Double vision after laser surgery to repair retinal tears

[Twotwelve]

I am a 55 year old female, moderately nearsighted since childhood. On Friday, 6/26/09, I had laser surgery on my right eye to repair tears in my retina. Because of the location of the tears (apparently near a nerve that controls the pupil), he numbed my eye socket prior to the surgery. After he injected the numbing solution (not sure what), he pressed some gauze over my eye and pressed very hard and told me to hold it very firmly against my eye or I would end up with a black eye. He left the room for 5 minutes or so during which time I continued to firmly press the gauze against my eye. I remember seeing small colored dots almost immediately and then flashing. When he returned to do the surgery, I asked him if the flashing was normal and he said 'absolutely'.  He did the surgery with no pain and patched my eye. He told me I could remove the patch the next day and that I might experience blurred vision, double vision or a droopy lid but that it should clear up by Monday. When I removed the patch on Saturday, I had severe double vision, which, from my online research would probably be referred to as hypertropia. When you look at my eyes, the right one appears to be focusing up (there is more white showing under it than the left eye). And, also, what I see out of my right eye seems to be off axis to what the left eye sees- i.e. if I'm staring at something like the top of a window, what the left eye sees as horizontally level, the right eye sees that line sloping down to the right. Also, if I cover the left eye, what I see out of the right eye seems to be somewhat distorted making it difficult to walk- I feel woozy. Depending on the angle of my head, the two stacked images I see may be very separate such as when I look at a TV, I might see two separate TVs. Needless to say, I could not (cannot) function without covering one eye. On Monday, I returned to the specialist's office. The eye was dilated again and he said the surgery looked great and he told me he honestly thought my eye would be fine but that it was just taking me longer to get over the numbing. He told me that he was lasering around the nerve that controls the pupil and that is why he numbed my eye. He said that he was not working around the nerve that controls the eye muscle so damage to that would not be what is causing my double vision. Now, it is Saturday and my vision is still double. I can't help but wonder if I will be stuck with this situation and it has been very difficult to even imagine that. I do have an appointment to go back on Monday (in 2 days). I may be completely wrong, but what I think happened is when he had me press so firmly on my eye while the numbing took effect, I pushed my eye out of place and it was frozen there perhaps because of the numbing. I remember asking myself ‘is it really good to press this hard on my eye?’ and thinking that eyes must be tougher than I realized. I really just wanted to do what he said. I was afraid not to. Also, since my eye was so numb it didn’t hurt to press hard. My questions: Could this really be what happened to my eye? If so, will it ever return to normal on its’ own and if so, how long could it take? (It does appear sometimes now that there is less white showing under the eye than there was a week ago but I can‘t tell that my vision has improved.) Or, if not,  can it be returned to normal surgically or by some other means? Would a retinal/vitreous specialist be the doctor that would do the surgery, or will I need to find another doctor? Any information would be most greatly appreciated!

[Ray T Oyakawa, MD]

The double vision is due to the local anesthetic.  It may or may not get better.

Repost this to Dr. Hagan.  He has written about this.

Dr. O.

[Twotwelve]

Thanks for the quick response, Dr. O.  I did post it to Dr Hagan so I'll see what he says.

[Ray T Oyakawa, MD]

Post on odd days.  I do even days.

Dr. O.

[Twotwelve]

OK, thanks.  Should I post on the Eye Care (Expert Forum) or this one- Community
Forum or does it matter?  (I'm new to this site and forums, in general). Tks again!

[Natasha2711]

I had laser surgery to seal two tears in my right retinal and one tear in my left retinal. The surgery was over two weeks ago and I still have headaches and can see a blue light at bottom of each eye. Kind of like a smoke affect. Is this normal?