Asking For Help And Offering You Exposure: Platform Project

Thank you Melody,
I am stumbling through and making mistakes, so hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.

I am learning how to link and it not dead end or circle back.

FYI All top three buttons now have some content.

Thanks for the kind words,

I can use all of the prayer I can get, in a lot of ways.

This is supposed to be the easier eye. The other one was really tough, only Dr. Wang would touch it.

If I can’t read next week, guess I will just have to listen to Sean!

Thanks!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Norma Allen

Norma, it is a long story. I am a touch typist so I will just rattle it off, but don’t worry with it if it is too much. I have noticed your posts about eye problems and thought I might send you a private message when that became available.

So the last time I go on a missionary trip to Africa, I hear of these children dying in the Congo, not all that far from Mansa, Zambia where I was. So I sneak into the Congo, find them with local help (and help from above) and bring them back alive, but I gave away my food and water. When I got back to my last base camp I found that my water there had been taken. I was in serious trouble.

I got so dehydrated that it shrank the vitreous humour in my eyes and pulled the retina loose in one and did misc. damage in the other. (I have floaters in it like a snow globe) I made it back to the US, fell off the plane and had to have help to get in the van, but I made it home. I shouldn’t be alive. I had a bad cough for a year. Have lots of little ailments I picked up in Africa now.

I went to a name brand eye clinic to have the retina pull fixed, my local doctor said it wasn’t that bad, but the surgeon had a bad day and blinded me. They made a number of mistakes that caused my retina to shed. Then I had a vitrectomy, a buckle, lot of laser by another doctor to save the eye and restore what of my vision they could. They put a bubble in my eye, you may have had that too. I had to keep my head pointed to the floor 24/7 for 66 days, including sleeping. Lost a year of any serious work in our food distribution business and about went mad.

They didn’t get the retina straight and that took years to work through, now it is not so bad, you get used to a lot. I was over 80% black as night blind in that eye before they reattached the retina, so I am blest.

All of the trauma caused a trauma induced cataract, which was so bad it caused glaucoma. With the cataract and scar tissue blocking the drains, my pressure was going up and up and the cataract was blinding me. No one local would touch me. I went to Dr. Ming Wang, the man they based the movie “God Is Not Dead” on and he said you have no choice, I promise you complications if we have the surgery and blindness that isn’t correctable if we don’t.

June 15th I had the surgery. Came out as blind as a bat. He tapped the fluid in my repeatedly, took tons of eye drops, pills and treatments and now I have 20/40 in that eye with some distortion but I consider that a miracle. It is developing a secondary cataract, I have to go back in December and they will fix that, they say it usually is a piece of cake, but my eye over responds due to the previous damage. Dr. Wang says when miracles start, they tend to continue, but if I have problems we will deal with them. Put his hand on my shoulder, said I know you have been through a lot, but I really believe we will get through this and you will clearly see the smiles on your great grandchildren not yet born.

This surgery is on the other eye. I have what they call floppy iris syndrome which makes it more tricky, this eye has what they call a malignant cataract, not cancer, just really ugly and getting worse by the day. That is the surgery I will have next week. I asked why that eye is so bad and Dr. Wang said, that eye went to Africa too, but without all of the surgical trauma it took longer to get this bad. I did a lot of welding too in my younger days, flew airplanes and was up in those sunny skies and that may have made this worse for a fellow as young and skipper as I am 😉

On some nasty eye drops, both to treat it and for pre op. I never knew you could be on eye drops so strong they would make you sick to your stomach or your throat as dry as a desert, but I do now.

If I might encourage you, I know my retina improved for three years and possibly to a lessor extent even longer. Aerobic exercise seemed to help the most when they lifted my activity restrictions. I kept a record and looked at a grid regularly and noticed the changes.

I certainly feel for you and your retina problems. I go to Dr. Wang and see people from all parts of the world in the waiting room and some have been through so much before they found him. I see people that are in so much worse shape than I am. The man is obsessed and convinced God put him on the earth to make the blind see. I wouldn’t argue with him. Wonderful guy, MIT and Harvard degrees, has a degree in nuclear physics that he uses to advance laser surgery, has written a number of text books used around the world. Created many of the tools and methods he uses. He assigns a coordinator to every patient that follows them through every step of the process, room to room, finances, prescriptions, surgery dates, I think I could ask her the weather forecast and she wouldn’t bat an eye and tell me the week’s forecast!

I have had five eye surgeries so far, will need a sixth for sure, may need a seventh, but they are confident I will do well eventually and I see better now in my first eye than in years, in spite of the secondary cataract.

Thank you for your concern.
If I may be of any service, by all means contact me.