#gas bubbles

Today's Walking Photos: To avoid burying the lede, I’ll start off by saying Happy Birthday To Me. But there’s more to the story, so do read on if you dare.

Aaaarrrrggghhh, unbelievable – my last post here was on February 12th. See, remember the snow and ice in my last post? Well, so that got worse, we got more snow and ice and wind, and a few days later our power went out. For three days. And then there was the downtown company that we’re working on emptying out, and things got really busy there and I never seemed to have time for a walk. And then March arrived and I thought okay, weather’s calmed down and work has calmed down and hmmm I just might have spare time again to squeeze in some walking and then NOPE SORRY BUDDY IT’S DETACHED RETINA TIME AGAIN.

Yeah, in the same dang eye where I had cataract surgery in August and then a detached retina in September, I now suddenly had a fresh and new detachment in a different spot, and it was severe enough this time that it couldn’t be repaired with an in-office procedure like the one in September. This called for a full-on surgery in the hospital, called a vitrectomy. Inexplicably avid readers of this blog may recall the gas bubbles that were placed in my eye during the September procedure – well, for a vitrectomy the eyeball is actually nearly filled up with a single gas bubble which serves the very important purpose of placing necessary pressure on the surgical repair site, but which in the meantime completely occludes the vision in the eye until it is gradually absorbed into the body. Did I mention that the bottom edge of the bubble – which appears at the top of one’s visual field because everything is reversed in our vision – undulates like the surface of a dirty fishbowl as one walks or moves one’s head? Or that when one is at rest, the bubble pulsates with one’s heartbeat? Well, consider it mentioned.

So yeah, I haven’t felt terribly inclined to walk. BUT. It is long-standing tradition here at Pat’s Walking Photos that my birthday is the one day each year when I post a photo of myself. As a result I realized this morning that today was the day when I needed to resume walking. Your reward (?) is the top photo in which you can see the rakish eyepatch I’m wearing much of the time in order to decrease the disorienting and fatiguing visual information that my addled, gas-inflated, post-surgical eye is constantly sending to my brain. It doesn’t completely eliminate this extraneous information, but it does help. 

I included the second photo because a) I’ve been away so long that you clearly deserve a bonus photo; and b) it would have made a perfect Birthday Throne for my self-portrait, but it was too squarely situated in someone’s front yard for me to make such an audacious move. But it’s fun to admire, right?

U: It was like having cute gas.

P: UNDYNE!

U: Without actually being burpy.

P: WELL--

U: Oh wait, yeah, you’re right. I was still burpy. It just wasn't your kicking causing it, Bean.

Today's Not-At-All-Walking Photo: Heyyyyyyy sorry I missed Friday. The air quality was worse than Thursday, but that wasn’t what canceled my walk. Remember a couple weeks ago when I had that cataract surgery and it went so well? Yeah. On Friday, after experiencing some weird visual symptoms and calling them in to my surgeon, I was summoned to the eye clinic and eventually learned that I had a detached retina in that eye. It’s kind of a serious thing, so it needed to be taken care of right away. Fortunately it was found to be a “small” detachment, which meant it could be repaired with an in-office procedure without anesthesia and without going to a surgical facility.

And so that’s how I ended up having pneumatic retinopexy instead of going for a walk on Friday! (Look it up – it’s super fun!) I won’t bore you with the entire process, but will just mention that a key step is injecting buoyant gas bubbles into the eye in order to press the retina against the back of the eye so that it reattaches and heals. For those keeping track at home, the gas is everyone’s favorite, sulfur hexafluoride!

All of which brings me to the image above. In the days since the procedure, when I’ve babbled nonstop about how weird it is to have these gas bubbles in my visual field, family and friends have asked me to describe it. And so yesterday, since I had some free time and somewhat improved vision, I attempted to create a visual approximation of what I’m seeing all the time. The bubbles are actually a darker purple-black color and I couldn’t quite achieve that hue, but otherwise this gives you an idea of how the bubbles are situated in my field of view. This image shows 9 bubbles of varying sizes, which is what I was seeing yesterday, but on Saturday there were more – easily 13 or 14 – and today there are only two, as all of the bubbles gradually merge into one big one. 

Important note: this image shows how the bubbles appear if I’m looking straight down (which I’m not supposed to do a lot). But when my head is level and looking straight ahead, then the yellow dotted line shows how much the bubbles are present in my visual field. Isn’t this FUN??!!! I thought so too!!!

But wait, there’s also this: You might be wondering, "Heyyyyyyy, I thought you said the gas bubbles were buoyant. Well if they're so damn buoyant, why are they down there at the BOTTOM of your vision?!" And in answer to you I shall say, the fact is that your eye receives all of its visual information upside-down and reversed, and it's your BRAIN that inverts all of that information from the optic nerve and presents it to you in the correct orientation. So the optic nerve sends the brain an image with the bubbles at the top, and the brain dutifully puts them on the bottom where they "belong." I KNOWWWWWWWW!!!

Anyway. I had a follow-up with the doctor today and she assures me that everything is looking GREAT and the retina is healing up just as it should. Maybe only a few more nights of sleeping upright, and about 8-10 more days before the bubbles are absorbed into the body and disappear from view. They’ve been fascinating company, but it won’t break my heart to see them go.

The Scientific Research Notes Of S. Sunkavally (years: 2002-2011).

The Scientific Research Notes Of S. Sunkavally (years: 2002-2011).