Happy to help, best of luck.
Thank you.
Is the cloudiness normal? It seems to only be slightly better today. Just wondering if I should contact my doctor about it.
I know it has been awhile since I posted on this thread but I wanted to give an update.
I found an awesome doctor close to me and after initially trying to treat my issues conservatively, we opted for remove and replace.
I had one of my lenses replaced on Monday and the surgery went very, very well. I'm still a little inflamed and I have some stitches but there has been only slight pain from the eye block which is almost gone.
I do have some cloudiness in the eye that I did not experience with the first surgery 2 years ago and I am wondering if that takes more time to go away with a remove and replace surgery.
Just a bit of an update on my situation.
I went to my optometrist and was able to get the lenses for my glasses remade to a single vision lenses and I am able to see a little better. It is not the optimal situation and I have to change glasses to read but at least I am able to see much better.
My appointment with the cornea/refractive specialist is a week from Friday. Hopefully he will be able to help me. I will update about that appointment after it happens.
Thanks
The deal with sooner the better is that IOLs are put "in the capsular bag" where over 3-4 months adhesions form that hold it in place. It is possible for a skilled an experienced surgeon to break these adhesions, remove the old IOL and put a new IOL into place. If the capsule is open from a yag. viscoelastics can be used to hold the vitreous back. quite often the need to remove an IOL is not apparent at 3-4 months so its not unusual to have an IOL that's been in the eye for over a year operated on successfully.
I forget to ask anyone's opinion about exchange after 2 years. I have read that sooner is better but what is the consensus on getting it done after such a long time?
It's ok for thinking I had floaters, I went back and looked at my post and realized I didn't make it completely clear what exactly it was that I had.
Re: "I find it difficult to imagine any surgeon would place a regular multifocal (not a toric) in someone with that much astigmatism without correcting it (unless that shift all happened after surgery, which seems odd), and the farsightedness is also defeating the whole point of the Restor, its likely leaving your distance vision poorer since its well inbetween the focal points."
I completely agree with you. I got a copy of all my medical records from my surgeon and the last refraction showed that one eye was +1.00 and the other eye was +1.25 for farsighted but there is no record of the what the astigmatism was. All the records seem off and when I asked about it the OD at my surgeons office would not give me an answer.
Re: "I am curious if single vision glasses (or contacts) might be a better choice than progressive glasses since that might actually let the Restor lenses actually work for you to provide more near."
I was just thinking about this earlier and I decided that I'm going back to the new OD that I have to see if he can put me in a single vision lens. I wanted to see if I would get used to the visual disturbance from the progressive lens and I am seeing that it is not happening. Luckily I have a 30 day no questions asked on the lenses and can go back and get a change without more money out of pocket.
I have been trying to do research on surgeons who do explantation but have found very few in my area. My new OD told me that the doctor I'm seeing at the end of this month has done explanation before but is not sure how many he has done. He also gave me the name of another doctor at Duke who he said was a "legend" in these types of issues. I think he will be my next step after this months appointment.
As I said before I just want to not feel so hopeless anymore and move past this. I know I can't live the rest of my life this way.
Thanks for that information. It does give me a little bit more hope for my situation. The hardest part is the wait to see anyone. The appointment that I have for May 27th was made a month ago. It's very hard to keep hope and be optimistic about my situation when I have to live this way for what seems like forever.
My doctor never gave me this kind of information. i wish he had, maybe I would have been able to make a much better informed decision.
At this point I'm of the mind that with the blurriness, halos, and starbursts during the day and at night that I would prefer an exchange to a monofocal I just don't know if there is anyone who will do it for me because I've had a YAG in my left eye.
What I do know is that I have no quality of life anymore. The visual disturbances are interfering with all aspects of my life. I think of almost nothing else during the day and can't wait for the day to end so I can go to bed and not have to look at anything. Getting up in the morning has become a chore.
I'm sorry to sound so bad and I have read some of the success stories here on the boards, but I still feel hopeless.
Thanks again for listening.
Yes I was happy at first because instead of seeing a giant blur everywhere I looked, I could see things without glasses for the first time in my life. I had been wearing +10 lenses since I was 15 months old so to see anything, even if there was some blurriness was the most amazing thing ever. I was also happy because I kept being told that the vision would improve, it never did. I have had the blurriness and the halos since day 1 but decided to be happy and optimistic. I think at this time the optimism has gone away because of the fact that it feels like no one was listening to me.
I don't have any floaters after the YAG. I have a big piece of the capsule hanging down into field of vision and the doctor told me to ignore it and see if it went away but it still has not gone away.
As far as the need to have a 2nd YAG surgery, I've seen 5 doctors, and only 1 of them told me I needed a YAG and it was the one in my original surgeons office. I was actually told I needed the YAG by the receptionist before I even saw the optometrist. I hadn't been in the office for a recheck for 4 months, how could they know anything about needing a YAG when they hadn't even seen me? Then when i went I actually saw the optometrist she told me that the previous optometrist noted that there was no opacification on the other eye when I was in 4 months previous. When I mentioned this my new optometrist, he looked and told me that there was very little opacification on the capsule and it was not interfering with my vision. So it does make it look like what Dr. Hagan said, that they have some kind of co-management agreement going, otherwise why would I be told I needed YAG before even seeing a doctor.
There is a lot of astigmatism left in my eyes and I don't know why the surgeon did not give me a toric lens or correct the astigmatism. There is also residual farsightedness there too. I went to the optometrist and my astigmatism is +1.50 and +1.75 in my eyes and the farsightedness is +1.00 and +1.50. This has been a slow degeneration of my vision since the surgeries last year and none of the doctors I have seen have any explanation for it. I got glasses last week to help with the vision but they are also disorienting. I got progressives but I still have to switch to different pairs of readers depending on what I'm doing. I have great distance correction with the glasses but nothing else.
As far as the halos, they have been bad since day 1, but once again I was told over and over again that they would get better and they haven't. I do wonder if they seem like they are getting worse because I'm noticing them more or not but I do know that they are becoming somewhat debilitating. I can even see them during the day.
I do feel sometimes like I was a little naive going into this whole thing. I thought i did all the research and learning that I could before decided that I wanted to do this. I know ultimately this was my choice. However, the choice does not seem to be working for me and I just want some help trying to see better again.
Thanks for listening.
re: "I feel like this has been the worst thing I have ever done in my life. I just want to have the lenses explanted and have monofocals with glasses. "
You described your initial results as: "Once again, they weren't perfect but I was happy. ", so it isn't clear how much of the issue is the lens choice vs. later issues. It sounds like the problems started with need for YAGs (which can happen with any lens), floaters after the YAG, which a lens exchange doesn't deal with, and the need for a YAG in the other eye and for astigmatism to be dealt with.
Multifocals do increase the risk of halos, and so it could be that a lens exchange is appropriate if they are causing you major problems. However since you were happy initially, I'm wondering if the halos weren't as bad at first and if they aren't primarily due to the multifocals themselves but instead due to your remaining other issues.
Astigmatism can be corrected with glasses/contacts, but an LRI is a minor few minutes procedure surgeons often do in their office (rather than an operating room), its not like cataract surgery since they don't do anything inside the eye so it isn't as big a production. Unless you have enough astigmatism to warrant a toric IOL (which sounds unlikely since you didn't have them), an LRI is useful even if you later get a lens exchange. It is the case that sometimes they can plan the incisions in a lens exchange to reduce astigmatism rather than having a separate LRI.
Dr. Hagan,
Thanks for your reply. I have seen a doctor at Duke already and he wanted me to get LRI surgery which I am not willing to do at this time. I was given the name of another doctor at Duke by the last optometrist I saw and was told that he would be able to help me, but I have an appointment with a cornea/refractive surgeon on May 27th of this month to see what he can do for me. He has a great reputation and his training and experience are top notch.
I agree that it's going to take a team of doctors to help me. I just feel very alone right now and I just need help coping I guess.
Unfortunately there are many posts like yours on this website. That is why I wrote this article and suggest you do also:
http://www.medhelp.org/user_journals/show/1648102/Consider-ALL-the-Options-Before-Your-Cataract-Surgery-Working-Through-Whats-Best-For-You
Your handle suggests you live in NC. I would suggest you make an appointment at the department of ophthalmology at either UNC or Duke. I would start out with a cornea/cataract/refractive surgeon. It will take a team of ophthalmologists to get you back to a condition that you can tolerate.
In retrospective your interests have been poorly served. Many of these optometrists and ophthalmic surgeons have "co-managment" arrangement where they divide the surgical charges. Patients are often not told of this. It's legal but in my opinion not ethical. If a surgeon is not willing to co-manage then quite a few optometrists will not refer to them.
Duke and UNC are both first class ophthalmology programs and deal in post operative complications.