Cataract Lens Replacement and Rejection: Understanding How Our Bodies Work
I wrote a piece a short time ago on what I was learning from cataract surgery. I am still learning, which accounts for this piece and certainly others to follow. Here’s a link to the earlier piece:
Next Lesson Learned and Surely Not the Last
About 10 days after the second surgery, which followed the first surgery by a week, my eyes began to get worse. They started to get redder; they were irritated and inflamed and weepy. I resembled someone who had been drinking — lots. I could barely tolerate light. And, I was remarkably uncomfortable. Someone who saw me at an event asked if I was crying. I have been wearing sun glasses and a baseball cap every minute of every day (and night).
As the days progressed, I realized I was regressing in terms of my eyes healing from the cataract surgery and surely what I was experiencing several weeks after surgery was not the commonplace symptomology one should have after lens replacements.
To state it simply, my eyes actually felt like there were foreign objects in them; something in my eyes did not belong there.
On the medical eye front, I reached out to my surgeon. Even though he is away, he responded from afar promptly and connected me to his colleague and I had an appointment arranged for early the next morning. Remarkable actually. His colleague is wonderful and smart and kind and she has been trying to calm my eyes down. She said I was having an immunological response to the new lens, like I was rejecting them. But, even as she was and is helping me, I kept wondering why my eyes were (and still are) struggling so hard to accept a foreign body. Remember, too, that I am a trauma expert.
It took some reflection and help and I realized, in short, that the body (in this case, my eyes) was keeping the score because the trauma I had experienced in the past was showing itself off in the present.
Let me explain.
There is a rich literature on trauma’s impact on our bodies. Studies have confirmed that women who have experienced sexual trauma avoid colonoscopies; they can’t tolerate being violated again in a similar area. And there is an abundant research on how trauma affects our breathing, our heart rate, our weight, our healing, our overall health. Surely it affects our immunological responses.
And, then it struck me: Since I have been physically abused, both in childhood and adulthood, I have struggled to heal from surgeries. By way of example: When I had surgery to repair my wrist that was hit, there was (and still is) a lump where I was struck. It doesn’t hurt but it doesn’t go away either. The visible lump remains as a permanent reminder.
So, it should not have come as a shock to me that when some foreign objects were surgically implanted in me (lenses), my body reacted and my immune system went on high alert. The foreign object insertion in essence touched off my vulnerabilities, even though the insertion of new lenses to replace cloudy old ones is a positive, not a negative. If I had focused (ironic word here), I would have anticipated this but I didn’t recognize pre-surgery what occurred post-surgery.
One way of describing this immunological response is to say that the eye surgery set off my trauma “tuning fork;” the surgery reactivated past trauma and brought it forward with a vengeance. Thus, I had red and totally irritated, out of sorts, eyes.
I am very familiar with “tuning forks” and the tuning fork orchestras they can generate in those who have experienced trauma. I have written about this at length in articles and books. I have even created tuning fork art to symbolize the outsized response that occurs when an old traumatic event is triggered by a new traumatic event, which surgery is and can be.
The above image is an example of my trauma art. I created it in response to Viola Ford Fletcher’s story recounting the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 she lived through and the abundant turning forks generated from the violence she experiences, trauma with which she has been and still is living (she is now 103). This piece of art is being donated to an organization in Prince George’s County that focuses on increased awareness and memorializations of and reparations for the lynchings that have occurred (and often are unrecognized) in American history. That organization provides a fine home for this art piece.
I shared my eye revelation with others, including the students I taught yesterday in a course on trauma anniversaries and the tuning forks these anniversaries generate. It made for a class that was remarkable in its candor. And, while I am still struggling and not completely accepting of my foreign lenses yet (I have hope), I do understand what my eyes are saying: you (Karen) put something foreign into us that is disruptive to your body’s integrity and it serves as a reminder of past physical and unwanted intrusions.
Bottom line, I have new medication, new insight, new opportunities to apply to myself what I often apply to others: an understanding of the price we pay for what has happened to us in our past. Trauma doesn’t go away. The body speaks to it, even though we work to ameliorate the trauma. And, there’s a powerful lesson here for us all: we need to own our past and recognize the cost it places on us over our lifetimes. That’s one valuable lesson.
Note: A special thank you to my Rutgers SSW students for listening and sharing and to Drs. SM and VY, I am one grateful patient for your understanding and patience. To GK, as always, you are spot-on and ever so wise.
