Detached Retina

DMTC Co-Producer Steve Isaacson called just now and said the retina in his right eye had to be reattached today. He had noticed a shadow in his field of vision last week, but it had worsened today. Surgery was done immediately today, on an outpatient basis. As a result, "Tommy" will likely be cancelled this coming weekend, since the show can't be done without a drummer, Steve can't do it (or at least shouldn't do it), and there is little time to find someone who knows the show.

When I was 38 years old, in 1994, the retina in my left eye detached. I had been having a little trouble negotiating around darkened rooms all summer long, and when I went to the optometrist they caught the problem, using that test where you click a trigger every time you see a flash of light (there were big, awkward spans of time when I didn't click the trigger at all).

My blindness was in the left eye's field of vision occupied by the nose, and usually-covered anyway by the right eye - hence my slowness in catching the problem. I talked to the optometrist, and he said that I didn't have a retinal detachment, since he knew what that looked like, and referred me to a glaucoma specialist instead. The glaucoma specialist said my eye looked fine, except for the obvious retinal detachment. So, off to surgery....

Talking to Steve, it sounds like he had a less-radical reattachment procedure than I did. In both cases, reattachment is done by cryogenic freezing, using liquid nitrogen, applied to the outside of the eyeball.

In my case, they put me under using sodium pentothal (truth serum). They then more-or-less removed the eyeball from its socket, put a silicone rubber band around the outside to squeeze it more elongate, then applied the liquid nitrogen to the outside of the eyeball. When I awoke, the whole operating room was laughing. I asked why they were all laughing, and they all said, "oh, nothing!" (damned truth serum must have been all too effective - what was I talking about in my unconcious state?) Indeed, the silicone band remains around my eyeball to this day.

In Steve's case, they didn't remove the eyeball from its socket, or mess around with a silicone band, and instead injected an air bubble into the eyeball to help pin the retina against the shell of the eyeball prior to the cryogenic freezing.

In any event, Steve will need to recover and for the time being probably shouldn't do things like drive, drum, dance around on stage, or undertake any activity where depth perception will be an issue. If his recovery is like mine, for a short span of time of about a week, he'll have a 'dead-eye' look that is disconcerting, but potentially useful in situations like negotiating contracts, wheedling suppliers, or menacing rivals. But maybe he'll be luckier - it was a less-radical procedure after all.

On behalf of all of us at DMTC, and in the Sacramento-area constellation of community theaters, here's wishing Steve and Jan the best regarding this new challenge.