A Quick Update

First, I have to apologize for my lack of interesting blog entries lately. I have a few on my mind that I might get around to writing this weekend, hopefully some of which will be informational and humourous.

I spent tonight walking down the beach with my camera snapping photos. The sunset photo below was one of a few that I ended up liking. One thing that I’ve noticed lately is that everyone I know that uses flickr, including me, seems to be on a bit of a break. I used to log in every night and see tons of new photos from everyone. Now, I can go days without seeing any changes in photos from any of my 60 or so contacts. Maybe everyone is busy, or perhaps some of the initial excitement over flickr is finally starting to wear off.

Tomorrow is a pretty big day for me — after postponing my surgery for well over a month, tomorrow I finally get to sit down with my plastic surgeon and map out everything about my next surgery. First, we’re gonna sit down and figure out a date. Since next week I’m booked doing stuff at work with some guys from out of town, it will definitely be the week after (unless of course the hospital is completely packed solid). The next thing we’ll do is go over my last CT scans in complete detail. At this point, I’m going to ask a lot of really tough questions.

To be honest, although I’ve been really happy with my plastic surgeon, I’ve been pretty disappointed with some of the things that have happened along the way. When I had my initial CT scan in the hospital on the night of November 4th, I sat around for most of the afternoon fully expecting (because some doctor told me) that I was going to have emergency surgery to fix my broken cheekbone. However, once the plastic surgeon in the ER finally looked at my CT scan in detail, he said that surgery could wait a few days and let me go back to Chilliwack with my family to heal.

When I went to St. Paul’s a few days later for a follow up appointment, I met with a doctor (who I later learned was just doing his residency) who looked over my CT scan and said that I did not require surgery at all — he said my cheekbone would heal properly and that if I still had double vision in six weeks I should return. I left and went home, fully relieved that I didn’t have to have surgery to repair my cheekbone (which is quite involved — it involves incisions in the eyebrow, under the eye, and a final one inside your mouth — then the cheekbone is repaired using screws and metal plates).

However, once the swelling in my eye went down, it became apparent that my eye was no longer in the proper position. Obviously looking in the mirror and seeing one eye in a different position in distressing, and the whole thing was pretty scary for me. At this point, my friend’s fiancee, who lives in Switzerland, offered to look at my CT scan for me and give a second opinion. Upon seeing it, he immediately said that I needed surgery to repair not only the cheekbone (which in his opinion should have been operated on in the ER), but also to repair an undiagnosed orbital floor fracture. I placed a call to a real plastic surgeon here in Vancouver and told him everything that had been going on. Three days later I was in St. Paul’s getting ready to have surgery.

Unfortunately, the surgery came far too late and my cheekbone had already started to heal in the wrong position. The only way to correct it at this point is to do a massive operation that involves bone saws and blood transfusions. The plastic surgeon basically said he wouldn’t even attempt it due to the minimal displacement of the injury.

So, they went ahead and “repaired” the orbital floor fracture using a plastic implant. Unfortunately, as my last CT scan showed, the implant is not in the correct position and my eye is still slightly out of place. In addition, I have lost most sensation on the left side of my face and have persistent double vision in about 25% of my visual field.

As a result, I have elected to do another surgery hoping that they can correct both the double vision and the position of my eye. But I want to go into the operation this time confident that there’s a proper plan in place (since last time the first time the operating surgeon saw my CT scan was about 5 minutes before we started). I’ve been told this time they are going to use a larger implant that will go further back into my eye socket, and also probably use a few microscrews inside my eye socket to hold the implant in place. Doesn’t sound very fun, but I want to get this all overwith as soon as possible.

Most likely my surgery will be on Thursday, April 26th, hopefully in the morning. I’ll give everyone an update as soon as I find out for sure.