New eyes... and God's goodness

I don't think I have shared about my eye condition with you here, but I have a corneal condition called Salzmann's Nodular Degeneration.  This is a pretty a rare condition for which they cannot really pinpoint a cause, but what it means in practical terms is that I have little white deposits or tissues all over my corneas.  They actually float as well as spread and grow larger over time.  Ten years ago I had surgery to remove them, which was really painful and tough to recover from.  It made me not want to have the surgery again.  However, I finally got to a place with my vision -- particularly with the detailed artwork I do and the computer work -- that I knew it was (past) TIME. 

Because of the white circular tissues/scarring, I was seeing hazes and four, six, eight images/halos of what I was looking at. One morning I wake up being able to see okay, and the next not very well at all, then the next day fine. Knowing it was time to address this, I decided to have the surgeries done one at a time so that if anything went wrong I would still have one (not very) good eye.  I just had my second of the two surgeries this past Tuesday, and I must say that in 10 years they certainly have improved the recovery process.

I am still recovering sight-wise, but the pain management is much better now than 10 years ago. I also had my husband videotape the surgery -- I won't share it here, as it is really difficult to watch.  Amazing to see the doctor working on my eye with those tools and not be able to feel it. He painstakingly removed every bit of scar tissue on my eye. It was pretty rough the day after the surgery, as I was in a LOT of pain.  I was able to manage with 3-4 ibuprofen every 4 hours.  But the next day I was much better - no ibuprofen needed - and the next even better.   For these surgeries, I was fitted with a "bandage" lens which protected my eye after the surgery and was especially helpful when I needed to blink. This "bandage lens" was not used after the surgerical scraping 10 years ago, and every time I blinked it felt as if I were scraping my eyeball with sand.  These kinds of improvements in tools and technology are amazing to me, and I am truly thankful.  

I went back today for the doctor to remove the recovery lens, and I am seeing okay.  I can see really well now in the first eye that he worked on. (Otherwise, I wouldn't have gone back for the second surgery!) So, I pray/believe it will only be a matter of time before I am seeing really well in the second eye. One amazing improvement with the new surgeries is in the type of "bandage" contact lens they used for my healing process. It is called an amniolens and was developed by a Christian doctor who believed that there was a way to develop a process for more rapid and full healing using young tissues, but who was not willing to use fetal tissue.  Through much research and experimentation, he discovered that the amniotic membrane of the placenta has many of the same healing properties that stem cells from fetal tissue would.  This is harvested from the placenta after birth and freeze dried for use in many types of healing for eye tissues.  You can learn more about that here:

"Ming Wang vs. Science vs. Faith" — Film Competition sponsored by The Veritas Forum from Veritas [1] on Vimeo.

I am thankful to God for science and those who persevere in hope of helping people through new discoveries.  Part of Dr. Wang's story is in the film "God's Not Dead."  I am constantly amazed that though I have this condition, God knows how intricately he has crafted my eye and has given me hope through this new discovery that my eyes will heal and in some ways be in even better shape than before.  And, I am seeing well enough to use the computer again... and hope to soon be holding a paintbrush or pencil and doing some new artwork.  Hope all of you are well.  Now that I can read, I'll be making the rounds!! 😊👁👁🙂