Tag: Cataract

Annual Graves’ update, plus cataract surgery follow-up

2025-01-23

My condition with Graves’ continues to be stable, to the point that my endocrinologist is at point to want to stop my biannual checkups and let my primary care physician perform the assessment, absent any issues as they are now.

I’m not against it but it creates a slight issue with my continuing my biannual blood work as the primary care physician relies on the endocrinologist to add that panel to the standard labs. For now, we agree to have the endocrinologist continue scheduling those thyroid tests and adding the next office visit to the calendar, Ah, the medical insurance dance is a joy.

Not much to say about my vitals other than I did gain a little weight from the previous visit (3 lbs). Not sure if that is from enjoying myself a little too much or from resuming some weight training.

Cholesterol and prostate levels also look good, although the cholesterol is slightly higher but still with a good ratio of HDL to LDL. Me thinks I enjoyth smoked meats and mead a bit too much!

The doctor proceeded to whip out his calculator and informs me that I’m just a tick over the ideal risk for heart attack at something like a 6.4% chance. I’ll take it!

As for my thyroid levels, my TSH is still showing me as being hyper but it’s almost 3x better than from the previous reading. T4 and T3 are still within the ‘normal’ range but both a tad bit on the higher side from before. More importantly, I am still asymptomatic and feeling great!

Cataract Followup:

After a long pause in my laser treatments following cataract surgery, I can report that the vision in my right eye is now at about 20/15 and in my left, around 20/25. In both eyes, I did lose my ability to read without glasses and am now about 20/40 for near vision. The left eye does have an anomaly (a fold in the retina) that made nailing down the final adjustment to the lens difficult, hence settling at 20/25.

I can’t complain because now I don’t need to wear glasses for sports although I am wearing protective goggles while playing pickleball. And having to wear glasses for reading and computer work is little different from when I had to where glasses glasses previously, just now for reading. Other than correcting my vision for sports, the treatment also seems to have eliminated nearly all of the ‘star’ effects when looking at lights at night, an artifact from my lasik surgery back in 2001. Booyah, I call that a win!

Pause in my post cataract laser treatments

2024-10-03

Looks like my treatment timeline will be extending a little longer than expected. I was hoping to be done by the end of this month but a known issue has put a pause in finalizing my laser adjustable lenses.

Right eye is pretty good but the left eye has a thickening on the retina that needs to be addressed first. It’s preventing a good read on what remaining adjustments will be needed to lock my prescription in. Took a steroidal shot into the left eye to try and get the swelling under control and will be taking a different prescription eye drop for the next few weeks in hopes of getting the eye to settle down.

So now I’m ‘looking’ at maybe the end of November before I’m all said and done. 🤞🙏

Right eye cataract post-op day 1

July 24, 2024

Immediately after surgery, vision was a blur and that was to be expected. The whole process was pain-free and the longest part was just getting the light dose of anesthesia and waiting for the eye to get numb before surgery.

Once the eye is ready, you are wheeled into one of two stages. The first is to have your natural lens broken up by a laser and the second is to then go and have the lens fragments removed (suctioned) and inserting the replacement lens. The whole process was finished in about 15 minutes.

In my case, I opted for what’s called a “light adjustable lens.” Rather than being a fixed lens, these lens can be adjusted by uv laser up to 3 times to refine the prescription to suit me. The lens that’s implanted already has a prescription but due to my having lasik some 23 years ago, my cornea is not of a uniform shape. Using a light adjustable lens, they can compensate for those irregularities.

As the implanted lens is sensitive to uv light, I need to be vigilent about wearing uv blocking glasses for the duration of the adjusting period, which doesn’t begin until 3 weeks after the second surgery on August 6 (too much uv light can cause the lenses to be ‘fixed’ prematurely). They issued a clear set for indoors and a tinted set for outdoors. These have to be worn during the entire time I’m awake. To complicate the timeline, I’m taking a vacation in mid-September and my ophthalmologist is taking a vacation in late September, stretching the end date to October 14.

Here are my other gotchas:

– no highly physical activity for 1 week after surgery (yes, that means no pickleball!)

– I need to wear an eye shield while sleeping to prevent me from rubbing my eyes at night or other incidental contact with the eye for 1 week after surgery

For me, I think I will be forgoing pickleball until the lenses are finalized. It’s going to be rough but there’s too much risk of me losing my glasses during play. On the upside, I think I’ll be able to resume golfing as soon as August 13, but I’ll have to reassess my availability based on how my vision is.

So as of the morning of day 1, things are looking promising. I’d say the blurry vision has reduced to where it’s no longer like looking through heavy fog to more like light fog or wet glass. I don’t plan on reporting out everyday but will provide updates as milestones are reached.

Here’s to a brighter future!