Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Where Oh Where Has This Year Gone?
My goodness time has been flying by lately. While I was waiting for some videos to upload into my iMovie app tonight, I started looking at the last 12 months worth of pictures and am amazed at how much my kiddos have grown. I don't really feel like I've ever caught up with this year. Being down for over a month at the beginning of the year really takes its toll! I am happy to report that 6 months out from surgery, I am doing fantastically well. I have had no scarring and no loss of vision in any area that's pertinent to my daily function or my career. I have a slight deficit in the periphery of my right eye near my nose and my other eye more than compensates for it. I am able to practice dentistry without any problems. I am still LOVING my new job. I am finally able to do the kinds of dentistry that I've always wanted to do. I have gone to several training courses over the past few months and feel like I am finally catching up with technology in my field. My boss is in the process of building a larger place for us to move into by the end of the year and it's fun to see that process as well.
This summer was filled with camps, classes and short vacations. Joshua attended an art camp at his school, a young botanist camp at the Botanical Research Institue of Texas and spent countless hours in the pool. He took private swim lessons this summer and went from a kid that wouldn't let go of the wall last summer to a kid that will jump off the diving board and swim the length of the pool. I am thrilled! He also likes to dive underwater with me to touch the bottom in the 10 foot end of the pool. So thankful for the wonderful teacher he had this summer! Joshua also hit another major milestone this summer. He spent 2 weeks in Midland with Grandma and Grandpa Robinson by himself! He had a blast and wasn't homesick in the least. He is already talking about the next time he gets to go out there alone. I think SKYPE helped out with the homesickness issue and the fact that my parents had him so busy he never had a chance to dwell on it. Lily wasn't overly amused at being left behind but she got some good girl time with me to do things that Joshua would never go for if he'd been here.
Miss Lily started a dance class this summer and is absolutely hooked. She's my dare devil and has absolutely NO FEAR. Unfortunately, she's also a little on the clumsy side so she ends up bruised in several places. I have been looking for some sort of outlet for all this energy but she's too young for most programs. I found a little dance class that is right next door to her school that had a summer class for 2.5-3 year olds. She LOVED it. They do tap, ballet and tumbling and it is so cute! Tap seems to be her favorite but I think it's mainly the deliciously loud shoes! I got to sit in and watch the final class of the summer and was impressed by all that she had learned. She was the youngest in the class but seemed to have no trouble keeping up. We have signed on for the year and I am looking forward to the little recital in the spring!
School started on August 8 for Joshua. It seems so early but I love the early release in May. We are able to hit vacation spots before they become crazy crowded. With his late birthday, Joshua just started Kindergarten. He loves it so far. He turns 6 next week but the cut off for Texas is September 1. He had a wonderful time in Pre-K last year at the same school and we can't wait to see what this year brings!
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
And the "Eyes" have it...
What a month this has been! I wrote last about my awesome new job and how well it was going. Well 3 weeks into the new job things went all upside down and backward! My job is still great...I just havent been to work in the past month due to emergency eye surgery that I had to have on Valentine's Day!
My parents had come into town for the weekend to see the kids. We hadn't seen them since Christmas, so we had done some catching up and fun stuff over the weekend. With my new work schedule, my parents come in on Friday and were going to leave on Tuesday to spend my day off with me on Monday. I had a routine eye exam scheduled late Monday afternoon to get my contact prescription renewed. I had asked my parents to pick Joshua up from school and I would get Lily on the way home from my appointment. Well, that never happened.
I am VERY thankful to have a thorough optometrist. She has and recommends a retinal scan once a year. I am horribly near sighted and have been since puberty. My contact prescription has been the same for the past three years though. I have also had a small flash of light that would go off in my right eye from time to time but every time they dilated my eyes and did the scan it was normal. I had been told that due to the degree of correction needed on my eyes, that this would happen and we would monitor it. My scan came back looking vastly different on my right eye this time, and they sent me directly to a retinal specialist that evening. I had surgery first thing the next morning.
Apparently I had been living with a partial retinal detachment in my right eye for about 4-6 months. I didn't have any pain or loss of vision. Everything seemed to be fine in that eye. In fact, with my contacts in my vision was 20/20. The shape of my eyes makes my retina very thin and it tore a small hole in one spot. It had been there long enough that I had accumulated fluid under my retina and that was causing more of it to detach. Long story short, they had to put a band around my eye to relieve some of the pressure on the thin retinal tissues, then made incisions and drained all the vitreous out so they could laser my retina back into place. After all that, they placed a large bubble of gas in my eye to hold everything in place until the lasering could scar in. Some fluid was left under my retina because it was very gel like and they would have caused more damage to get it all out. The first two days post op, I had to lay or sit face down. I am NOT a stomach sleeper and this was tough! We rented a chair with a bed attachment to help out (think massage chair minus the masseuse) and it proved to be a life saver. After the first two days, I had to lay on my left side exclusively. I had to sleep with pillows behind me so I wouldn't roll over and the whole nine yards. After two weeks, the main area where the tear was had healed beautifully but I had an area on the left that hadn't healed due to the fluid that they had to leave under the retina at the time of surgery. This area needed to be relasered and they could do that in office. Sounds easy, right? Not so much! I had to have a shot IN MY EYE. I still cringe at the thought. Oh the HORROR of it all. I have never expected to dab my eyes and come back with blood on the kleenex but that's what I got for about 20 minutes after the injection. The lasering itself was uncomfortable to. It felt like pulsing bursts of a really bad migraine coming on and everything was a hideous shade of neon pink for 15 minutes after they finished. I then had to lay on my right side for 10 days for that to scar in.
I was finally released to be up and moving on Monday (almost 1 month after my original surgery). I still have the gas bubble in my eye and cant' see very well. It is shrinking, so at the moment I have a line through the middle of my vision. With glasses on, I can see some detail above the line. Below the line, it's like looking through thick aquarium glass. It bothers me to walk in crowds because I can't really see anyone coming up on my right side. Night vision is also off due to the glare and odd reflection of lights off the bubble. I can't even really describe what I see and don't see at this time. The gas bubble should be gone in another 4 weeks or so and then I can be fitted with a new contact prescription for that eye. They're not done with me yet, though. Since they took all the vitreous humor out of my eye, I have a cataract forming on the lens. So in 3 -4 months I get to have cataract surgery at the age of 34. They are planning on burning my prescription into the new lens so my vision will be corrected for the most part. I think Lasik would have been easier! The important thing is, they saved my vision! I was perilously close to losing it based on what the surgeon has told me. SCARY!! It's a Valentine's Day I will never forget....
My parents had come into town for the weekend to see the kids. We hadn't seen them since Christmas, so we had done some catching up and fun stuff over the weekend. With my new work schedule, my parents come in on Friday and were going to leave on Tuesday to spend my day off with me on Monday. I had a routine eye exam scheduled late Monday afternoon to get my contact prescription renewed. I had asked my parents to pick Joshua up from school and I would get Lily on the way home from my appointment. Well, that never happened.
I am VERY thankful to have a thorough optometrist. She has and recommends a retinal scan once a year. I am horribly near sighted and have been since puberty. My contact prescription has been the same for the past three years though. I have also had a small flash of light that would go off in my right eye from time to time but every time they dilated my eyes and did the scan it was normal. I had been told that due to the degree of correction needed on my eyes, that this would happen and we would monitor it. My scan came back looking vastly different on my right eye this time, and they sent me directly to a retinal specialist that evening. I had surgery first thing the next morning.
Apparently I had been living with a partial retinal detachment in my right eye for about 4-6 months. I didn't have any pain or loss of vision. Everything seemed to be fine in that eye. In fact, with my contacts in my vision was 20/20. The shape of my eyes makes my retina very thin and it tore a small hole in one spot. It had been there long enough that I had accumulated fluid under my retina and that was causing more of it to detach. Long story short, they had to put a band around my eye to relieve some of the pressure on the thin retinal tissues, then made incisions and drained all the vitreous out so they could laser my retina back into place. After all that, they placed a large bubble of gas in my eye to hold everything in place until the lasering could scar in. Some fluid was left under my retina because it was very gel like and they would have caused more damage to get it all out. The first two days post op, I had to lay or sit face down. I am NOT a stomach sleeper and this was tough! We rented a chair with a bed attachment to help out (think massage chair minus the masseuse) and it proved to be a life saver. After the first two days, I had to lay on my left side exclusively. I had to sleep with pillows behind me so I wouldn't roll over and the whole nine yards. After two weeks, the main area where the tear was had healed beautifully but I had an area on the left that hadn't healed due to the fluid that they had to leave under the retina at the time of surgery. This area needed to be relasered and they could do that in office. Sounds easy, right? Not so much! I had to have a shot IN MY EYE. I still cringe at the thought. Oh the HORROR of it all. I have never expected to dab my eyes and come back with blood on the kleenex but that's what I got for about 20 minutes after the injection. The lasering itself was uncomfortable to. It felt like pulsing bursts of a really bad migraine coming on and everything was a hideous shade of neon pink for 15 minutes after they finished. I then had to lay on my right side for 10 days for that to scar in.
I was finally released to be up and moving on Monday (almost 1 month after my original surgery). I still have the gas bubble in my eye and cant' see very well. It is shrinking, so at the moment I have a line through the middle of my vision. With glasses on, I can see some detail above the line. Below the line, it's like looking through thick aquarium glass. It bothers me to walk in crowds because I can't really see anyone coming up on my right side. Night vision is also off due to the glare and odd reflection of lights off the bubble. I can't even really describe what I see and don't see at this time. The gas bubble should be gone in another 4 weeks or so and then I can be fitted with a new contact prescription for that eye. They're not done with me yet, though. Since they took all the vitreous humor out of my eye, I have a cataract forming on the lens. So in 3 -4 months I get to have cataract surgery at the age of 34. They are planning on burning my prescription into the new lens so my vision will be corrected for the most part. I think Lasik would have been easier! The important thing is, they saved my vision! I was perilously close to losing it based on what the surgeon has told me. SCARY!! It's a Valentine's Day I will never forget....
Monday, January 23, 2012
New Year, New Beginnings
Things have been all topsy turvy in the Millner household since the holidays. It actually all started in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have been unhappy at my job for quite some time. I was in a very stagnant place. The other dentist that I worked for had a very set routine and didn't want to learn anything new...PERIOD. I have known since before Lily was born that I had no future with the practice. The office manager (owner's wife) is never going to be able to cede enough of her control over the office for a true partnership to happen. I have stayed in the location for several reasons. First and foremost, it's convenient. I am 10 minutes from home and 10 minutes from both kids' schools. I am able to drop everything and go pick up the kids if they need me (mainly because I'm not busy but I'll get to that in a second) and it's usually not a problem to shuffle patients around if one of us is sick. Second, I hate confrontation and am not always wild about change and the unknown! Also, when I came back from maternity leave with Lily, the economy had bottomed out and there wasn't anywhere to go. It's still slow in a lot of areas. I guess teeth tend to get the back burner when money is tight, and many have lost their dental insurance.
Anyway, there were some very frustrating and disturbing trends going on in the office over the past year. I can overlook one or two instances but it was becoming more and more common. My schedule would suffer so the owner could be busy. If I was busy, it was because I was cleaning teeth. NOT what I really went to school for. I had also taken a class on Enteral Conscious Sedation back in March of last year and am still waiting on them to order the equipment so I can put said certificate to good use! So everything came to a head shortly after Thanksgiving and I called a dental broker to see what was out there.
Within a few hours of sending my resume to the broker I had a dentist in Fort Worth contact me about a position with her practice. I have spent the past 6 weeks meeting with her, doing working interviews and ironing out all of the parts of a new contract. I signed the contract last Monday and gave my notice on Tuesday! I am very excited about my change of venue. The practice I am going to is cutting edge and they are willing to teach and mentor me! It's certainly not convenient but I think the pros outweigh the cons in the long run. The only big change to our normal schedule will be Joshua going to after school care three days a week and he's excited about it. His best buddy goes to after school care so the two of them will have more playtime together. I finished working at the other office last Thursday and decided to take a week to myself and recharge. I start this Thursday and am spending the next few days organizing closets and getting our new schedule figured out!
Anyway, there were some very frustrating and disturbing trends going on in the office over the past year. I can overlook one or two instances but it was becoming more and more common. My schedule would suffer so the owner could be busy. If I was busy, it was because I was cleaning teeth. NOT what I really went to school for. I had also taken a class on Enteral Conscious Sedation back in March of last year and am still waiting on them to order the equipment so I can put said certificate to good use! So everything came to a head shortly after Thanksgiving and I called a dental broker to see what was out there.
Within a few hours of sending my resume to the broker I had a dentist in Fort Worth contact me about a position with her practice. I have spent the past 6 weeks meeting with her, doing working interviews and ironing out all of the parts of a new contract. I signed the contract last Monday and gave my notice on Tuesday! I am very excited about my change of venue. The practice I am going to is cutting edge and they are willing to teach and mentor me! It's certainly not convenient but I think the pros outweigh the cons in the long run. The only big change to our normal schedule will be Joshua going to after school care three days a week and he's excited about it. His best buddy goes to after school care so the two of them will have more playtime together. I finished working at the other office last Thursday and decided to take a week to myself and recharge. I start this Thursday and am spending the next few days organizing closets and getting our new schedule figured out!
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