I’m back now from Europe, and taking a well deserved rest from travel for a few months. While I had a good time on my last trip, it wasn’t something I was totally looking forward to at the time, mainly because I had just gotten through recovering from a big surgery and was enjoying life around home. In terms of my surgery, I think the end result is quite a bit better. I had a private CT scan done in Serbia so I could gain some peace of mind with regards to the outcome, and here was the end result. CT scan from after my third surgery You can basically see the titanium mesh which is under my ...

In exactly four weeks from today, I’ll probably be waking up in Vancouver General Hospital after having my third surgery to correct some orbital fractures I received in 2006. I met with the surgical coordinator yesterday to complete all the pre-surgery documentation giving the surgeons my consent to operate on me, one more time. The surgeon performing the operation is one of the best in his field, even internationally. Years ago he helped start Singapore’s eye care centre, and he frequently travels and speaks at international conferences. He’s published several different books on eye surgery, ...

As many people know, I suffered a few facial fractures back in 2006. The primary result of that incident was to put my cheekbone slightly out of alignment, as well as the complete destruction of the bone under my left eye (other than maybe a 1mm ledge on one side, there’s literally nothing there any more). I had one surgery back in 2006 to put my eye back in the right place. It improved things slightly, but still left me with a droopy eye and some residual double vision. About six months later the surgeon did a CT scan, which ultimately looked like this: The surgeon concluded at the time that ...

I just went to get a few groceries, and had this weird feeling my stomach like I was forgetting something. I looked at the time on my iPhone and realized that it was three years ago to the day that I went through that window in Vancouver. Times flies I guess, as do people. ...

It’s been nearly four weeks now since I had some minor surgery on my face. For those of you following along, I made a decision a few months ago to have a few moles removed from my face. As a kid, they were awesome beauty marks that made me the envy of the playground, but as I got older, they had slowly increased in size to the point where they were interfering with shaving and what-not. Two of them were fairly flat, but the one on my cheek was raised slightly, and would get nicked from time to time by my razor (at which point I’d spend the next few hours trying to get it to stop bleeding). ...

All my stitches are out. This is day five after surgery now. All the areas are a bit red, but they’re healing. Was nice to take a real shower today and also shave. It generally takes about 6 months for surgery sites to finish healing, so I still have lots of healing to do. A little bit of trivia – after 7 days, surgery sites only have about 7% of the tensile strength of normal skin. So still have to be careful for a while. ...

A few weeks ago I blogged about an upcoming appointment to have a few moles removed from my face (the main reason being that I keep cutting them while shaving). Well, today was the day, and they’re officially gone. Strangely enough, I’ve developed a bit of a fainting reaction over the years to needles. That’s weird because needles don’t scare me in the least, and for the most part, I have a pretty high pain tolerance. But there’s something about a needle being stuck in me that elicits some kind of physiological reaction, almost like my body knows something else is coming, and tries to ...

I have an appointment on Wednesday to get a few moles removed from my face. I’ve had them most of my life, and for the most part they haven’t really bothered me. That being said, this last year I’ve found myself cutting two of them while shaving from time to time, which usually results in them bleeding for hours at a time (real attractive, I know). You can see two of them in this photo. The first is the one on my right cheek, and the second is the one on my left upper-lip. The third one is really tiny, and it’s in the center of my lip (I don’t cut it shaving, but I figure I might as ...

So this was my second full week at the gym. Other than Wednesday (where I missed going because I had to go to Vancouver), I was there every day this week. I’m definitely noticing an improvement in fitness, since my heart rate has come down while doing cardio, and I find it harder to get out of breath when I’m whacking a tennis ball around the court. I’ve been doing my normal routines in the morning, and also trying to get out and do something in the evenings as well (either go for a walk, hit some tennis balls, or rollerblade). I generally eat fairly well when I’m at home (depending on ...

Just got back from my appointment this morning. Some lady spent 20 minutes giving me impromtu eye tests, and measuring my face and eye positions. There’s one tool they use to measure eye displacement which is actually slightly painful because they force it to sit on the edge of your eye socket and press it there. Unfortunately, my left orbital bone is slightly out of place so it’s hard to get an accurate measurement using that device. Anyways, once I finally talked to the surgeon, he basically indicated that another surgery at this stage is probably too risky. He said even though the end result ...

On Wednesday, I’ll get to meet Dr. Peter Dolman, who is one of the best ocuplastics surgeons in the country. I’ve been on the wait list for about three months now, and I really have no idea what to expect to be honest. I went to the extra trouble to try and make sure my CT and MRI scans were there waiting for him, but I suspect that somehow they will have been lost come Wednesday, and we’ll have nothing to talk about. Truth is, I really don’t know what the end result will be. Tonight I told some friends that it’s really a lose-lose at this point, which is true from my perspective. Option ...

I ended up doing a bunch of work on Saturday night, and just hung out close to home. A quick twitter by me saying I was going to have a few casual drinks at my place led to Dave showing up for a few beers. After that, we went down to the Six Acres to meet up with Trevor, and then ultimately over to Matt’s house for a few quick drinks. When I got home that night, I realized just how tired I was. I passed out on the couch around 4am, and quite literally woke up sometime around 5pm last night. I got up here and there to answer my phone and check email, but I just couldn’t force my body to wake ...

I just got back from an appointment with my plastic surgeon. After two surgeries, I am still left with a few problems, the first of which is a slight visual dissimilarity between my left and right eye, and the second is double vision above my mid line. Based on some recent measurements I had done, my surgeon proposed four courses of action: Do nothing Remove a bit of skin from eyelid on my “good” eye to make it sort of match the appearance of my “bad” eye Adjust the eyelid of my “bad” eye to make it better match my “good” eye. Open me back up and either adjust the current implant, ...

This is a pretty important week in the life of Duane. On Tuesday I’ll meet up with my plastic surgeon which might potentially be the last meeting I have with him regarding this whole affair. My first meeting was about twelve months ago and resulted in two surgeries to my eye socket. I’ve spent this last year bouncing between doctors offices, getting eye exams, several CT scans, and will meet this week to probably wrap everything up. In terms of my vision, it’s still not perfect. I see pretty much everything perfectly below the midline (i.e. looking straight or down), but as I look up I tend ...

Today I had a specialist appointment to fully quantify the damage to my vision from my accident last year. The appointment was about an hour of waiting in the waiting room, twiddling my thumbs, and an hour of experiments. They were forced to dilate my eyes, which means not only am I totally sensitive to light right now, but I’m having a very hard time reading anything. Not sure the verdict, but it’s looking pretty likely that my double vision in my upgaze is probably permanent. I can potentially compensate for this by changing my eyeglass prescription to have a slight upward taper in the ...

Nearly one year ago today, four guys that I had never met before decided it would be a good idea to put my face through the plate glass window of a 7-11. Prior to that one moment in time, now forever etched into my memory, I was upstairs at the Railway Club in Vancouver, enjoying a few beers with some friends in celebration of their wedding earlier that night. Upon exiting the building, somewhere between catching a cab and eating a bag of nachos, I overheard these four guys harassing a bunch of girls just a few feet away from me. People have told me after the fact that perhaps I should have just ...

I had a meeting with my plastic surgeon today to talk about the last surgery I had. It’s been a little over five months now, so in terms of results, everything should be stable. In my opinion, the position of my eye, while better, is still not perfect. In addition, I still have double vision in the top-left version of my visual field. My plastic surgeon did a few simple tests on me, mainly involving looking at my eye and tracking its movement using a finger. At least to my surgeon, the results are acceptable and do not warrant another surgery. For now, I have a few referrals to some eye doctors ...

This morning I went downstairs and checked the mail, and was surprised to see a bill from the ministry of health. It would seem that the government wants me to pay for the ambulance that took me to the hospital the night I ended up with multiple lacerations to my head and face, and five broken bone segments in my face. While I’m obviously appreciative for our medical system, considering I have had two surgeries now that I haven’t had to pay for, given that our health care system is supposed to be covered, I’m pretty surprised that I have to pay this at all. ...

On Friday, I met up briefly with Rebecca down at the Six Acres in Gastown for a few drinks on a patio. It was a good way to start a Friday afternoon, and since I had only woken up a few hours prior, I was definitely in the mood to drink and grab something to eat. Afterwards, we went down to the west-end for some pizza, and to hang out with John, who was busy playing with Dave Olsen’s new microphone on his computer. A bunch of my new blogger-type friends (most of which I originally ran into down at Northern Voice) were down at DemoCamp the other day, but unfortunately I wasn’t feeling up to ...

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