Day six after upper surgery and my eyes will not shut all the way when I sleep. How long does that go on?

Posting at midnight because I am dreading going to sleep, which tells you everything.

Upper blepharoplasty last Friday, so day six. My partner noticed two nights ago that when I am asleep there is a thin line of white showing under each lid, they are not closing all the way. I checked in the mirror by trying to shut my eyes gently and yes, I can feel there is a gap, the lids are tight and there is a point where they simply stop. I wake up at about four every morning with eyes that feel like they have been sandblasted, then it eases through the morning.

The clinic sheet mentions this and calls it lagophthalmos, and says it is common and settles. Fine. But it does not say how long, and six nights of this is starting to feel less like a phase and more like the new arrangement. Is this the swelling or did they take too much skin? Genuinely worried I have been over-resected and nobody will admit it until it is too late.

Mine did this for about a fortnight and I was every bit as convinced as you are. It went. The four in the morning sandblasting is horrible and very familiar.

Have you got the ointment they gave you and are you actually using it at bedtime rather than the daytime drops? I made that mistake for the first week, kept using the thin drops before bed because the ointment blurred everything and I hated it, and could not understand why the mornings were so grim. The thick stuff is specifically for the hours your lids are not doing their job. Blurry for twenty minutes, much better night.

Also, and I say this kindly, six days is very early to be diagnosing yourself with over-resection. Your lids are still swollen. Swollen lids do not travel their full distance.

yuki_crease said:

Is this the swelling or did they take too much skin?

Both things can produce a gap, which is why nobody on a forum can tell you which yours is. What you can do is track it. If the gap is smaller this Friday than it was last Friday, it is swelling doing what swelling does. If it is identical or worse at three or four weeks, that is a conversation to have at your follow up rather than at midnight with strangers.

I had exactly this and I remember the specific dread of the bedroom light going off, so let me tell you what mine actually did.

Mine would not close fully for the first week and a bit. The lids felt tight rather than sore, there was a point where they stopped, and the early mornings were the worst part of my whole recovery, worse than anything on the day of the operation. It improved gradually rather than switching off: less gap, later wake-ups, then one morning I realised I had slept through. What made it bearable was the night ointment, and honestly, accepting that the first fortnight was going to be broken sleep rather than fighting it. Our aftercare guide covers why the surface dries so badly overnight when the lids are not closing, and dry eyes after blepharoplasty covers the grittiness that comes with it.

On the over-resection fear, which I also had: I am a patient and cannot examine your lids, so I will only say what the honest markers are. Not closing fully is expected early and is watched rather than acted on straight away. What is not a wait-and-see is pain with pressure and any change in your vision, which is a same-day call, or a surface that is getting worse rather than slowly better despite lubricating it. Yours is improving in the mornings, which is a reasonable sign, but the person to put this to is your surgeon at your follow up, and please do put it to them rather than deciding on your own that you have been let down.

Nineteen days and I slept through the night with no gritty wake-up. Went back and asked at my follow up, as advised, and was told the gap was already much smaller than at the first check and they were not concerned.

The bit I would tell my day six self: the ointment properly at bedtime, not the drops, and stop measuring the gap in the mirror four times a day because you cannot see a week of progress in an afternoon.

Glad it settled. Filing this thread away, because I am seeing a surgeon next month and it had genuinely never occurred to me to ask what happens if the lids do not close afterwards. Adding it to my list.