August 16, 1999
My Story
Joanie Stockdale

I've worn glasses since I was in the first grade. I remember the first day I got them - I could see shingles on roofs and leaves on trees and so many other things for the very first time. I loved my glasses! Sure, there was that mean boy who called me "Four Eyes", but Miss Altoff said I looked very intelligent. She's still my favorite teacher.

I'm forty-six years old now. Last year I went to my primary care eye doctor thinking that I probably needed stronger glasses yet again. To my surprise, he told me that I had corneal dystrophy in my left eye. This could be solved by PRK, he told me, but first we would have to scrape the cornea. This first chapter of my ongoing nightmare began on March 6, 1998. The scrape was unsuccessful - my cornea did not regenerate in the desired way. Not only that, but during the agonizing healing process, my eye tore one Friday morning when I opened it because the alarm went off. That was my first "erosion" - but my doctor wrote to my insurance carrier that I had had "recurrent erosions". In fact, I never had one prior to the corneal scraping.

The next step: PRK. I had time to think about the whole thing since I opted to wait until May to have the first procedure done so that I would not miss work. I was a ten-month employee at that time in the Fine Arts Department of a small liberal arts college. I loved my job. As a single mother, I was ecstatic that my two children's tuition would be paid due to the fact that I worked at the college. The people with whom I worked were my dear friends, and I did not want to disrupt the department, even for the two or three days I thought I would need to recover from the surgery.

I wasn't frightened, really. I trusted my doctor, and figured it couldn't be any worse than childbirth, divorce or the neck surgery I had ten years ago. Besides, life was good! A wonderful man named Peter had moved in down the street and asked me to go for a walk one day. That was Day One of a wonderful new relationship.

Peter drove me to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for the first procedure on May 24th. We met the surgeon there because this was the nearest laser machine. It was an hour and a half drive for him and for us. I was amazed at how little time the whole thing took. The laser was very loud. But, truthfully, it was all over before I had time to think.

The month following the surgery on my first eye was awful. The left eye was healing and the right eye couldn't use my old glasses because the lenses of my glasses had to work together. My right eye, the uncorrected one, was my dominant eye. I had no idea how important eye dominance was. Even at this time, though, I hadn't a clue how important it would become later. I was persuaded to wear a contact lens in the right eye until the month was up. I was afraid that it would not heal in time for me to have the procedure done on June 26th. Peter and I kept saying over and over again that it would be all over by the 4th of July.

My eye did heal in time, and Peter and I returned to Cedar Rapids on June 26th. Nothing seemed right to me that day. The pre-op instructions were different from the ones Peter and I had both heard just four weeks earlier. We both questioned the nurse. The nurses were confused about the number of deadening drops I had been given. There was a party-like atmosphere in the laser waiting room - friends were visiting a nurse and they were laughing loudly. My doctor was running late….but it would all be over soon.

Again, the whole procedure took just seconds. Finally, Peter and I were outside walking toward his truck to get me home, healed and done with all of this - My left eye had been scraped and lasered….my right eye contact lensed, and now lasered. It had all started four months ago, and we thought we were almost done. All done by the 4th of July…

But a nurse ran out the door after us and asked me if I was Joan Stockdale. She asked me to come back in.

The nightmare had just begun.

My doctor's face was as white as his jacket. He told me that he had just done the wrong thing to my eye. He told me the laser had been incorrectly programmed. I told him I wanted Peter in the room. It was obvious that my doctor wasn't sure what to do now. He asked us to leave. He called someone. He had us come back in. He told us he had decided to laser my eye again right away to try to reduce the "shoulders" on the ditch that now existed in the center of my cornea. He hoped it would help with glare. I really had no choice but to agree to the extra procedure. There was an air of nervousness in the laser room. Before he began the second procedure, I asked my doctor if the deadening drops would have worn off. He was quite surprised that I had not been given fresh drops. When it was over I went out into the waiting room. Peter was gone. The nurses who had been having such a good time earlier had asked him to leave the area. He was standing down a hallway. He was worried, of course, and resented the fact that they had sent him away. I was too much in shock to even take it in, but, looking back, I can't believe they did that.

The Risk Management Director of the hospital approached us. She was calling me "Honey", assuring me that there would be no charge for this and that God would take care of us all. (I was billed for that day, and later, when I requested my records from the hospital, I was sent the personal and confidential records of two other patients mixed in with mine. I couldn't help but wonder who got mine.)

So I began the healing process again, this time for no good reason. I was led to believe that as soon as the eye healed it would be fixable. Peter and I both thought as we drove home that day that we would be back soon for the repair of my eye. "All over by Labor Day…" That was the first carrot of hope dangled in front of me. There were to be many, many more.

I was told the following Monday morning at my post-surgical appointment that I would have to give the eye time to "grow back". It was now July. He said we'd be able to operate in October or November. I was due back at work on August 3rd. I tried contacts, but nothing could help my unbelievably bad vision.

GASH is the best acronym I've ever come across. Glare, arcing, spider webs and haloes. My "glares" were spider web-shaped and consumed my total vision range. Only those who have experienced this understands what I mean. There are not words that adequately convey how things look to someone who hasn't seen like that.

I waited weeks and weeks for a succession of contact lenses which my doctor kept promising were "sure to help." Each one was worse than the last. After my doctor said to me that it sort of seemed like we were "chasing our tails", I decided it was time for a second opinion, and went to a Midwest tertiary institution's corneal clinic. The head doctor of my original doctor's group (who, to this day I have never met) tried very hard to prevent me from leaving his practice. He called me from a payphone at the airport and told me he knew how good my vision was. It was an unpleasant fight, but I finally got "permission" to go for the second opinion.

The interns and residents at the University gathered round, amazed at the condition of my eye. It was only at this point that I realized how unusual and complicated a situation I faced. I was told that the eye would have to grow back for at least six more months. At this point in time I knew that I had to go back to work. With glasses, I thought I could do it. Things went from bad to worse, though, and in a "routine" meeting on a Friday afternoon I was told that if I came to work Monday morning I would lose all the time I had accrued toward total disability.

I guess I had always thought that if I were ever to be labeled disabled I would have a vote.

That night all four wheels came off. I woke up in the middle of the night in total desperation. I could actually feel the fear running through my blood. I couldn't sleep, eat or think. My voice was monotone, and I was someone else, not me. When I looked out my own front door nothing was familiar. The weight was too heavy for me. My spirit was broken. My whole family was out of town, but Peter held me up as best he could. I spoke with a mental health nurse who talked me through the worst times. It was the weekend from hell. On Monday morning there was no question of me going to work. I went instead to my physician who put me on anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications. She kept assuring me that she knew I was a strong person and would survive this. I didn't think so. Needless to say, I lost my job. My temporary replacement was hired full-time.

With time my mental condition improved, but I felt unproductive and weak. I hated that my teenage children had to see me like that. My church gave us food at Christmastime. I was always the one who delivered the food baskets to others.

In December I was introduced to a low vision specialist at the University. My low vision specialist helped me to understand the importance of the dominant eye issue. My right eye, the "overcorrected one" (what an understatement) was my dominant eye. For forty-six years it had been leading my left eye, and the left eye had been following. Now, neither one could do its job. Therefore, I was suffering from what he called visual confusion. He prescribed fogged lenses for the right eye to help my brain train the left eye to become dominant. The first lens was very dense. I wore it for four or five weeks and then went to a less dense lens. The lenses were a passive aid, and at least it took the right eye totally out. It was kind of nice not to see three of everything for a while.

On February 5, 1999, eight months after the surgery, I was one of three patients involved in a Physician's Conference at the University. Thirty-some ophthalmologists attended and every one of them looked in my eye. The other two patients and I spent the day sharing our vocabulary and our experiences. That was extremely healthy for each of us. Their eyes were reparable. The consensus of the conference for me, though, was that there is no technology in existence that can help me. My eye has done all it can for itself, but I can't see through the scar.

And so, I'm waiting. I did survive the mental collapse. I am my children's strong mother again. I was afraid for my relationship with Peter for a short while, because, as he once said, I was not physically handicapped when we met, and now I am. He has stood by me, though, and we are very much together. I pretend a lot that my vision is better than it is. I have been re-hired by the college in a different department. Peter and I go to Iowa City monthly so that they can monitor my eye's pressure. I put four steroid drops a day in it in the hope that perhaps the scar will be diminished.

My father died five years ago. He was your old fashioned house-call physician. He was my hero. It took me months to accept the idea that I, his daughter, could ever sue a doctor. At an emotional level, that was somehow totally unacceptable to me. I had to get over that, though. I also had to get over just walking out of my original surgeon's practice, too. I am not the kind of person who leaves and never comes back. My mom and I went to see him one day so that I could tell him that I forgive him. We all cried.

I have been hurt physically, emotionally and financially. I don't know what the final outcome will be. I know that even in my good eye, my night vision isn't great. I have no contrast in the right eye. There are lots of things I don't have. But I'm standing up for myself, and I'm trying to be patient. I have learned from other difficult times in my life that what doesn't destroy you makes you stronger. I've learned that surviving these things helps you to be able to help others as they try to survive.

Maybe it will be all over by next 4th of July. Maybe the year after that. Maybe never. Full moons and fireworks are pretty cool in triple vision.