Uncrossing the eyes almost – Surgery #12

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Cancer walk with Ali and my Mom

For the last year, I have had double vision left to right and up and down. This is due to 6th nerve palsy – my 6th cranial nerve is not communicating with my eye muscles properly to align my eyes.  I can either wear my eye patch, or I wear my glasses with a piece of tape covering the pupil which tricks my brain and allows me to use one eye to see.  It’s better to wear the glasses so my brain can try to coordinate my nerves with my eye muscles.

So far my progress had stopped around August.  Keep in mind I’ve had some level of swelling in my brain that is pushing on my brain stem since August so that might also have an effect on the ability for the 6th nerve to heal and correct my vision.

Since my eyes stabilized for the most part, my neuro ophthalmologist felt there was an opportunity to realign my right eye to see if we could correct the left to right double vision.

Final measurements

High tech testing

The surgery is call strabismus surgery.  The surgeon goes inside my eyeball and shortens one muscle, and moves another to realign my eye to trick my brain. On November 27th I had surgery to attempt to correct my double vision.  In addition to the left to right issue, I also have a vertical issue with my vision and my eye is tilted to the left. The goal was once the first surgery healed, we could attempt to fix the up and down issue along with the tilt.

Testing up and down vision

Eyes are very vascular

Unfortunately, my brain is not cooperating at this time to completely fix my vision.  The surgery was successful, but my brain and nerves are not quite working together.  In addition, my last MRI in December, showed that I have a cyst and scar tissue where the tumor was removed and it is putting pressure on my brain stem in the area that affects up and down vision.

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