Recovery Update: The Bubble, the Blood Vessels & the Crusty Arm

Today was my one-week follow-up after having the silicone oil removed from my left eye, and apparently my recovery story needed another plot twist.

First, the easy update.

My arm is getting crustier.

That sounds disgusting because, frankly, it looks disgusting. The road rash from my disagreement with my prosthetic, gravity, and the carpet is continuing to scab over. It may technically be healing, but aesthetically, we're still several miles away from a Neutrogena commercial.

Now, back to the eye.

For the past several days, I've been talking about the horizon, the vinaigrette, the eclipse and, most recently, this translucent dot or bubble floating around in my vision.

Naturally, that was one of the things I wanted to ask about at today's appointment.

The Good News

The doctor looked at my eye and didn't see the translucent dot I'm seeing.

Okay. That's encouraging.

Apparently, whatever I'm seeing isn't something obvious sitting there waving at him from inside my eyeball.

The Bad News

He said what I'm seeing might be an air bubble.

So after spending the last week describing my eye as an airplane cockpit, apparently there might literally be air involved.

You can't make this stuff up.

The horizon has been shrinking. The vinaigrette has been disappearing. The eclipse came and went.

Now I've potentially got my own tiny bubble level.

👁️🫧

And Then Came the REALLY Bad News

This was the part of the appointment I wasn't particularly excited to hear.

The doctor is concerned enough about the blood vessels in the back of my eye that I may need injections into the eye to help prevent further bleeding or problems with those vessels.

Yes.

Shots. In. My. Eye.

I've dealt with an amputation.

I've dealt with dialysis.

I've had retinal surgery.

I've had silicone oil put into my eye.

I've had silicone oil removed from my eye.

And somehow the phrase "injection into your eye" still manages to get my attention.

I'm not saying that's definitely happening yet. That's the possibility we're now discussing, and we'll see where things go from here.

For now, I'm continuing the recovery process and paying very close attention to what I can—and can't—see.

The good news is that I'm seeing better than I was immediately after surgery.

The weird translucent bubble is still hanging around.

The arm continues to transform into one giant, crusty scab.

And apparently my left eye has decided that one surgery wasn't enough material for this blog.

Stay tuned.

At this rate, my eye may develop Wi-Fi tomorrow.

Apparently, My Eye Has an Eclipse Now

Another day, another update from the cockpit of Left Eye Airlines, where apparently the in-flight entertainment has switched from aviation instruments to astronomy.

The good news is that the horizon is getting smaller.

The less-good news?

It’s still there.

That strange line across my vision that I've been comparing to the horizon indicator in an airplane cockpit hasn't completely disappeared. It takes up less of my field of vision than it did before, which I'll count as progress.

But today I discovered another visual effect.

And this one is weird.

I went to a recovery meeting with quite a bit of reading. I spent a lot of time looking downward at the material, and that's when I really noticed something different happening in the center of my vision.

It looks like an eclipse.

🌞🌑

Not the Mitsubishi Eclipse.

Although, admittedly, a turbocharged 1990s Mitsubishi would be considerably more entertaining than what my left eye is currently doing.

I'm talking about the sun-and-moon kind of eclipse.

When I'm looking down, things directly in the center of my vision become very dark. There's this dark circular area that reminds me of the moon passing in front of the sun.

So we've officially upgraded the Left Eye Airlines instrument panel.

First, I had a horizon indicator.

Then, apparently, we were climbing.

Then the horizon started shrinking.

And now?

We're apparently experiencing a total eclipse somewhere around cruising altitude.

Meanwhile, the eye itself is still pretty red, as you can see in the photo. It also hurts sometimes.

Pain management isn't quite as simple for me as grabbing whatever happens to be in the medicine cabinet. I have end-stage renal disease, so Advil isn't an option for me, and I don't take aspirin. That means I'm not casually reaching for those when the eye starts bothering me.

For now, I'm continuing to pay attention to what the eye is doing and following the recovery process.

And then there's my arm.

There really isn't an elegant way to describe today's arm update.

It just looks nasty.

The scrape from my disagreement with my prosthetic, gravity, and the carpet is still healing, but visually it has reached that wonderful stage where someone could look at the picture and reasonably ask:

"What the hell happened to you?"

The answer remains:

I fell.

Apparently, however, my arm believes it was involved in a motorcycle accident, bar fight, and bear attack simultaneously.

So today's recovery scoreboard:

Horizon: Smaller, but still there. ✈️
Vision: Improving, but strange. 👁️
Center of vision: Eclipse mode activated. 🌞🌑
Eye: Still red and occasionally painful.
Arm: Absolutely disgusting.
Sense of humor: Somehow still operational.

Recovery isn't always a straight line.

Sometimes it's a horizon.

Sometimes it's a bubble.

Sometimes it's vinaigrette.

And apparently, sometimes it's a solar eclipse inside your eyeball.

At this rate, I'm slightly concerned about what tomorrow's special effect will be.

Captain Niel signing off from Left Eye Airlines. Please do not stare directly at the eclipse. ✈️👁️🌑

Left Eye Airlines Is Gaining Altitude

Another day, another update from the increasingly complicated flight deck known as my left eye.

And today, I actually have some good news:

I can see a little better.

Not 20/20; throw away the glasses; read the bottom line of the eye chart better.

But better.

Since Friday, I’ve been taking three different eye drops, four times a day. At this point, administering eye drops has basically become a part-time job.

Morning: drops.
Later: drops.
Afternoon: drops.
Evening: you guessed it... more drops.

But something appears to be happening.

The strange horizon-indicator view I've been describing is changing again. When I look straight ahead, there is still a visible bubble at the very bottom of my field of vision.

So apparently, the complimentary vinaigrette service aboard Left Eye Airlines is finally running low. 🥗

The bubble hasn't completely disappeared, but I'm able to see a bit better through the left eye than I could before.

I'll take it.

Unfortunately, while my eye may be improving, the rest of my body has apparently filed several complaints about the treatment plan.

The antibiotics are absolutely wrecking my stomach.

I don't tolerate antibiotics particularly well to begin with, and my stomach has made its position on the matter extremely clear:

NO THANK YOU.

Then we have the steroids.

Those aren't upsetting my stomach.

They're doing something much more dangerous.

They're making me hungry.

Not regular hungry.

Steroid hungry.

The kind of hungry where you eat something and your stomach immediately asks:

"That was the appetizer, right?"

So the current recovery scoreboard looks something like this:

Left eye: improving. 👁️
Bubble: still hanging around at the bottom. 🫧
Stomach: protesting the antibiotics.
Appetite: apparently preparing for hibernation.
Arm: still healing from my recent disagreement with my prosthetic, gravity and the carpet.

The photos continue to make everything look considerably more dramatic than it feels, especially the arm. But compared with where things were just a few days ago, I'll happily take incremental progress.

And perhaps most importantly, Captain Niel seems to be getting a little more visibility from the cockpit.

We're not at cruising altitude yet.

The seatbelt sign is definitely still illuminated.

But for the first time in a few days, I think we may actually be able to see the runway.

And the vinaigrette?

Almost off the menu. ✈️👁️🥗🫧

Day 2: My Eye Has Seen Better Days 👁️

Day 2 after having the silicone oil removed from my eye, and this is what we’re working with.

As you can see from the picture, my eye is still very red and irritated. It currently looks like I either had eye surgery or seriously underestimated my opponent in a bar fight.

For the record: eye surgery.

The weirdest part remains the vision. I’m still looking through what feels like a glass of cloudy liquid, complete with a visible line that shifts as gravity does its thing.

It’s like someone installed a tiny carpenter’s level inside my eyeball, except this one is considerably less useful at hanging pictures.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing my eye drops four times a day—antibiotic plus the steroid. I have checked several times, and despite the steroids, I have not turned green, ripped my shirt off, or become the Hulk.

Disappointing.

At night, the eye guard goes back on to protect everything while it heals. Then I head back to the retina surgeon next week to see how things are progressing.

For now?

Red eye. Cloudy vision. Eye drops. Eye guard.

And apparently a front-row seat to watching gravity work from inside my own eyeball.

Day 2 of recovery continues.

The Eye Patch Came Off. That’s When the Fun Began. 👁️

Today, after dialysis, I headed back to the retina surgeon for the follow-up from yesterday’s silicone oil removal.

And the eye patch came off.

That’s where the fun began.

First, my eye looks like it got beat up in a bar fight. It’s bruised, irritated, and yes—it hurts.

But strangely, that isn’t the worst part.

Looking through that eye right now is like looking through a glass filled with cloudy liquid that is slowly trying to level out under gravity.

There’s a line. There’s cloudy stuff. It moves.

Basically, someone installed a snow globe in my eyeball and forgot to put the snow in.

Apparently, this is now part of the healing process.

I’ve also graduated to eye drops four times a day. One is an antibiotic, and the other is a steroid.

So if you see me next week and I’m green, 8 feet tall and screaming “HULK SMASH!”, we’ll know the steroid drops worked a little too well.

For the next week, I’ll continue the drops, keep an eye—literally—on the healing, and wear my eye guard at night so I don’t accidentally mess with it while sleeping.

Then it’s back to the retina surgeon in a week to see how everything is progressing.

Until then, I have dialysis, eye drops, an eye guard, and my own personal cloudy aquarium attached to my face.

Recovery continues.