A&E VISIT TODAY AFTER TWO WEEKS EEK

[optom]

Last night got very bad foreign body pain and feeling, lots of swelling of the eyelids and watering of the eye , the discomfort was quite unbearable and found it very hard to keep the eye open, rang the ward were i had the surgery and the advised i visit the A&E , so this morning woke at half 5 the eye was perfect no pain at all swelling had totally gone down and no pain. I said i would go tot the A&E just in case , so took the 3 hour trek to dublin as i live in the west of the island. got to the A&E and its was busy of course but it works on a triage priority basis and they must have considered me a priority ( may have played up the symptoms t o the nurse lol ). got in to the see the doctor an absolutely lovely woman very helpful and knew her stuff which believe it or not is some times a luxury !!!!

she looked at my eye and said the graph is beautiful (her words not mine) she couldn see and fb stain or the presence of a fb or any other trouble , no problem with the stitches or the graph . so ive been sent on my way .

happy with the outcome and good to test the emergency services i suppose lol!! just wondering had any else such and episode or am i a sensitive mite !!!!

[Andrew MacLean]

optom

A visit to A&E that tells you that everything is well is a good outcome. I also made the trek to our ophthalmological A and E only to be told that everything was fine.

Just for the sake of others readers, the standard advice given to graftees in the UK is that RSVP warns of a rejection

R: increased Redness
S: increased Sensitivity to light
V: decreased Vision
P: increased Pain

All the best

Andrew

[GarethB]

To add to Andrews note, if you are a garftee and have any of the symptoms, even if it is just one of them, get down to A&E ta have it checked out.

[Lynn White]

Hi Optom

The cornea has the most nerves of anywhere in the body (its a protective mechanism to make sure you look after your eyes!) so anything going wrong feels dreadful. Most likely you had an episode of the healing epithelium round the operation area being "knocked off" by your lids. Tears hot the nerve endings and its VERY painful with lots of photophobia, pain and watering.. and the watering makes your lids swell. Overnight, when you are not blinking, the epithelium healed up and all was well again.

However.... epithelium heals differently to the rest of your body. If you cut your hand, say, the cut heals from the bottom up and is well sealed. The epithelium heals very rapidly by cells adjacent to the damaged area sliding across and bridging over it. Nice fast healing BUT it often does not bed down very well and the top layer can be "knocked off" quite easily. This is quite likely what happened to you (cells from the scar area being knocked off) as by the next day all was looking OK again.

Thing is, it can happen again, especially if your eye gets dry. If it does, check with your ophth about regular usage of lubricants etc which will help to stop this happening.

AND, just because it was OK this time doesn't mean it is OK the next. Unfortunately you have to get pain like this checked out every time it happens.. just in case!

Lynn

[optom]

LYNN I NEED YOUR BRAIN