. My right eye would get tired since it was working extra hard, but that was it.

The really good news is that my eye hasn’t hurt at all. Other than the awkward patch, everything is good. Ended up going to bed nearly two hours earlier than usual … but don’t forget that early morning!