The first couple days after surgery the pain was pretty unbearable for her. It was extremely bad on the trip home from the hospital, so bad she threw up about a mile from home.
Fast forward 5 months and she still can't wear contacts which she had worn for the passed 25 year. The white portion of her eye is raised slightly around the iris which doesn't allow the contact to sit tight against her eye. That does seem to be slowly getting back to normal. She's currently wearing glasses with a much stronger lens in that eye. So, her vision is nowhere near what it was prior to the surgery. She still has some slight shading at around the 10 o'clock position of the vision in her right eye. We blame that shading on the fact that her original retinal specialist didn't sense a lot of urgency on getting the surgery done ASAP after the detachment. They told her to just go about her business but don't jump on trampolines or anything like that. She didn't like that decision so she went to another Dr which told her she needed surgery ASAP, so in the meantime he told her to only lay on her back or her right side until she could get in for surgery.
I had a retina tear, repaired, detached two weeks later, repaired, detached again six weeks later, repaired again and has held firm for ten years. In each event the doctors acted as if it was an extreme emergency, and rightfully so.
Your retina has a minimal blood supply when detached from the back of your eyeball, and can die off, resulting in blindness. I have a partial deficit where the tear was, and because the retina didn't heal smoothly against the back of the eyeball, straight lines get kind of wavy.
It doesn't bother me unless I am reading, I just read with my good eye. As much of a problem it was to get my retina attached I was just glad to keep my eyesight. I still get an occasional "flash", scares the hell out of me, because I got flashes before the tear and detaches.
Point being, if your vision gets odd (possible detach) or eyeball fills with blood (retinal tear)
get to a RETINA SPECIALIST asap.
Edit: if your vision gets funky, could also be a stroke or other problems, get to to hospital.
