{"id":3094,"date":"2019-05-11T11:23:14","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T14:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/?p=3094"},"modified":"2019-05-11T11:23:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T14:23:14","slug":"hiatus-sideways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/2019\/05\/11\/hiatus-sideways\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiatus: sideways\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>An interesting phenomenon happened before my regular eye checkup in late February: the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"visual distortion in the right eye (opens in a new tab)\" href=\"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/2018\/12\/03\/hiatus-progress\/\" target=\"_blank\">visual distortion in the right eye<\/a> didn&#8217;t regress much, but subjectively my vision was almost normal. However my <em>left<\/em> eye \u2014 until now, unaffected \u2014 had developed a similar distortion in the opposite direction!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My conjecture was (and my ophthalmologist agreed) that this was a software adaption by my visual cortex. The expectation was that all these effects would continue to shrink for the next several months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unfortunately that was not to be. Two weeks after the checkup I noticed a persistent spot at the edge of my right-eye visual field, outlined by sparkles, even at night. I knew these were the symptoms of retinal detachment, and the ophthalmologist performed immediate surgery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was done by the same means as my November <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vitrectomy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"vitrectomy (opens in a new tab)\">vitrectomy<\/a>. The retina had wrinkled again, but this time at the edge; so instead of buckling it just began to tear. This was repaired by a belt-and-suspenders approach: laser \u201cwelding\u201d, keeping the retina in place by a pressurised octafluoropropane gas bubble, and buckling the sclera mechanically. All this required paralysing the eyeball muscles and doing some tricky micro-mechanical work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, after a scary and painful first week \u2014 the internal eye pressure had more than doubled and had to be relieved \u2014 I&#8217;m happy to report that recovery is underway, again. The <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Perfluoropropane\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\"gas bubble (opens in a new tab)\">gas bubble<\/a> takes several weeks to be replaced by fluid and in the meantime there&#8217;s just a blur to be seen; but all indications are that the retina has been fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More in about a month&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting phenomenon happened before my regular eye checkup in late February: the visual distortion in the right eye didn&#8217;t regress much, but subjectively my vision was almost normal. However my left eye \u2014 until now, unaffected \u2014 had developed a similar distortion in the opposite direction! My conjecture was (and my ophthalmologist agreed) that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[34,48],"class_list":["post-3094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta","tag-eyeglasses","tag-hiatus"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Rainer Brockerhoff","author_link":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/author\/rbrockerhoff\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1q3Zc-NU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brockerhoff.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}