Tag: orbital-floor Posts

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, and was recommended to me by pretty much all the surgeons I contacted in the United States over the last year. He recently retired from public practice, but after reviewing my case, decided to perform one more operation in an effort to help me out. Assisting with the surgery will also be Dr. David Rossman, […]

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 […]

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 one is to cut my face open again, pull out the plastic, and reconstruct my orbital floor with titanium. There’s obvious risk to that surgery, as well as about six weeks of recovery to go […]

As I said in my last entry, I am now at home recoupering from what is hopefully my last surgery to correct the damage from November. I’ll go through a quick walk through of yesterday. I woke up around 10am and basically just tried to kill some time until I was supposed to be at the hospital. I was originally going to take a cab down there at around 12:30pm, but it was such a nice day out that I decided to just walk the whole distance myself. Surprisingly, it only took me a half hour. Once I got there, everyone was immediately friendly. Even though I had to answer a pile more questions that I had already answered before, it didn’t really bother me as things were finally about to be finished. Everyone was on time thankfully, and at 1:15pm I found myself getting changed in the Jim Patterson […]

Friday afternoon I had yet another enlightening visit down at St. Paul’s hospital. I actually went in rather grumpy and upset with the whole process, but about five minutes into it was greated by a really cute, friendly medical student. So, my spirits rose pretty quickly to the point where I was making light of the whole situation. It was actually rather funny, because the first little bit of dialog went like this: Cute student: “so why are you here today?” Me: “I have no idea” Cute student: “what do you mean you have no idea? You came in.” Me: “My doctor’s office called me and said to come in. They didn’t know why.” Cute student: “So you have no idea why you’re here today” Me: “Nope” Cute student: “Oh. Well let me see if I can figure it out. Me: (thinking “yeah right” to myself) — “Go for it.” […]

Well, yesterday was an interesting day. I guess I should really start with that night, since I did whatever I could to keep myself busy, knowing that I was going in for surgery early in the morning. Obviously, I didn’t really have that good a sleep, since I had a lot on my mind. 7am came pretty quicky, and I made my way down to the hospital for my 8am time. Despite them sending me multiple emails and leaving a few voice messages that I should be there at 8am, apparently at 7:45am, I was “late”, and people seemed to be in a huff about that.. Not sure what that was about. So, first thing they get me to do is change into those funky gowns. Some girl took me into the changing room and told me I had to strip naked and put them on, so I did. But […]