When he re-examined me that morning, as he recalled recently, “I was satisfied that the procedure was working for you. The balloonish spots were the gas bubbles, which Byrnes said would be absorbed gradually. My vision was blurry and partially blocked by what looked like several bouncing, purplish balloons, but I could see. Sunday morning dawned - and I could see out of my right eye. That night, I would have to sleep sitting up with my head held erect, using pillows and duct tape across my forehead to attach my head to the wall behind the bed. After that, for another six hours, I would have to sit still, looking down with my head tipped at a 45-degree angle. Success would depend on keeping the gas bubble pushed against the back of the eye, which meant I needed to go home, put my head down on a pillow on the kitchen table, and sit that way for three hours. The procedure was over in less than 10 minutes. The tear has to be in the upper half of the retina for the bubble to be effective. This would push against the frozen tear in the retina and help seal it in place. The process creates an irritation that causes a scar to form, and this scar tissue holds the retina against the wall of the eye.īyrnes then injected a gas bubble into the vitreous jelly inside my eyeball. “We didn’t have time to wait for an operating room we needed to do something right away.”Īfter applying numbing drops and injecting local anesthesia, Byrnes placed a small probe in front of my eye directly over the tear when activated, the probe created a localized freezing spot within the retina. “The macula was coming off, and the longer the macula is off, the more vision you lose,” Byrnes says. There was another factor that called for immediate action. At around $1,000, it was a fraction of the cost of the hospital vitrectomy, though Byrnes warned me that it also had a lower success rate: 75 percent compared with 95 percent. Given the location and size of the tear, Byrnes felt I was a candidate for an in-office procedure known as pneumatic retinopexy. The retina had detached from the upper portion of the eye and an adjacent area was torn. But after examining me, Byrnes said, “I think we can fix this here.” When my wife and I arrived at Byrnes’ office less than an hour later, I was totally blind in my right eye. He would take a look and see what he could do. The retinal surgeon told me to meet him at RGW’s Fairfax office right away.
So I called Naseh again, in hopes of finding a less expensive option. I wanted to keep from going blind in that eye, but at what cost to my family? The ER charge and physicians’ fees already were estimated at around $1,000. The surgery would have to be performed in a hospital operating room, under general anesthesia. The response was the last thing an uninsured patient like me wanted to hear: I needed a major eye operation - a vitrectomy, which removes part of the vitreous gel to get to the retina and repair it - as soon as possible. The resident spoke with the eye surgeon on call and relayed my diagnosis. Central vision becomes severely affected if the macula becomes detached. As the vitreous starts to detach, it may pull on the retina and cause a tear.” The dark shadow I had dismissed Thursday was my retina starting to tear, the liquefied vitreous gel leaking through.Įven more worrisome, the macula - the part of the retina responsible for fine vision - was in the process of separating from the inside of the eye. “When the vitreous gets less gel-like, it can detach from the back of the eye. “As we age, the vitreous jelly, which holds the retina in place, begins to liquefy,” Rich says. In fact, most happen while you’re walking down the street or even sleeping,” Rich says. “Most people think retinal detachments come from trauma, such as being hit by an air bag in an auto accident or getting hit with a racquetball or tennis ball. Rich III, an ophthalmologist based in Falls Church, Va.
This degenerative condition occurs in 30 percent of people older than 50, according to William L. Many spontaneous tears occur in boomers who develop posterior vitreous separation. (It also affects more men than women, the NEI reports.) The National Eye Institute says there are a variety of risk factors for retinal detachments, including being extremely nearsighted, having a family history of the problem and aging.
I hadn’t been hit in the eye or experienced any other eye-related injury, so the idea that my retina might be torn never crossed my mind.īut more than 90 percent of retinal detachments occur spontaneously, according to Gordon Byrnes, an RGW surgeon. If this is just another floater, I told myself, I can live with it. I should have called my regular ophthalmologist right away, but I didn’t have health insurance at the time for financial reasons.