Third cranial nerve repair!

Well, we finally got to meet a neuro-ophthalmologist( there are only 4-5 of the species in the whole of Seattle area ). It took 2 months to see one. And he finally gave us somewhat good description of my eye problem. My third cranial nerve was damaged during the surgery, which is what causes the droopy lid. In most cases the nerve repairs almost completely and the lid function returns. But any nerve repair takes about 6-9 months. In the meantime, this third nerve damage has caused a condition called Exophoria. In simple terms, my right eye does not converge very well when i try to read or do anything which requires convergence of both eyes. This of course causes stress and dizziness.

So on most days i can only spend about 15 minutes at a time reading or online or doing anything which requires concentration . Of cource, i am trying to do all these things without concentrating so much, but u cant do that to read. i can type and probably do some daily activities with minimal eye use, but most are still restricted. The eye convergence can be corrected using prisms on my glasses, but the docs dont want to do that right now, since it might interfere with the nerve repair.

So here i am waiting and waiting for my nerve to heal itself so that i can start doing some things which usually would occupy 75 % of my day.

As i had mentioned in an earlier post that we engineers have a difficult time dealing with such situations without much control and explanations. Most of the the recovery problems do not usually have any explanation. This is true of a lot of medical problems. Along with all of this you have to also deal with the sudden missing independence. I can barely do my daily activities like cooking, reading, driving or anything. It sure is difficult to be suddenly so dependent. Well hopefully all this is temporary.!. Eyes are a very important part of your life for sure!!

Here's wishing my nerves a fast recovery! I am trying to find workarounds for certain activities for sure. Like i am using Key2Speak s/w to write up this blog. Because typing for me is not so concentration intensive, but reading what i typed up is. So this software just reads out whatever iam typing aloud. I can also read mails or webpages with it. So atleast i am not using my eyes so intensively!
I am getting familiar with my kitchen slowly, so that i dont really need my eyes for every small thing. Ahh i miss driving though.

Happy Holi!!

Happy Holi everyone!! (March 4)! Holi is the festival of colours, celebrated in India to celebrate the onset of Spring. It is a day to celebrate, have fun and socialize. We usually don't do much on Holi here in the US, but we have had crazy days when we were back home. Days of trying to scrub off the colors, the ones which would stick to your skin for a couple of days!!!

This year too, we did not do much. We used Haldi( turmeric ) instead of the usual holi colors and we ( vivek mom and me) had a small session of applying a ton of yellow on each other. Turmeric is very good for the skin and is usually an ingredient in many ayurvedic skin concoctions or cosmetics. So Vivek is definitely looking good today!

Recovery Update: My eyes got weird mid Jan, probably because the right eye started to open well and got used a lot. We had a vision field test and the right eye is much better now. The overall vision has gone from 20/40 b4 the surgery to 20/25 now after the surgery. The right eye's peripheral vision on the right side, which was almost blacked out is now getting better and i have a couple of blind spots instead of the complete black right semi-circle. But this also means that the vision in the right eye suddenly changed a lot, so the brain doesnt know what to do with it. Using the right eye started making me very dizzy mid jan and i could hardly read using both the eyes. The brain is slowly adjusting to it though and I can read a bit now and spend some time onine. Yey!!.. ok I cant even get too excited coz that adds to the dizziness.. heh!.

More Later!