Martin M.
I am blind in my left eye following surgery at this clinic
I am blind in my left eye following blehpharoplasty (upper and lower eyelid) and neck lift surgery at this clinic in Istanbul. Both my right and left eye received deep cornea abrasions during the procedure. The doctor has been unable or unwilling to tell me how this happened. I have seen multiple ophthalmologists and cornea specialists since being back in the U.S. who tell me the most likely scenario is that they allowed my corneas to dry out so badly that any minor touch of my cornea would result in these deep abrasions. There is no way to know, because nobody from the clinic is telling me what happened. I have learned that the cornea has five layers. Both abrasions go 2 1/2 layers into my cornea and the left abrasion spans the entire cornea. I have partial vision in my right eye because the area of the abrasion is not as large and is in one quadrant. It has been over a month since the procedure. I was put in contact lenses to protect the remaining cornea layers, am on antibiotic drops four times per day, have to take a daily anti viral oral medication, have to use erythromycin gel at night and wear a sleep mask to protect my eyes. I am also on pain medication for significant left eye pain. While at the clinic in Instanbul I told the doctor and multiple staff multiple times that I could see nothing. That I was blind. They repeatedly told me the gel they use during surgery causes some temporary blurriness for about 3 days. I explained over and over that it was not some blurriness and we were well behind 3 days. It was blindness. They repeatedly told me that it would get better. Not once did they have anyone look at my eyes. Even after 8 days post surgery when I could see nothing, the Dr messaged me to give it 3-4 more days. That would have been 11-12 days post surgery. Thankfully I didn’t listen to him and immediately went to an emergency eye clinic at the hospital after I got back to the U.S. They saw me immediately. I have had to go 2x per week. They are monitoring the healing of the abrasions, but have noted that my left cornea is healing with ripples in it. It is not smooth. For this reason they have discussed the potential of either laser surgery or a cornea transplant, but they have to first give it a few months to see the final outcome. Prior to the surgery I had 20/15 (better than perfect in my right eye and 20/25 (near perfect vision in my left eye). Now I am 20/40 in my right eye and what I have come to know is CF in my left. CF means counting fingers. From 4 feet (about 1.3 meters away) I can tell how many fingers someone is holding up, if they hold them up against a light background. I can not see letters on a chart and cannot read fingers if they are standing farther away. I also had major trauma to my larynx from the intubation or extubation that had me coughing up blood and had throat pain for over a week. They took me twice to an ER (one time at 1 am) to see an ENT for my throat to be scoped, but neither time was an ENT available. I was in ICU for two days post surgery. My family was worried sick, because I was supposed to text them after the surgery, but as I went right from surgery to ICU, I could not contact them. They messaged one of the numbers I gave them to ask my status and was told that I was resting comfortably. I certainly was not. I was gasping for every breath with negative pressure pulmonary edema (fluid on my lungs). No explanation of how this rare complication happened either, but given the trauma my larynx experienced, doctors in the US believe they are linked (but again, the clinic offers no explanation as to what happened). They asked me to extend my stay due to the coughing up of blood, but I knew I had to get back to the U.S. Nobody there was addressing my deep blindness concerns or even looked at my eyes. The doctors in the US said that if they had even just looked at my eyes it would have been extremely apparent. My decision to have plastic surgery at this clinic is clearly the worst decision I have ever made.