Day five

It has almost been one week since the surgery. Yesterday I had to go to a wedding and do several errands. I noticed that whenever I wore sunglasses, it would make the bottom of the bruises sweat and as they were sweating they were turning darker and bigger--like it was pulling the blood to the surface.

After the wedding, I came home and iced for a full hour to see if I could take the dark bruises back down to where they were the day before.  They were much worse by wearing sunglasses most of the day.

I think it helped to ice it for a long time last night. Instead of being worse, by this morning, it actually appears to be a little better than yesterday.  Today is Sunday and I am not going to go to Church in sunglasses, so I will do a lot of icing and see where that takes me for tomorrow.  Here are the comparison pictures between yesterday and today:

TODAY

YESTERDAY

The area around the surgery is becoming quite oily (top) because of not being able to clean it thoroughly. That will go away after they take out the stitches.  Even though, in these photos, there does not seem to be a significant difference, there really is. The reddness is much lighter today and there is more yellow filling in where the dark purple was. My eyes feel much "brighter" today--not so swollen.  That is a nice feeling, too. 

The little black strings from the stitches are becoming more of a nuisance. The bandages that held them down have turned mushy and fallen off. My surgeon daughter told me that the bandages are designed to get gooy and mushy and then fall off, but that leaves the spaces around the eyes sticky and oily.  Without the bandages, the strings tend to flip in a variety of directions and sometimes land near the eye. When they land around the tear ducts, it makes the eye itch and I can't really rub it.  The tear ducts are itching almost contantly, anyway. That has been the most unpleasant part of the whole surgery process. I have not experienced pain.

My goal today is to do a lot of icing to see if I can get the redness to go away even more. As part of that process, I will try not to wear the sunglasses at all today. That really aggrivates the swelling and bruises.  However, my grandchildren will come over after church today and they have been afraid of looking at me without the sunglasses, so my sunglass avoidance may be foiled.  Until tomorrow....