My droopy eyelids!
Before Surgery
What had originally started out as “Doctor, I think something is in my right eyeball” turned out to be the skin on my eyelid interfering with my eye sight especially in the afternoon/evening.
I basically had two choices to fix this problem:
1. Candice Busch, my best girlfriend, suggested I could super-glue my eyelid up.
2. My doctor suggested I could get the droopy skin removed. He also kindly suggested that my lower lid could use some work while he was there.
After a lot of indecision and yes, figuring out my training schedule for running, I finally made the surgery appointment for the first part of March.
Day after Surgery
The first couple of days after surgery were rough as instructions were “rest your eyes.” That meant no reading, writing, or watching tv plus sleeping with my head elevated. I spent my days with ice packs on my eyes listening to re-runs of NCIS and Castle episodes. I think I have now watched every season 5 times over. My nights were spent with lovely shiny eye guards taped on my face so that I didn’t accidently rub my eyes in my sleep.
My eye guards looked like some shiny bug eyes.
Hollywood Style
Once I was feeling a bit better, I did start venturing out around my neighborhood, Hollywood style.
I really thought the worst was over until the stitches started to heal. Healing meant itching. I couldn’t rub my eyes. Every blink meant the underside of my swollen lids grated against my eyeballs. Some relief was had by putting ointment in my eyes which resulted in blurry vision. So again, I was left with no reading or watching tv.
When the itching got so bad that I was ready to do anything to get it to stop, the doctor suggested I start taking Benedryl. The Benedryl gave me instant relief. That was the good news. The bad news was regardless whether it was the non-drowsy Benedryl or not, it made me extremely tired. I was back to sleeping most of my days away.
Two weeks out of surgery
By the end of two weeks, I was feeling more myself. I had started walking and slowly started back to doing short mileage runs. The swelling was still there but the majority of the brusing was gone. The itching and scratchiness were down to a miniumun so I was able to start focusing for short periods of time.
Week three of my recovery brought more relief in that I was only taking the Benedryl twice a day for the first couple of days. I was beginning to focus more often than not without the constant itching. The swelling was almost gone as well as most of the bruising. Some of the stitching was still visible and red but not as bad as it was in the beginning.
During the three full weeks I was recovering, I had high hopes of getting a lot of reading done which didn’t happen. I did watch an enormous amount of TV. I can say that was really mind-numbing but had it’s benefits as it mostly put me to sleep. My running pace hasn’t been affected by basically being off for two weeks. I do think that walking in week two helped keep my running where it was as well as gave my body some good old recovery time which all runners need from time to time.
Droopy eyelids gone
And though I still have some slight bruising, redness and swelling, I am quite pleased with my now non-droopy eyelids.