Tag: injury Posts

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 the reason my eye was still droopy was because the orbital shape on the left side (which appears on the right in the CT image above) didn’t match the shape on the left. Effectively that leads to an increase […]

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 isn’t completely ideal, given the magnitude of the original injury, he thinks the end result is fairly successful. There are small cosmetic revisions they can make if I want, but I really don’t think I want to go down that route. So that’s it I […]

A few weeks ago I received a phone call, the purpose of which was ultimately to talk about some of the injuries I obtained as a result of the incident in November of 2006. During that call, I was asked if I had ever applied for compensation to the BC Victim’s Assistance Program, which I hadn’t even heard of to be honest. The BC Victim’s Assistance Program is a government run program meant to help people who were the victims of violent crimes move on with their lives. It provides financial compensation for people due to medical expenses, time off work, counseling services, and lost income potential, amongst other things. Due to my mother’s insistence, I called and talked to someone in the program and asked if they thought I should apply. They said I should, and mailed me all the documentation to fill out last week. So a few […]

My first MRI was actually fair bit shittier than I imagined. I got to the hospital about 40 minutes before my scheduled time, and went to the Jim Pattison pavilion (like I was told). Unfortunately, there was no MRI facility in the JPP, and at that hour there wasn’t really anyone to ask. I found an information kiosk that showed a MRI lab in the Centennial Pavilion, so I hurried down there and took a seat in the waiting room. Of course, there wasn’t anyone in the reception booth so I just sat in the corner hoping that it was the correct place. There were a few other people in the waiting room with me, so I wasn’t too concerned at that point. However, an hour later everyone had left and it was just me in the waiting room alone. One of the MRI technicians eventually came out and looked […]

I just did a quick check of my Google calendar for the week, and it’s look pretty jam packed for the next few weeks. Things start off with a bang tomorrow — I have to go to St. Paul’s Hospital for some intestinal tests in the morning, and head down to Vancouver General Hospital tomorrow evening for an MRI (two hospitals in one day people, good times). Just did some reading on an MRI, and it’s not a very dangerous procedure, unless you have certain types of implants in your eye socket. I’m fairly certain mine is ok, otherwise we wouldn’t be going ahead with this, but I’ve seen one too many TV shows, so I’m a bit nervous now. On another note — I picked up the movie “Across The Universe” the other day based on a recommendation from Dan Lilly. It’s the most unique movie I’ve seen in […]

Just got a call from Vancouver General Hospital. Turns out in just a few weeks I’ll get the privilege of relaxing inside a big metal tube for an hour down in the MRI clinic. Apparently I can wear my own clothes, as long as there isn’t any metal on them at all. Otherwise the metal will probably rip out and go crazy in the huge magnetic fields. The good news is that MRI’s don’t use radiation, which means my super powers will probably not be affected this round (I figure with all the CT scans and X-rays I had last year, I’ve had my share). Should be a fun time, staring at the inside of a tube while it makes weird noises for an hour. A few weeks after I have another appointment with my surgeon to talk about doing another surgery.

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, augment it with another piece of plastic, or rebuild the orbital floor using a titanium mesh So, it’s decision time. I have no idea what I’m going to do, but since option #4 has the ability to restore […]

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 to see double of everything. I have sort of naturally adjusted by automatically raising my head when looking up so the object I’m looking at is straight on, but it’s a fairly big pain in the ass for me, especially when it’s dark […]

Today was a strange day. I woke up this morning and went down to the clinic to get the results of some tests I had done this week. If you’ve been keeping up with my saga, I somehow got a digestive infection when I was in the hospital with pneumonia a few months ago. It’s not contagious or anything – about 10% of people in the hospital get it after a week, and over 50% of people generally get it after four weeks in a hospital. You typically don’t get this unless your body is hit with a really hard broad-spectrum anti-biotic, which in my case was clyndamycin in the hosital. This type of antibiotic actually ends up killing all the helpful bacteria in your stomach and intestines, making your susceptible to other infections such as the one I got (since the good bacteria normally fight it off for you). […]

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 lens, but since it doesn’t really interfere with my job, I’m ok for now I guess. While another surgery might be able to fix everything, I was told that at this point there is nearly as much risk as there is potential reward, so it’s […]