Sunday, November 22, 2009

sunday with the curtains open

if you remember from a few posts ago, mom has had a corneal ulcer. this is really painful, and mom had a lot trouble trying to be comfortable while it healed. a big part of what she needed was dark because her eye was so light sensitive. our curtains were closed for a long time.

this morning, she opened them! it's raining, but beautifully green on the golf course.

btw, last night when she was washing the leftover gel-goop out of her eye, she came real close to just snipping the sutures and pulling them out herself. i had to remind her that the v-e-t's supposed to do that. she almost didn't listen to me, but i got real LOUD (MRAW!), and gave her a BIG head butt. she restrained herself, and the stitches are still there. she's practically counting the hours until her appt on tuesday.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

obviously

mom didn't get her stitches out on wednesday. she's a little bummed. there's nothing wrong...just have to wait to get an appt with the doc who put them in.

there are two docs that work together: the cornea guy and the eyelid guy. mom's seen both of them. the cornea guy pronounced her well, and she has to wait to see the eyelid guy. so tuesday around 1:30 the little sutures will come out and mom should be able to open her eye completely.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

New picture tomorrow - we hope!

Mom has ANOTHER doc appt tomorrow. This makes 17 in 5 weeks. She's hoping that she'll be able to post a picture of her eye without the sutures tomorrow night. She was wondering if the needle/thread holes will close or if she'll have the equivalent of pierced eyelids? if she cries, will the tears come out of the holes?

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

it's a school day

i decided that mom should teach us a lesson about eyes.

first, she's going to show you a picture of her right eye.

if you click to biggify, you'll see the bruising from the injections, and the sutures from the tarsorrhaphy (the accent is on the second syllable). tarsorrhaphy is the suturing of the eyelids to protect the eye.

when the picture is biggified, her eye looks wet because mom uses antibiotic eye drops. now she uses two that alternate on the hour, plus an additional one every four hours. until this past monday, she was using two that alternated on the half hour, plus one that was two times per day. she's a fan of the polder digital timer that she wears around her neck to help keep track of her dosing schedule.

the tarsorrhaphy was done so that mom's eyelid wouldn't scrape across the healing corneal ulcer. before she got her eyelid sutured, she would open her eye after sleep and her eyelid would tear open the ulcer again.

mom's v-e-t said that women who have gone through labor and childbirth say a corneal ulcer is more painful. mom believes that.

here's the lesson: most eye injuries heal in one day. if your human has an eye irritation that lasts longer than one day, insist that she/he go to the v-e-t immediately.

(mom knows that her eyebrow is in pretty sad shape, but she's not about to tweeze or wax while she's got this going on...)

Monday, November 2, 2009

It's all Mom's fault

Mom's got a black eye. The outer edges of her right eyelid have been sewn shut to protect her eye so it can heal from a corneal ulcer. It's been ridiculously painful, and Mom lost her sense of humor for awhile. Now that she's feeling a little better, she's thinking she would have made an awesome zombie for Halloween!

We'll post pictures when she finds the camera cable.