After my vitrectomy surgery I had to remain face down 24 hours a day. The only exception was the 12 times a day when my wife was putting drops or ointment into my eye. Therefore, I had to come up with equipment and settings to help me sleep at night and survive in a prone position during the day. This post is about the night situation, so I will cover the daytime setup later.
The surgeon’s staff gave me a brochure for a company that would rent vitrecomy recovery gear by the week, but I decided to try to solve the problem myself, because I am so tall that I guessed none of the rental stuff would work for me. For example, their sleeping arrangement consisted of a large wedge pillow that raises your body off the bed (so far, so good) and a U-shaped pillow mount that holds your head flat. The problems for me were: a) your head is facing down over, but not too far from, the bed, thus I think it could get hot and stuffy in that little pocket; and b) if I set it up that way, my feet would be way off the end of the bed, which would be quite uncomfortable.
I ended up finding an Earthlite Home Massage Kit on Amazon.com (link valid as of 8/16/2013) that is an extremely flexible U-shaped pillow mounting system. I mounted it between my mattress and box spring at the foot of the bed and ended up sleeping the opposite way from usual (so I didn’t have to mess with the headboard). The result is shown below.
That first night after the surgery was pretty bad. I had a terrible time sleeping on my face, so I got up and rearranged the Earthlite kit to it would support me over the kitchen table, so I slept there for a while. The picture makes it look like the pillow wasn’t quite flat, but I think I managed to adjust it so my face was parallel to the table.
I dreaded going to bed, because the surgeon instructed me to keep wearing a plastic shield at night. This particular torture device was fitted to me after surgery to protect the eye from me clawing at it. Because it fits on the face, it digs into the face when said face is pressed into a U-shaped pillow for sleeping. My wife tried various things, including putting tape and eventually gauze under the spots it was digging into.
The Earthlite Home Massage Kit is very adjustable, which important for face-down sleeping. If the head is too low, all the blood rushes there and I had lots of swelling around the eye. So I used a couple of pillows to raise my torso above the level of my legs and feet. I also put a pillow under my ankles to help keep my feet comfortable. It is important to raise the U-shaped face pillow enough that the weight of the head is distributed among the forehead and cheeks (too low, and all the weight is on your forehead). If the pillow is too high, however, you’ll be supporting some of your body weight with your face, which is also a bad idea.
No matter how comfortable the pillow seems, it will feel like cement on your forehead after a couple hours, though it will probably be really sweaty, too. This makes sleeping tough. I ended up buying two memory foam replacement pillows for the Earthlite unit as well as a couple of extra covers for them (so some can be washed while the pillows are still in use). I highly recommend getting the memory foam pillows, even though they cost as much as the original unit itself. The original pillow is good, but not good enough for sleeping all night.
My surgeon has given me permission to not wear the shield about 4 weeks after surgery, so that has significantly improved my sleep. I no longer dread going to bed.
I recently had surgery to fix a detached retina and, as of this writing, I am still recovering from it. This is the first of several posts where I will discuss the surgery and, primarily, the recovery. The recovery is quite an ordeal, but at the moment, it seems to be going well, and the retina seems to be in place.
I’ve had a tear in my retina for years, but it somehow stopped itself with a ring of scar tissue. It went unchanged for years, but apparently decided to give way recently. I didn’t have the flashing or the gray curtain that so many people report when their retinas detach. Instead, things looked a little funny in my center vision, with straight lines not being exactly straight. It also seemed that things weren’t exactly where they should have been, which, I presume, was a sign that the whole retina had detached and the focal point was in the wrong spot. The other telling feature was a something that looked like a bubble on the lower right side of my vision. My ophthalmologist took a picture of the retina, and that area looked like curtains, so it had really lost its shape. It was still sensitive to light, so the retina was still alive and could possibly be repaired. My wife and I were hustled over to a retina specialist to get him to take a look and schedule surgery. Since things don’t just go bad a little, it turned out I also had a tear in the macula, which is the focus of detailed vision, so it was a challenging case.
The surgery apparently involved micro-scale instruments being inserted into the eye so the surgeon can place the retina and then use lasers (in my case) to tack it down. It is called a vitrectomy, because the vitreous jelly that fills the eye is removed. In my case, a gas bubble was then put in to keep the retina in place during the healing process. The gas bubble floats, and the retina is at the back of the eye, so, if you are good at mentally visualizing that situation, you can guess why the recovery period is so unpleasant. I have to remain face down all the time, except when I’m getting drops put into the eye. All the time! I was initially told 2 weeks, but when the 2 weeks were nearly up, I was given 2 more weeks. I’m not done with those two weeks as of this writing, but I expect more face down time. Future posts will cover the setup I used to make my recovery as comfortable as possible.
Initially, I was supposed to be partly awake for the surgery, which sounded kinda cool, but also horrifying. It turned out that I started snoring in the twilight sleep they put me in, so the anesthesiologist decided to put me all the way under so my snoring didn’t vibrate my head and mess up the surgeon. The surgery apparently went well, though my vision will be messed up for quite a while, so I won’t know the final outcome for a while. The surgeon did close the macular hole and the bubble is holding it in place, so fingers are crossed for a good outcome.
In addition to the Endeavour, we saw some other spacecraft at the California Science Museum. Exciting to have all this space history in one place so close to us!
The Space Shuttle Endeavour was in a temporary facility when we went to see it in January at the California Science Museum near USC, just south of downtown Los Angeles. It was exciting to see it, and, though it was crowded, we didn’t have to waste too much time getting in to see it. We had tickets with reservation times, but there are lots of exhibits to look at while the crowd moves through to the the shuttle. Those were somewhat interesting, though some of them were very tailored to kids.
Rather than lots of description here, I’ve put short captions of the pictures below, so click through and take a look.
Used shuttle tires! Part of the exhibit on the way to the main attraction.
Note the spelling of “Endeavour.” And the control jets.
Near the entrance to the hall, we stopped to pose in front of the Endeavour.
The photo of my wife is better lit than the one of me, because of the ability of the respective photographers.
One of the tiles looks broken, and many look a bit worn.
The view along the shuttle’s side.
The tiles are all individually numbered, and some have to be oddly shaped.
The bay door hinges are visible on the side of the shuttle.
A close up view of the skin above the thermal tiles near the start of the wing. Short people would have trouble taking that picture.
I like how they painted the flag in the direction it would go if it were “flying” while the shuttle moves.
It’s pretty amazing to walk under the Endeavour! It is mounted tall enough that even I could walk under it. I could have reached up and touched it, but didn’t because I didn’t want to be thrown out.
Tiles on the underside.
There doesn’t look like enough room for the landing gear can fit in there
That looks like an access port for servicing, perhaps.
A closer view of what I think must be a service access area.
The main engines and the very tall tail.
I don’t know if that’s a hinge on the tail below the main engines, but it sure looks like it could be articulated.
The nose without any annoying people in front of it.
It’s hard to get the whole thing in the frame without a wide angle lens and in the small space. This is the best I could do.
My wife and I went to the California Science Museum in January to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Pictures of that will come soon, but there are other wonderful things to see there, including the aircraft shown below.
Next to the parking lot was a Lockheed A-12 reconnaissance aircraft, a predecessor to the SR-71.
A-12
Then we see a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter mounted on the side of the one of the buildings.
F-104
In the large hall that led to Endeavour, we see the Northrop T-38 and F-20. As I joined Northrop as an avionics engineer, the F-20 program had just been killed. It was designed to be a cost-effective fighter to compete with the F-16, particularly in overseas sales. It seems that the government used it as leverage against General Dynamics to cut the F-16’s cost and then left Northrop in the cold. Of course, foreign governments backed away as soon as the US government decided against purchasing the F-20. Did I mention that the F-20 project was funded internally by Northrop? Indeed, Northrop felt that the F-20 was such a winner that they self-funded it. Well, it’s still a good looking airplane.
We went out to our favorite Mexican food place (Avila’s El Ranchito) last night, then took a nice walk on the beach. It was supposed to be a lousy, cold, overcast day, but it turned into a delightful evening. Click the pictures to see a full-sized version. All taken with iPhones, so expect noise in the low light images.
Firepit and heater at the restaurant
Me at the top of the cliff
My wife thought it was colder than it was
It was a delightful time to walk on the beach
Other beachgoers watching the sunset
Some paddleboarders and surfers out there too
Trying to keep my eyes open while looking towards the setting sun
The sun is almost gone
And I even got a movie of the sun sinking beneath the waves.
Today quickly switched from a pleasant Sunday to a little too exciting when my wife arrived home from grocery shopping and yelled “Fire!” At almost the same instant, I could smell smoke and there was a helicopter flying over the house. Once my heart started beating again, I saw that the fire was south of us and that the helicopter was fighting it with water drops. We walked to a hillside sort of above the fire as the smoke enveloped us and ash fell. Before long, we returned home in case we needed to evacuate. It turned out that the helicopter was refilling on a ridge near us, so we got some amazing views of the thing roaring over us. A newspaper report details the fire:Â http://www.ocregister.com/articles/fire-371632-beach-brush.html
I took a bunch of pictures and here are the best ones:
Our first view of the smoke
We couldn’t directly see the fire, but it was behind that ridge
The fire attack chopper made many runs
Here it is flying into the smoke
And here it is coming back out to refill
Getting closer
And right over our heads!
The smoke was really thick, so those pilots had to brave terrible conditions
Yes, if you look carefully the chopper really is in there
Flying to the ridge for a refill
Just about at the refill spot
Coming straight at us after another pass on the fire
Getting closer
Just about to fly over us!
I also took some movies.
This one shows the chopper flying up a canyon on its way to refill.
We had an amazing sunset last night – one of the prettiest of the year. Of course, these iPhone photos don’t do it justice, but the battery in my good camera was completely dead. There was a bit of a storm coming through, as you can see by the distant rain and the clouds, but the temperature was perfect on my back deck as we watched the sunset.
A bunch of the flowers around us are in bloom, so I took some pictures of the iceplant outside our fence, the kangaroo paws in our side yard, and a few others.
I gave my mother a new iPad yesterday in the hopes that it would get her back to reading email and possibly responding to it. Sometime I will write a rant about how lousy the iPad is for the elderly, but not today.
I read all the stories about how the new iPad gets hot, particularly when playing games. Based on my experience yesterday, it gets surprisingly warm when doing pretty much nothing. I set my mother up with email and a few other things and showed her how to browse the web, and before long, the iPad was noticeably warm. Not hot, but unpleasantly warm and uncomfortable. My iPad2 doesn’t do anything like that. So even when not playing Infinity Blade or other graphics-intensive games, the electronics and battery in the new iPad really heat up.
I put one of the magnetic covers on, so I am hoping that my mother folds it around back when she’s using the iPad and that will prevent her fingers from becoming too toasty.
I am curious if this is going to become a problem for Apple, because the heat is surprisingly excessive.
Anyway, I hope my mom uses the iPad and reconnects with her friends and relatives using it.
The Space Shuttle Endeavour was in a temporary facility when we went to see it in January at the California Science Museum near USC, just south of downtown Los Angeles. It was exciting to see it, and, though it was crowded, we didn’t have to waste too much time getting in to see it. We had tickets with reservation times, but there are lots of exhibits to look at while the crowd moves through to the the shuttle. Those were somewhat interesting, though some of them were very tailored to kids.
