Monday, November 15, 2010

6 weeks post-radiation - second follow up in Mesa

Hello friends, time for another update. It seems like things are constantly changing with the vision in this eye of mine. Visibly, I've now lost about 1/3 of my lower eyelashes on my left eye, the scars on my eyeball are still noticeable and don't seem to be changing any further, and my left eye gets tired of being open before the end of the day, so it sometimes gets bloodshot.

I had another follow up appointment with Dr. DeSouza in Mesa on Friday. If you recall, when I saw him a month ago I had a great deal of swelling near the area of the macula in my left eye, simply as a side effect of the trauma from surgery and radiation. He gave me the Avastin injection, the anti-VEGF antibody (sorry to doubt your pre-conceived notions about drugs TJ!), which was intended to reduce the edema in the area. To cut to the chase, a single dose appears to have worked wonders for me. A month ago the vision that I did have in my left eye was about 20/70. When it was tested on Friday it was 20/30, so that's an obvious improvement. I should note, however, that some days are better than other days as vision is concerned, and Friday was one of the better days. Overall though, the vision is definitely improving.

While the vision I do have is improving, the amount of vision that I have in that eye hasn't yet changed noticeably, indicating that the tumor hasn't yet started shrinking. While Dr. DeSouza didn't take any measurements of the tumor he did mention that it still looked quite large, and didn't think that he had noticed any decrease in size. I didn't ask him specifically, but hopefully he would have mentioned something had he seen any obvious signs of tumor growth.

So, the amount of vision in that eye hasn't changed. The vision that I do have is improving. The lava lamp-like flashes of light I see, which became more frequent after radiation, are now back down to about once a minute on average, but now they last for 2-3 seconds instead of the 1 second that they used to last. They are now always dynamic, moving around the field of vision as the flash occurs. They sometimes show up in color these days, too, instead of the plain white that I used to see each time. Sometimes I get to see several at the same time, and when they are different colors it's like I'm getting a private fireworks show!

The other change that's going on is freaking awesome. Almost the whole length of the border between vision/no vision is a constant pulsing, almost like a constant strobe light, continually flickering with a really high frequency. Talk about a distraction... Interestingly, even when I have my left eye closed, the flickering persists. I was just kidding about that being freaking awesome.

I read that Oliver Sacks book, The Mind's Eye. It was pretty interesting, although I have to admit I was impatient during the first few chapters, as I wanted to hurry up and get to the part about the author's eye cancer. Skipping ahead in a book, however, is something I do not do. I was disappointed that Dr. Sacks had some misinformation about ocular melanoma in his book...incorrectly saying that only 1% of them metastasize. That's completely wrong. As I've mentioned previously, it's closer to 50% that metastasize. I've emailed Dr. Sacks to see where he's getting his numbers from, but he hasn't yet responded. One of the most striking take-home messages from the book is simply how different the visual experience is for each person. When it comes to stereo-vision, some people perceive three-dimensionality much more richly than other people, and these differences are more complex than simply how far apart your eyes are on your face. Therefore, the experience of losing vision in one eye is vastly different from person to person.

When my left eye was temporarily patched in California, I felt I'd be okay when it came to doing many things if/when I eventually lose vision in the left eye. Walking down the street, it was still pretty obvious to me how far away oncoming cars were, and approximately how fast they were traveling. Going down steps, or stepping off of curbs wasn't a big deal, because my brain already had some expectations about how big a step is, or how big a car looks based on its distance from you. Looking at something for which my brain had no prior expectations was a completely different thing. Hiking was relatively difficult, as the ground is not anywhere close to level or uniform. I had no ability to see depth when looking at a 3-d sculpture that I hadn't seen before. When we toured the California state capital building, and we were looking straight up into the top of the dome, I had to ask Angel if there was room for a walkway around a certain part of it, because I couldn't judge depth in that scenario either.

I think that's all for now. I have no more doctor's appointments set up for now until Angel and I head back out to San Francisco to see Dr. Char on January 7th. If anything happens before then I'll be sure to let you all know! Thanks to everyone for continuing to follow my blog. And thanks for the comments, phone calls, emails, and cards that you've sent. I know I speak for Angel also when I say that we still very much appreciate everyone's thoughts and well wishes. Peace out!

Oh, one more thing. Prop 203 recently passed in Arizona...I'm pretty sure I'm eligible to get a medical marijuana card, so I'll start taking orders sometime early next year! Just kidding, that would be bad!