glaucoma surgery post-operative care

Hello pickeles

Isn’t amazing what surgeons can do, what can be done about all sorts of ailments and conditions? I hope the results of your surgery are everything you hope for.

You pose some interesting questions. Firstly, I have experience with some eye surgery…recently.

My first thoughts are these:

It’s clear to me that if you follow the regular post-op instructions and everything is in order than your trabeculectomy should behave as intended. Yet I think you should ask your surgeon some other questions. I would really like to know the answers too in order to give you specific yoga advice about what to do with the bikram poses.

You obviously know during your recovery it is essential to avoid those physical positions of head below heart (inversions) and avoiding the strain. The question is NOT about how long to avoid these things during the initial period of whatever they quoted to you (anywhere from 4 – 8 weeks as far as I know, depending on healing and margins of safety).

Rather, the questions I think you can ask are:

• Do you have to avoid engaging the valsalva maneuver after healing?
• Under what circumstances (or how often) can you do it safely? Is it occasional or won’t it matter?
• Does the trabeculectomy, once healed manage the situation in times when the valsalva is engaged?
• What are the things that you could possibly do that would increase intraocular pressure to a level that could be dangerous to you in the short term (episodic and one-off experiences)?
• And what are the things that could cause an increase risk by long term behaviours?
• Will life be normal again, can you do everything you could do before, now that you have had a trabeculectomy?
• Once healed and stable, if you go to yoga say, 3 times a week and engaged behaviours that increase intraocular pressure during class, is that OK?

The questions above should generate some good discussion and hopefully, even if the questions elicit the same response for all (which is actually quite affirming), you’ll know the parameters of the situation. If/when you can find these things out from your surgeon then please come back and share what s/he said. Hopefully you’ll be told information that is practical and useful. Sometimes care professionals take an almost scaremongering approach and take too many things “off the table” (especially when it comes to ‘hot yoga’ or things with which they have no experience. It’s kind of an ‘err on the side of safety’ when it’s something that is not personally known or understood, which is understandable but not always acceptable!).

You may come back and say “everything is normal” after you heal. You may find out you have to avoid certain things. When you know, come here and I can suggest modifications to your practice if necessary. I definitely have things in mind, but I am not going to suggest anything until we both know what your surgeon says. (While I cannot give medical advice (hence the wait for the answer to questions), I certainly can assess how that medical advice affects you in the context of the yoga class.)

You can write me an email directly so I can tell you something specific that I won’t share here. Up to you.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂