A few posts back (in “Day 24 - Gyor to Esztergom; a problem arises” and “A problem arises, continued”) I told the story of my left eye’s retinal detachment, the confirmation of that diagnosis by Dr. Zoltan Nagy’s ophthalmology clinic in Budapest, and my decision to return home immediately for surgery to attempt to correct that.

I arrived home in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Friday, August 1st, had an appointment with a retinal specialist the following Monday, and had surgery on that Wednesday, August 6th. That was 8 days after the detachment, nicely within the two-week window during which surgery for complete (macula-off) retinal surgery is considered likely to offer some restoration of vision. The surgeon deemed the surgery “technically successful”, that is, he accomplished all he had hoped to by positioning the retina back into its proper place, but it remained an open question if the organic processes necessary for true reattachment and thus restoration of vision would occur. Only time would tell.

I followed the doctor’s orders which included no physical activity other than walking, no reading or writing with that eye uncovered (to prevent too much movement of the eye), a regimen of four different eye drops four times per day, etc. Yesterday, three days after the operation, some return of vision started to occur. During the time the retina was detached I had virtually no vision at all in that eye and could only see a sliver of light in the extreme upper left of my field of vision. I now can see across my whole field of vision (except where occluded by a gas bubble injected to hold the retina in place). The clarity of vision is not very good, but good enough to make out the general shapes of things, and a strong indication that the surgery was not simply “technically successful”, but that the organic processes necessary for restoration of vision was proceeding.

There is no way to tell how much vision will be restored. With complete retinal detachments there is almost no possibility of vision being restored to its former state, but there is a decent likelihood that a good amount of the former vision will be restored. That is a process that takes about a year to complete. At the present I am quite happy that the process has begun.