Eye Saga 5

Monday, 22 March 2010

Wow! What a weekend.

Friday morning, I sat down with COL Scott Barnes, the chief of the refractory eye clinic and the cornea specialist at Fort Bragg. He explained there are two things wrong with my right eye. There is scar tissue plus the eye needs to be reshaped; it is too flat. Yes, the center of the cornea is thin, but the cornea tissue he needs to remove are on the outer (perimeter) edges so the cornea in that area is thick enough. He continued to explain that I have a 33% chance of improving my vision, a 33% chance of no change or a 33% chance of getting worse vision. Frankly the odds are not that great. However, he also continued by saying that if the procedure were dangerous with little chance of success he would say we are NOT doing the procedure. (My perspective is I’m not a betting man. I serve the Master Physician, so God’s ultimately in charge.) COL Barnes is a pretty good doc and eye surgeon; his clinic completed 37,000 PRK/LASEK procedures with a 99% success rate during the last 10-years. His clinic also did 3,000 LASIK procedures during the last 10-years.

So, the plan is we’re moving forward by doing a LASEK procedure on 29 March at 12:30 p.m. The EK procedure is similar to a PRK procedure with one minor difference. The difference is how to get past the outer layer of the cornea to get to the inner layer. In laymen’s terms instead of scraping the outer layer of the cornea off the eye for PRK, he’ll use eye drops to loosen it and move it aside. He’ll use a laser to burn off some of the perimeter tissue then move the outer layer back into place. Using an analogy, he’ll slide the rug off the hardwood floor, so he can make corrections to the hardwood surface. Then he’ll slide the rug back in place when he’s done.
After the meeting with COL Barnes, I spent an hour waiting in the pharmacy to get a bag full of medication valued at approximately $2K for the procedure. I signed for two varieties of narcotics for pain management. (The meds are designed to knock me out, so I sleep. This way the eye lid is not scraping against the cornea surface as it recovers. Meanwhile, the contact lens that COL Barnes places over the cornea serves as a bandage which I’m not to touch. He removes the contact on Day 5.)

I still need to figure out logistics, because I cannot drive or work for 5-days. My eyes will not be in any shape to legally drive as I’ll need to recover. The clinic will not release me until they see a driver is with me, then they’ll let me go. I’ll have follow-up appointments on Day 2 & 5, which they insist a driver report and depart with me. (Fort Bragg is a 2-hour trip from where I work in North Raleigh. My car has a Fort Bragg DoD decal, which makes it easy to get through the controlled access to post. However, if the driver is using my vehicle… a Mazda Miata, they’ll need to know how to drive a manual transmission.)

I arrived home about 2 p.m. and immediately jumped into my friend’s vehicle, who was waiting at my house. We traveled to Asheville to The Cove, which is Billy Graham’s training center in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We attended the entire men’s retreat organized by Providence Baptist Church. A number of partner churches were represented as well. (Some Marines from a church near Cherry Point attended.) Pastor Ken Smith from FL was the primary speaker. Lenny LeBlanc was the music leader. (Lenny had several “Top 40” songs back in the 1970s and 1980s. He is now the music minister at a church in Florence, AL.) It was neat to see God moving among the 350 men who attended. (Now I have another accountability partner to help me in my daily battles.)

During the Sat afternoon break, my friend & I climbed to the summit of the mountain on the premises. It was approximately 3400 feet high. The weather was beautiful (warm & sunny) and the view was awesome. The sky was mostly clear, so we could see a long ways. Wow! God has a good view.

Sun afternoon we drove in rain most of the 4-hour trip home. It’s neat to see the white and pink blossoms on the flowering trees and shrubs. (I believe most of them were crabapple and Bartlett pear trees plus some redbuds.) There were also many spots with yellow daffodils blooming. After arriving home, I watched several NCAA men’s basketball games. (My bracket is all messed up. I picked Kansas to win the whole thing.) Then I spent several hours reading. God is so good.

My sister called while I was away. She called on Sat to tell me that my favorite cousin, Sheryl Swanson, died. (I didn’t get the message until I was out of the mountains. There was no cell phone coverage, TV or internet in the hotel rooms at The Cove.) Sheryl won her first bout with cancer using chemotherapy about 12-years ago, but it came back and beat her this time. (She was approximately 5-years older than me. She was a wife and a mother of four. Her youngest is a senior in HS. Her middle two are in college. Her oldest is a Marine in Iraq.) I think she is a believer, so I am encouraged knowing I’ll see her again. I’ll send a card to Mike, her husband, in a few minutes. (We like to talk politics. He’s a conservative and very well informed. I’m sure we’ll bellyache about what Congress passed last night, because they aren't listening to the American public. Mike is an anesthesiologist, so he has a unique point of view on the subject.)

I’ll stay in Raleigh for Easter. I’ll be in recovery, so I don’t plan to go anywhere. (After my first PRK laser eye procedure in Nov 2007, my daughter read scriptures to me twice daily for nearly 3-weeks and I listened to a bunch of audio books.)

When I read Phil 1:3-6 today, I thought of you. Thanks for your prayers.