[blakekr]

#1058766

I have advanced TED and I am having a bilateral OD in two weeks. I’m nervous about the whole thing but I am definitely going through with the surgery, I waited a very long time before it could be scheduled.

We did our consult before the CT scan so we really did not talk about much of substance other than general risks of the surgery. It was also "observation day" at the hospital so the atmosphere was a bit circusy.

I’m a little concerned that the surgeon is not doing any blepharoplasty work doing the OD. Is this typical? There is no question that I need it but I wonder if he is avoiding it for now because he doesn’t feel comfortable with that kind of work, or if it’s common to do that separately. I have heard from several people who had bleph work done during their OD.

He is not doing it endoscopically and I have had people tell me that that is a red flag. Mind you, this doctor is extremely respected but I am not 100% sure if he is respected mainly for his research, or both research and surgery. I believe he’s done a total of 200 ODs (that doesn’t seem like a lot but I know this isn’t the most common surgery).

For people who got ODs, did you get the rest of your work (strabismus, lid work) from the same neuro ophth, or did you shop it around to more general plastic surgeons? Can you even do that?

I would appreciate your candid reactions to any and all of this. Thank you so much for reading!

[snelsen]

#1169850

Hi, this will be a short note today, for i am headed toward the bed! But wanted to respond to a few of your questions.
The sequence, as you may have read, is OD, strabismus, then eyelids. There are several ways to do OD’s. and it depends on where they trained, and the oculofacial surgeons (and sometimes ENT surgeons do one side of the decompression) do what they do best. So the approaches will vary. You want to heal completely from your OD’s. My double vision was terrible.
Generally, ophthalmologists who "do" strabismus surgeries, also do lots of pediatrics. So a different doc for this surgery.
Your eyes need to be where they are finally going to be, after the OD’s so the strabismus surgeon can make accurate measurements to move the muscles to get rid of the double vision. I LOVED LOVED LOVED my strabismus surgery. Also easy to recover from. Then, when all that has settled down, if your eyelids are retracted, the same doc who did the first surgery, and/or many plastic surgeons who "do" facelifts, etc tec, and/or the oculofacial surgeon lowers the upper eyelids, ad if needed, raises the lower eyelids. I just had that done, one eye at a time, in the past six weeks.

To me, it does not make sense to do the blepharoplasty the same time as the OD for the reason I mentioned above.

Just as a note-mostly terminology-the neuro ophthalmologist is not a surgeon, in my experince.

There is a to read if you use the search engine to read about all of these surgeries. I think I wrote a lot about my OD.
Biggest advice I can give you is to use cold packs, and elevate your head at night, will pretty much make things mooth sailing for you if no swelling.
Good night, Shirley

[elf]

#1169851

Hi, yes, the OD was done by one doctor, the eyelid surgery by another. The plan was to do OD on the 2nd eye a couple of months after the 1st, not bilateral, but either way is not uncommon.

Didn’t have the luxury to shop for doctors, but I would if I could. The 2nd eye’s OD wasn’t done at all as the original Dr left. Couldn’t travel to other provinces to shop for doctors. So waited. Decided with the new Dr that another OD wasn’t necessary. Did blepharoplasty on both.

The OD was not endoscopic, but the recovery wasn’t bad – watch out for the pain after the meds wear out, around day 5-6. But then it gets better. The blepharoplasty recovery took longer for some reason, about a month or 2.

[Author]

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