Seldom mentioned is the effect a bubble can have on the lens. After a Full, if gas touches the lens for an extended period it can starve the lens of oxygen causing a temporary "dessication cataract". A PSC (posterior subcapsular cataract) can also appear relatively quickly as a response to trauma or presence of a bubble, even after a Core. This PSC is different from the one that can appear after cataract surgery and does not respond to YAG laser surgery. HENCE: face down healing is not just to hold the bubble against the retina but to keep it away from the lens.

Yet as unfortunate as the effect gas can have on the lens it's not worth obsessing over: A gas bubble is a necessary surgical method to save eyesight!

FACE-DOWN LIVING AT HOME
To keep the bubble against the fixed tear I was instructed to remain face down for the first 24 hours. Because I had only one day to prepare I had to do a crash-course for solutions. There are some interesting face-down chairs and mirror-devices to watch TV. But the only place to buy them was online and they wouldn't arrive in time. I had to be resourceful.

SITTING
I put a TV table in front of my favorite chair. On the table I put a rolled up towel. This let me put my forehead on the table to look at the floor to relieve stress off my neck and shoulders. I was able to look down and surf on my phone and could listen to TV but not watch it. A big help was to have a long straw to make it easier to drink. Sitting sideways on a couch or recliner with chin tucked in was good, but staring down is pretty boring. I took breaks to stretch my legs and to do side-to-side twisting.

SLEEPING
I was lucky to have a mattress topper on one bed. The trick was to pull it away from the head about 1 foot. This gave me a space to stack two u-shaped neck pillows on top of each other. This created a "massage table" style bed. I had to fiddle with placement for comfort and breathing. After the first 24 hours I was allowed to sleep on my back with my head propped up and was allowed to go about daily activities (non-strenuous of course). Sleeping on my back with head flat was not advised, to promote healing and to keep the bubble away from the lens.

SO WHAT DOES THE BUBBLE LOOK LIKE?
To me it was like looking through a shimmery bubble of water, light and details were distorted like looking through a fish tank. Looking straight ahead was very blurry yet up close it magnified everything like a lens. I could put my hand within 1 inch from my eye and see my fingerprints clearly. When I put in my drops I could see the tip of the bottle tip hugely magnified an inch away. The bubble naturally settles at the top of the eye which appears at the bottom because the eye sees upside down. After 24 hours when I lifted my head the bubble level was about 85% of my vision. Around the top edge I could tell the room was sharp. Looking straight down the bubble appeared as a round circle.

Because of the bubble the eye was not useful for vision. One tip I found very helpful was to use a 'pirate' eye patch with a string. This allowed me to focus cleanly on my PC and laptop with no distractions. I kept one in my pocket. On my followup visits I was told the tear had healed well. So even though the bubble was no longer needed it became a waiting game to see it vanish.

DAY 2
Every day I would gauge the evaporation of the bubble by watching how far down the wall the line fell. The level seemed to drop about 2% a day and it was frustrating looking down as the bubble would always move into view.

DAY 11
The bubble caused a lot of reflections and shimmery 'pillars' from top to bottom. It was like the reflections you see on the inside of dark glasses when sun light comes in from the side.I also saw a lot of very tiny bubbles at times and some new floaters. I would see identical groups in multiple places at the same time as though they were reflections. Knowing it was temporary made it easier to manage. I decided not to worry about artifacts until the bubble was 100% gone.

DAY 55
The bubble got smaller each day until it was a tiny black dot. One night while watching TV it wiggled and vanished. FINALLY!

Headlights and LEDs appeared sharp and new floaters stirred up by the bubble were gone but I was left with a mild blur overall and increased astigmatism. A followup exam showed the RX in that eye had jumped from -3.00 to -7.00. I thought this could be a common lens-shift caused by pressure from the bubble. This made sense because the lens only needs to move a fraction of a millimeter to change the RX. The "zonules" around the lens which hold it in place can get stressed and cause an imbalance which are said to rebound after several weeks. However I saw my Opto again at the three month mark who confirmed this was a PSC (cataract) forming caused by the gas bubble. SIGH. So my next step is cataract surgery which I will be detailing here soon.

CONCLUSION
It's unfortunate that my decision for what I thought was a simple FOV took a more difficult path. Yet considering how many people have serious health issues of all types that are not correctable I feel that I was lucky. My eye is floater-free, my tear healed, and despite needing an IOL I knew I would have to get one eventually. I had accepted the risks and despite a setback I don't second-guess my original decision to get a Core FOV. If I had done nothing I would have lived with Obscured Vision by Floaters (OVBF) for the rest of my life. The loss of enjoyment for my hobbies such as home theater, photo and film editing, fixing vintage electronics and cars, and creative writing was something I was not willing to endure. So would I do it again? YES. I will be having a Core FOV on the other eye when the time is right.

My final comment is that cataract removal, RLE, LASIK, and Full Vitrectomies are mainstream despite their complications including detachment. So it's puzzling there is so much resistance to performing a FOV as a stand-alone intervention. Perhaps today's pioneers in Core FOV surgery are laying the foundation for what will become commonplace one day.