The results from everything today, had me in literal tears. My trauma to the brain is more severe than I thought, with great lasting consequences.
Let’s start by saying that my cerebellar stroke affected both hemispheres, but the right side is more damaged than the left side. Which explains the weakness in my entire left side of my body! BOTH hemispheres control your vision. That, to me, explains the weakness in moving my eyes from left to right and the misalignment that has me seeing double.
Which brings me to my motility surgeon follow-up visit. We (as in, my husband and I) didn’t wait too long. I heard my name being called by the wonderful student resident and I was whisked away!!
This is a fellow I have seen MANY times in the eye clinic at UVA.
He looked at both of my eyes and remarked that I would likely need surgery done in my left eye and he then proceeded to do the vision test with me. I was on the 20/20 line and I just couldn’t get the last two letters!!! They became a blurred, jumbled mess.
We were off into another room where he then tested my double vision. He tested with prisms as well to see if I was able to see singular with them.
Then my amazing doctor came in!! He said my eyes are very straight. He reassured me that he sees misaligned eyes all day and he’s happy with my eyes. He further exclaimed that he’s glad he didn’t touch my vertical muscles as those are the only eye muscles that work!! If he touched them to make my horizontal eye muscles stronger, than there could be a risk that my vertical muscles wouldn’t be as operative, which could then put my corneas at risk of becoming damaged, which would then lead to blindness.
After all of that, he said perhaps six months from now IF there is any worsening changes to my eyes then he could go in and do a minor surgery to help with the double vision. But for now, there are no more muscle surgeries on the horizon for me! Just a prescription for prism glasses!
They have still noted that I have bilateral 4th nerve palsy. I have severe limited addiction and 6th nerve palsy as well! And to keep my eyes moist I am still to do eye drops and the eye ointment at night. They have also stated that I have low myopia (nearsightedness) with astigmatism. I am to return to this doctor in six months but he said given how my left eye now looks in comparison to my right eye, that the ocular plastic surgeon would definitely want to do surgery on that eye to help correct it!
We will see in two weeks when I venture back to him! Oh the joys of being a TBI and stroke survivor. Never a dull moment!