Playing-post retina surgery

[Wes Krygsman]

Anyone have any experience with a detached retina? How long did you wait after surgery to return to playing?

I had a crazy emergency surgery a week ago for a severely detached retina with a tear and fluid buildup last Tuesday, and I am itching to play.

I am of course not supposed to play, or lift anything more than 5 pounds, along with many other restrictions (like laying and sitting face down for the past week, including right now). I do take doctor's orders seriously and I won't try to play until cleared of course, but I was wondering what everyone else's timeline was.

[thevillagetuba]

I can't help you there, but congrats on doing we after the surgery. My father has a detached retina and was told that the surgery would only have a 50/50 chance of giving him vision for a couple of years, at most. So, congrats on being able to get it fixed and best of luck with recovery!

[Sandlapper]

Call your doctor's office and ask to speak to his nurse is the safest thing to do. It's kind of like reading, which is a big no-no after surgery. You want the eye to stay still to not stress the retina and tear it loose again. To read music, your eyes are gong to be moving left to right and up and down, same as reading a book. So the question to your eye doc might be how long before I can read a book or bend your head down down safely.

Best of luck. Your doctor's nurse should be able to provide an answer.

[Rick F]

I wouldn't ask the TNFJ for their opinions on this. I would follow your doctor's orders implicitly. There was a eupher in one of the bands I played in some time ago who came back to playing too soon after a detached retina. His detached again. Don't know if it was reading the part or the vibrations from playing. He had to lay off for six months before coming back... this time laying flat on his back for months. Your eye sight is nothing to take lightly.

[imperialbari]

Your vision is too precious to tinker with. Follow the surgeon’s advice with a margin on the safe side.

In the meantime play guitar or piano.

Klaus

[Wes Krygsman]

I am taking my recovery seriously. I have been taking it very easy, laying or sitting face down 98% of the time I am awake since surgery and moving very slowly and cautiously when I do have to move. This past Wednesday, my surgeon cleared me to be able to lift my head to look forward while I move around the house, but to keep my head down only most of the time, not all the time. I have been enjoying the short breaks.

He did say to keep all the other restrictions in place, and I am following his directions. I do take my vision very seriously, but unfortunately, I will still be mostly blind in that eye. The surgery was an attempt to save what little vision I had left in it, rather than to make it better. There is a 50/50 chance that it could save the current vision, and a tiny sliver of a chance that it'll get better. I'll never be able to see clear enough out of it to read again though.

My retina specialist surgeon (46 years in practice) has never seen or heard of anything like my case, the progression or the severity. He also doesn't think the 2 thinks I had are actually related, just coincidental. He sent me to a few colleagues, and also the head of the eye dept of UMDNJ at Rutgers to document my case for future eye dr students to study with it being so rare. Lucky me!

I had blood pooling in my eye since February. It was blocking a small part of my central vision in my left eye. It was caused by a branch retinal vein occlusion (blockage that caused the backup), which is fairly routine (at least in older folks 60+, I am only 30) and I should have recovered completely with 100% of my vision back. It did go away naturally, as my doc predicted. In the end of May, beginning of June I was completely clear, back to normal vision, but the blood came back. This time it was worse, blocking almost all my left eye's vision, so he wanted to do surgery to remove the blood. It was not an urgent matter, and with my elementary band job, we agreed to do the minimal procedure during the summer.

When I went for my last appt. before surgery in early August, he found my retina was detached because of an infection that started behind it. The July appt. ultrasound showed no problems with my retina, but in the August ultrasound, it was detached in a few places (and cinched in the shape of a diagonal bow tie). The infection caused fluid to buildup behind the retina which made ripples/waves in the retina, and when the infection cleared up, the fluid went down. The ripples turned into folds, which blocked my central vision.

The surgery became much more complicated and critical at that point, but he needed to wait until the infection subsided a bit. He needed to remove my lens to give him more room to work on flattening and reattaching my retina, which took over 2 hours of surgery. They injected silicone oil to hold the retina in place and that's the reason I have to be face down, to let gravity do the work on the oil.

I was just wondering if anyone here has had any retina surgery and played soon after, just like the wisdom teeth removal that gets asked here from time to time. I do realize this is not the place to ask about my specific case, but I wanted to know about other tuba players' experiences.