it was 3 years ago when i was driving home from the north shore being in the water for 5 hours straight at backdoor. i looked in the mirror and seen what looked like a little piece of rice in my eye. i was freaking so i drove straight to the doctor. then came the bad news. “kirby, you have pterygium.” i asked “what is that? and how long does it take to go away?” the doctor told me “it’s a growth on your eye that won’t go away, you have to have surgery.” oh my gosh!!! i was shocked….
this was my eye after a few months of growth. i was in denial and tried to fight it off. i even tried to scratch it off with my tshirt but it just kept turning red all day and all night. should i leave it? or should i have surgery that will keep me out of the water for months? i waited almost a year before i went in for my first surgery. then worst news then the bad news. 2 months after the surgery, the ptergium grew back. oh my gosh!! talk about pain and suffering….
now what? live with a bothering itchy red eye for the rest of my life? no way. i go to hawaii’s finest eye surgeons….
i walk into the office and say, “hey doctor, please fix my poor eye. be honest with me and tell me if it will go away or not.” he said “i’ll cut off all the inside of your eye, pull your eye out of your socket, cut off the good white part from the back, and stitch it on the front?” eeh? that sounded crazy but it also sounded like a good idea. so i went for it. now i’m glad i did because it’s gone. my eye don’t turn red anymore, my eye isn’t irritated, and my eye looks like how it was before.
**by the way, to do the correct procedure, it costs $7,300 per eye. times that by the 2 times i had to get surgery? ouch….
**now that i know what it looks like, i see ptergium in so many of my surfer friends eyes. i don’t know what to say. go get surgery? or live with it? for me, i’m really glad i got the second surgery. my eyes are precious to me because i need it to see the world. how do you prevent it? wear sunglasses in and out of the water. if you have any questions about ptergium, feel free to ask. i studied a lot about it because i wanted to know what the heck is going to happen when somebody takes out my eye and starts to play around with it….
