Up next in 10
Strabismus Surgery- First 3 Months Recovery Expectations
37K views
Dec 12, 2022
The first three months of recovery from strabismus surgery included redness, swelling, double vision, dizziness, emotional anxiety and distress, and eyes that were not always straight. In this video I go through what my experience was like and when symptoms like double vision, redness, itching and dizziness started going away. For more day by day details, check out https://StrabismusSolutions.com/RECOVERY Thank you for watching!
View Video Transcript
0:00
I am three months out from strabismus surgery and I want to share everything about the recovery from
0:10
how it was the moment I woke up from surgery until how I feel right now and how my eyes are
0:15
working right now. I started out with 35 degrees of exotropia so my eye was clear out here
0:21
Then it went 25 degrees in and then I had my sutures adjusted and it got to about 10 degrees
0:27
out which is about where they're sitting right now it definitely still changes and fluctuates
0:32
a little bit but that's about where they've settled. So I've been doing vision therapy for about 18 months and when I went into surgery I thought
0:42
that since I knew how to use my eyes together I just couldn't keep them straight that as soon as
0:47
the surgeon made them straight they would work perfectly together and and so you can see in this
0:52
before picture, I was super excited. I was like, yes, this is going to be amazing. By the time I
1:02
got done with surgery, I didn't feel the same. I definitely hadn't anticipated how much it was
1:17
going to hurt. I'm like, I'm pretty tough and I didn't think it was going to be a big deal
1:21
but I didn't even want to open my eyes. On the drive home though, I actually started feeling
1:27
pretty good. I realized that as long as I kept ice on my eyes and kept them closed, I was totally
1:31
fine. It was funny. I started getting really hungry because you're supposed to fast before
1:36
the surgery. So the holy home I was wanting to eat and I tried eating with my eyes open with
1:41
sunglasses on. And then I, every time my eyes went above my food, if I didn't keep my eyes down here
1:48
I would get so sick looking out the window. It was just making my mind swirl. So I definitely
1:55
I started out trying to eat with my eyes open and then I just started eating with my eyes closed
2:01
But yeah, I was starving the whole way home. So I started feeling pretty good. Like as long as my eyes were closed and ice, I wasn't really feeling much pain that whole way home
2:10
Are you taking a video of me trying to eat rice? I'm fine
2:20
Nope. I'm fine. Yeah, that brain's not timing. This is the best peach I've ever eaten in my life
2:29
Is it? Want a bite? I'm okay right now. Oh, so good
2:40
I'm feeling pretty good. Are you? Uh-huh. I just don't like being blind
2:53
So that night was the first time that I really started looking at how my surgery worked
3:00
Did it work? Were my eyes straight? And I started taking videos and they weren't
3:10
so
3:33
so as you can see in those videos when i would move the camera further away my eye would just go
3:37
come really far in. And that actually changed over time where sometimes it'd be when I looked in the
3:44
distance, my eyes would look straight. And when I looked up close, they'd be turned in or vice versa
3:48
They were just, they were kind of all over the place. And I was super bummed. I was so disappointed
3:54
because my eyes were definitely not straight. They looked straight right after surgery, but then they
3:59
just I just went really far in And so I ended up just basically laying in bed with ice on my eyes and trying not to think about the way that they looked because I was so depressed and bummed out about it
4:15
So throughout the first few days I definitely was experiencing pain. I was taking ibuprofen
4:21
and coating, I think it was Tylenol, coating around the clock. I seen my eyes all the time
4:28
lots and lots of gross discharge it was gross my eyes were very red I had my surgeon
4:34
operated on the inside and outside muscles of both eyes so it was quite a process um and I had
4:40
anticipated that there was going to be some soreness but what I hadn't anticipated was all
4:44
the issues with like balance dizziness double vision nausea that sort of stuff um I couldn't
4:52
walk in a straight line like I could if both eyes were open I could kind of you know do some
4:56
heel to toe type walking, which right now is like completely effortless, right
5:00
Well, it wasn't effortless at first. Especially. Along with the balance issues, I also had some funny stuff with throwing and catching
5:32
This was again, when I had both eyes open, I could throw and catch just fine. Try right
5:39
Whoa, you caught it, Mom! What? What? Right. Maybe the surgery worked
5:49
But then once I decided to close one of my eyes and try to throw and catch
5:54
I was throwing like two feet to the side of my husband. And when I was trying to catch, it was just hitting me
5:59
Like I couldn't at all tell where the ball was in space. Like my brain did not know how to do depth perception at all anymore
6:06
It was pretty crazy. She just got eye surgery and she's catching a ball
6:17
Incredible, right? So that was pretty standard. the whole first week, by the end of the week, things were starting to get better. The more
6:25
I had my eyes open, the better my brain started adjusting to my surroundings. But the double
6:31
vision was insane. When I've experienced double vision before surgery, I would have, there would
6:35
be one object, you know, like I'm looking at one of my kids in the yard and there would be two kids
6:39
but they're only one yard, right? At this point, that first week, I was seeing like two whole yards
6:45
with two kids in them. And so that was really new for me. It was like double peripheral vision
6:49
and double central vision. Super crazy, made me very nauseous and sick, and I just wanted to sleep
6:57
and keep my eyes closed as much as possible because it was killing me. After a week, though
7:01
I had the opportunity to go get my sutures adjusted, and I meant driving three hours away
7:07
in the car, and this was my first time in the car for an extended period of time
7:12
and the first 30 minutes about killed me. I had to keep my eyes closed almost that whole time
7:16
but by the time we got there, I wasn't near as dizzy and I was getting used to it. So that's
7:22
one thing is that as you keep your eyes open and keep moving around, your brain does adjust and
7:27
learn so quickly. And I think maybe my recovery was slower because I just kept my eyes closed
7:32
I just kept keeping them closed, keeping them closed because I just didn't want to deal with it
7:36
But if I had just kept them open longer from the beginning, I probably wouldn't have experienced
7:41
that nausea, dizziness, double vision, all that stuff quite as long. So I got my sutures adjusted
7:48
It's the worst. You can watch my video about that if you want to see all the gory details. So my eyes were more straight. The dizziness, nausea, and like the inability to like walk
8:01
forward and backward in a straight line, those things went away pretty quickly after my sutures
8:06
were adjusted The double vision was so much better It was only like in the far distance and it went from being the peripheral double that all the peripheral was merged together and then I just had one like central target that was double
8:19
And that was only in the distance. So, so much better. So having my eyes more straight definitely made a difference. And I also, you know, felt more happiness
8:30
I wasn't like depressed anymore because I was like, okay, it worked. We're okay. This is all
8:35
going to be okay. And so it wasn't so bad. Um, there was still a lot of issues though. Um, I
8:41
would think, Oh, I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. And there was this one point where we were camping
8:45
and I went, I think this was 10 days after surgery. So probably about three days after my sutures
8:50
were adjusted. And I thought, I'm going to ride a bike. I hadn't tried driving yet. And I thought
8:54
I'm going to try to ride in a bike and see how it goes. And I got on a bike and started riding it
8:57
and I crashed into my daughter who was riding behind my husband
9:08
It was, I felt really bad. I just didn't see him. They're just like, I just, I don't even know what
9:12
happened, but my vision just wasn't quite working. That was my big peripheral issue that I had
9:17
So as the first couple of weeks passed by, I started trying to use my vision therapy techniques
9:25
I started going back to vision therapy and I started trying to make my eyes work together
9:29
doing different exercises and different things. And I took a few videos and realized that the harder I tried to make both of my eyes work
9:38
together, the worse they got. I would just be looking normally and kind of like not like haphazardly, just kind of
9:45
like looking around, not really focusing. But as soon as I focused on something, I would go in
9:51
That's me focusing close. Okay. Focus on something really far
10:02
That's what I used to do. So that was super discouraging and I felt like are my eyes ever going to work because
10:12
everything in vision therapy that I had done it helped me learn how to bring my eye in and
10:16
make my eyes straight by moving it in. Now my eyes were straight and I was trying to move it
10:21
My brain was still trying to move my eye in to see better. And so that's why it was bringing it in like that
10:26
So we had to totally revamp my whole vision therapy. I don't know, plan, I guess, and start treating me as an esotrope instead of an exotrope
10:37
And it was really frustrating at first. I really got very down on myself because I thought I, what has happened, I've like lost everything
10:47
but what happened is that I started learning how to relax instead of having to force everything and
10:53
force my eyes to work together I could relax and learn to relax my eyes so I started doing a lot
10:59
of different types of exercises that maybe seemed pointless but they were all about helping me relax
11:06
keep my eye my peripheral open and not think too hard about things we also did some or I shouldn't
11:14
they did. We're still doing exercises to help both sides of my brain and body work
11:18
well together and I started doing Vivid Vision which is a virtual reality program
11:25
All of these different exercises helped so much. Another thing that really helped is I started
11:47
using binasal occlusion which is basically tape on the inside of your glasses and then also a
11:52
prism on one of the glasses. And these things really made a big difference for me in learning
11:57
how to see, have both eyes working at the same time. There's one moment, the day that I got the
12:05
prism put on my glasses and I was walking to my car from vision therapy and I saw this tree and
12:11
it went 3D So it went from like flat and then I saw it in 3D and all the branches were coming out at me It was the first time that I experienced stereopsis since I had surgery It was super exciting
12:29
So that experience was about seven weeks after surgery and I was really starting to feel
12:34
more normal. And there are still a few issues with peripheral vision when it came to like driving or walking
12:41
I would like trip on nothing thinking that something was closer or further than it was
12:46
Like the side vision was just not quite right. That hasn't really gotten better until the last
12:53
few weeks. I feel like that has completely gone away. That I feel like I can completely drive
12:58
park, do anything. And I feel like my balance is back and my peripheral vision is back. And again
13:04
it's been three months since I've had surgery. So it took a really long time to get to this point
13:09
one of the most exciting parts of my recovery was when I went to my two-month checkup with my
13:16
ophthalmologist and so remember I did vision therapy for 18 months then I had surgery and
13:22
then I did vision I've been doing vision therapy ever since so it wasn't just the surgery alone but
13:29
I went into my surgeon and he checked everything out and we did the 3D fat test you know the stereo
13:34
fly and I did it. I saw the fly's wings floating above the book and I was so excited. Never in my
13:44
life have I been able to see that before. So yeah, the surgery hurt. There was eyes and redness
13:56
and the redness took like a solid six or seven weeks to completely go away. Even still sometimes
14:01
if I get my eyes start getting irritated, you can still see some of that scarring in there
14:06
It takes a long time to heal. It is not fun by any means, but not only have I gotten back to where
14:13
my vision was beforehand, where I'm not dealing with double vision anymore. I'm not having problems
14:18
with my peripheral. My vision's gotten better. I'm seeing with stereopsis so much more frequently
14:24
and my eyes aren't perfect. I'm sure in this video, my eyes gone in or out or they're not
14:29
looking straight and that's part of the package. I'm not anywhere close to being done with this
14:34
journey yet, but I know that surgery has helped me so much to get closer to my goal of using both
14:40
eyes full time. So now if you would like to join me in watching the whole recovery process in one
14:48
minute via picture, here you go. Thank you
15:29
I hope you enjoyed watching my strabismus surgery recovery in less than a minute
15:56
definitely felt longer than that when I was actually going through it. I actually kept
16:01
detailed notes about how I was feeling each day. So if you want to know more about that and more
16:06
details about when the double vision finally went away, when the redness started going away
16:10
and when I started feeling like my normal self again, head over to my website at
16:15
lazyeyesolutions.com slash recovery and all the details are there. Thanks for watching today
#Eye Exams & Optometry
#Health Conditions
#Laser Vision Correction
#Vision Care