Surgery begins

Because there was so much going on my sister and brother-in-law flew over from Perth to take me to Sydney. They were pretty shocked when they saw me and realised how bad my eyesight was.

When we arrived in Sydney we went for a walk and it was pretty scary as there were so many people around and I kept walking into people and being pushed around. My operation was early next morning and I was a mess. I was so scared about what would happen during the surgery and what the outcome would be. I didn’t sleep much that night, which I am sure was not the perfect preparation for eye surgery. My operation was called a vitrectomy and was going to clear away a blockage that had been building up for years and wasn’t diagnosed until it was at a point where it was blocking my vision.

Dr Chang was very pleased with how the surgery had gone and I was amazed at how I felt. It was very weird being awake. When my cornea transplants were done it was under general anaesthetic and I don’t remember any part of it. This time I could hear the doctors and nurses talking and answer the questions they asked me. We left the hospital two hours after we arrived and went back to our hotel where I slept all day.

The next day I was very ill and in a lot of pain. I went to Dr Chang’s rooms for my post-operative appointment and spent most of the time throwing up in the toilet. The pressure in my eye had risen dramatically and the side effect of that was that I was very sick. When he put eyedrops in my eye the pressure started to drop but it took a while for me to feel better. We had checked out of our hotel and were about to head back to Canberra and there I was throwing up in a plastic bag on the streets of Sydney and not one of the people walking by batted an eyelid. It was obviously a common sight! I slept all the way back to Canberra and then spent a couple of days recovering at home.

It was great to be able to spend some time with Vicki and Lyle and we took them to Majors Creek to show them our house and our new village. When they left I was amazed that they came all that way for a couple of days to look after me. I will never forget what they did.

My recovery went really well and then it was time to move. I was very incapacitated and seriously wondered how I would manage living in the country. I was feeling very insecure moving away from Dr Kate and was scared about being isolated in Majors Creek and not being able to drive myself anywhere.