Picture 3 months post laser surgery

January 13, 2009. About three months from the surgery to deal with Scruffy's iris melanosis/noma. (Dr. B., the ophthalmologist, is still convinced that it was the latter.) Here is this visit's eye picture - well, I spent two days taking pictures trying to get a really good one, but this was the best of a bad bunch:




It shows, in the lower outside section of Scruffy's left eye, the brown tissue that had me worried that it might be the return of the tumor. It has changed shape since the surgery, and size. But Dr. B. is convinced that what is showing is not a remaining tumor, but that the iris is significantly thinned now, and there is colored tissue under it that is now visible, and brown. He saw no elevation of the brown tissue, and no sign that there was anything unusual about it. He also said again that some of the discoloration might be detritis from the laser's burning of the tissue during the surgery. He did not feel that three months was necessarily the limit for any sort of further changes that might happen with the left eye. He felt that the eye was healing satisfactorily at this point. The pupil is somewhat distorted in shape now, and if you look at the eye from the right angle, you can see that there is a slight irregularity of the surface of the eye, I suppose caused by the removal of tissue that the laser demolished.

I picked this picture specifically, however, because it had a good view (relatively speaking) of the iris melanosis in Scruffy's RIGHT EYE. Which is growing, at least as rapidly as the left one did. I compare the left eye pictures from May 5, 2006 to September, 2008 - just over two years, and the incredible growth and branching out - those awful tentacles - that occurred in it in such a short time. And I stew about what the progression of this melanosis in the other eye means - if it continues at the speed it seems to be demonstrating, I suppose the likelihood is more laser surgery on the other eye, at the least.

We will be continuing the every-six-months appointments, to monitor the left eye's situation, and to hopefully prevent the right eye from getting into the same shape because it was allowed to grow so much before the surgery was done. The plus of the situation is that we are now Dr. B.'s patient, which I am much happier about.