Eyeball Update

Ever since I was a wee human, I've had a "freckle" on my right eye. We think it showed up as "reactionary pigment" after I was whacked in the face with a giant pine tree on the playground at Sandstone Elementary. (If you went there, you know what I'm talking about...we all got hit at least once, I believe.)


Well, this freckle has never bothered me. I can't feel it in any way, and it doesn't affect my vision. In fact, every once in awhile, someone will say, "You have a spot on your eye!" And I have to think long and hard to figure out what they're talking about.

It wasn't until high school that I even gave any thought to it thanks to the Postal Service song:

"""And I / Am thinking it's a sign / That the freckles in our eyes are mirror images / And when we kiss, they're perfectly aligned."""

Random the Postal Service band poster.

It actually turns out the unfreckled boy I was choosing to kiss was a toad that was never going to be a prince, but that's a whole different blog! Ha ha!

Every year, I go to the eye doctor like a good little patient, and they measure it, write down the measurement, and send me home with stronger contacts because I get a little blinder each time.

Except this year. In June, my lovely eye doctor (Dr. Melissa Rice in Silverdale...I recommend her!) let me know that the freckle was growing. My first thought was, "Nope."  Seriously this thing has been on my eye for almost 20 years with no change. Obviously she measured incorrectly. Actually, the freckle had doubled in size and added some little pigmented arms to boot. She referred me to Dr. Cole at Cole Aesthetics for a biopsy.

Now, Dr. Cole mostly specializes in aesthetic procedures (hence the name....)  so it was a little weird to be there for an eye freckle. And it was even weirder when he had my eye flapped open (I could literally see a chunk of my eye held over my face in a pair of rounded tweezers!!!) and hear him say, "Uh oh. Hmmmmmmmmmm. This doesn't look like anything I can do anything with. Let's schedule her with blah, blah, blah." I was laying there just thinking, "OK, please put my eye down."

As soon as he had reassembled my eye, they let me know that none of the freckle was in the top clear layer of the eye known as the conjunctiva. The conjunctiva is a very soft, fast healing layer so it's apparently ok to just make big flaps in it and then send me home without a super cool eye patch.  So the freckle was in the tough white part of the eye known as the sclera also known as the last layer of your eye before we puncture the eye ball and you DIE. Ok, not really. But if they do puncture the sclera, you don't just get a patch and a ride home. So naturally, Dr. Cole was hesitant to start digging around in there and I left with a referral.

Here's a gross picture of the cross-section of the eye.

Yesterday was the day I got to see Dr. Kremer who is a cornea specialist and works at an office that doesn't specialize in lasers and chin-lifts which was slightly more reassuring.  Dr. Kremer also has done thousands of eyeball surgeries and has a very loud voice so he must be qualified, right?

Dr. Kremer's office people shined about fifteenthousandbillion lights and thingies into my eye and decided it needed to come out. (They said it that way too! I was like, "The ENTIRE EYEBALL?!?!" And they laughed and said, "No, just the freckle.")  Boooo. I was really hoping to hear them say, "Nope, it's nothing. Just a way for us to tell you apart from your clone. Go home and eat lots of ice cream."

So we immediately segued into my pre operative appointment, and everyone made me feel ok about the whole thing (even though I was just faking and was really sort of falling apart in my head) and then they sent me on my way with a surgery date.

I am opting to do the surgery with no anesthesia for the safety of the baby and myself since past surgeries have proven that I am not a champ at all when it comes to anesthesia. They'll basically stick my head in a big foam block to immobilize it, and then I just lay there and try to not run away as fast as I can. They'll numb the surface of the eye, cut back the conjunctiva, and dissect out as much of the freckle as they can without puncturing the eye. Chances are they won't be able to remove it all, just enough for a biopsy. Then they'll put the conjunctiva flap back in place and finally give me a cool eye patch. A few days of recovery, and all is well.

It'll take 7-14 days to hear back from the pathology lab to know if the freckle is benign or cancerous. If it is benign, we start all over again with the "measure yearly" business. If it is cancer, we start eye drops to kill it and/or schedule a second, more invasive surgery to remove it all. 

Risks for the surgery are the chance of spreading the cancer, if it is cancer or puncturing the eye. A punctured eye will just need an additional surgery to repair the tear or hole using stitches or a graft.

So how am I actually handling all this? I definitely wish I didn't have to deal with this while pregnant, but many pregnant women deal with much more dire circumstances. I have my husband not-deployed to be able to help, three warm dogs to snuggle with, audio books to prevent boredom, and a mom on call to fly out if something really drastic should occur. This is outpatient surgery with little pain and very short recovery time. All will be alright, even if it does turn out to be cancer. Not many people can really say that. I am blessed, 99.9% healthy, and very, very excited to be a mom in 4-5 months.

Please feel free to pray for quick recovery and pray that I look good in an eye patch. I'll keep everyone updated on how good I look, of course.

Surgery is scheduled for the morning of the 26th of this month.

Here's a blurry picture of the nefarious freckle....it's right on the edge of my iris.