Retinopathy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinopathy

Early in 1994, my late husband tried to work.  He landed a job with a large restaurant company and entered into the training phase.  He wasn’t in the position long enough to collect benefits, just shy of the three months…and was eventually let go.  The reason for his dismissal…. he couldn’t preform his tasks.  Well, he couldn’t because he was in the hospital with Iritis http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/iritis/home/ovc-20260341, he had been training in the overnight shift and was having some pain in his left eye.  But the time his shift was over and he was heading home, he couldn’t see out of his eye and had extreme pain in any kind of light.  When he got home, off to the hospital we went.  When we arrived the doctors addressed the iritis by putting in drops to prevent and break the spindles that were connecting and affecting the pupil of his eyes.  Once his pupil had been enlarged the doctors were taking a look at his eye and discovered he had already had some bleeding in the back of his eyes ~ retinopathy.  The immediately sent us down to the eye clinic where the doctors there preformed 5,000 laser shots to the back of his eyes to cauterize the leaking blood vessels.  We had to come back three more days in a row, for them to completely cauterize all of the blood vessels.  This was the most horrific time as, the doctors had to put needles into each of his eyes… one at a time to freeze the eyes so they would not move while the laser procedure was taking place.  When the freezing was taking place he was to remain still and quiet …. but!!  he had reaction to the freezing and began throwing up!  “Keep him still” the nurse was saying, “hold his head level”… we were afraid that he would blow out any of the remaining leaking vessels.
Retinopathy is bleeding from the vessels at the back of your eye, in the retina.  The blood will pool within the clear, viscus fluid of the eyeball causing it to become opaque.  Eventually if untreated, the clear fluid will be full of clotting blood and the person will loose their vision permentally.  The vessels become compromised from a few different reason, but for my late husband it was diabetes.  The vessels were loosing their strength in the walls and began to leak out blood.
A few months after the thousand and thousands of laser shots to his eyes he began to complain of seeing dark shadows in his vision.  So back to the doctors we went.  The reason for the dark shadows, well … was that he had had so very many laser shots to the back of his eyes that it had create scar tissue on his retina.  This was causing “puckering” which means there was tightening of the tissue and it was beginning to separate his retina from his eyeball wall.  So he was admitted immediately and scheduled for surgery.  They took him in to …. remove the cloudy now, viscus fluid from his eye balls and “clean” or “filter” out the left over “scabs” and to put a slit in his retina to release the tension and relax the muscles so it would not detach.  All went well, however the slit in his left eye had to be made longer than the right…. as a result his vision was skewed.  He could see you in two places from one eye.  That was very difficult to get used to and caused him to be nauseated.
Once all had settled down he was put a six month doctors’ visits for two years. After the two years, it was placed on for one year.  Unfortunately, my late husband developed cataracts in both eyes.  At the time it was an in patient procedure, so he had to be admitted two different times.  Later on, about 5 years…. his left eye again developed a cataract.  But by now the procedure had become out patient surgery.

 

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