Surgery #2

Hello everybody!

Alright.... SO. Things just get more and more interesting around here.

Surgery number 2! I'm back in the mission home, and this time I'm really not allowed to do ANYTHING for 2 weeks. They want me to be extra careful this time around.

I'll try to explain what happened. I'm one of the unlucky 6-7 percent of people who have the complication where the retina detaches itself even further (in other words: the blind spot got bigger) after the implant surgery. So, a second emergency operation was deemed necessary.

This time, they had to actually go inside my eye. So what they did, was they stuck a needle inside my eye (after putting me under, of course), and sucked the fluid from between the retina and the rest of my eye wall. Then they inserted some kind of gas into my eye to keep the retina from floating back away from the eye wall (I don't know if 'eye wall' is the right term, but you get the idea), and they closed another hole that was in the retina. They  said that that third hole ('third', because they already closed two in the first surgery) was too small to normally be a worry, but they closed it anyways, just to be extra safe.

So that's what they all did. It didn't make my eye that uncomfortable or painful when I woke up, because there weren't any stitches or eye-squeezing implants this time around. However, I need to be always looking down... So my neck is getting really sore. I need to do it because the gas bubble in my eye needs to be at the back of my eye to do it's job right, so I need to look down so that it stays there. It'll get absorbed by my blood vessels over time.

And, of course, there's a plethora of drugs and eyedrops for me to take everyday, just like last time. Hooray! xP

Ummm, yeah. I don't blame anybody for anything. The doctors are doing everything that they can, everybody is being super-helpful, and the missionary who kicked the ball didn't see me coming, nor could he possibly have aimed for something as specific as my eye. As far as I'm concerned, this has all been one great big freak accident. I'm content, and even happy, that there's still optimism for a full recovery. Even the doctors, who are being very firm about what I can and can't do, are confident that I'm going to be okay. There's just a small possibility that I might need cataract surgery at some point. No big.

Anyways! thank you all SO MUCH for all of the love and support. It's really helping me to stay positive and to keep pushing forward. I love you ALL! You're the best!

Yours truly, without wax.

Elder Shaver

PS: Looking through an eye with a gas bubble in it is like looking down through a glass with some water in it: Kind of blurry, and it wobbles every time you move it (the glass in the simile, the eye in real life).

Elder Shaver finished the "L" on the mission chart on Friday!