I've been thinking a lot about this thread and wanted to give you a hug, @bergdorfblonde . (((Hugs)))
I also wanted share one more experience. Due to having military health insurance, I had been getting all of my care for my Graves and Thyroid Eye Disease at Walter Reed. The ophthalmology department there admitted in early summer that my case was beyond their expertise and referred me down to Ft Belvoir. The ophthalmologist there was a jerk and wanted me to have radiation, but the radiation oncology department there had never done it on eye muscles before and were going to also radiate part of my brain.
It was at that point in time that I finally contacted the national expert in this disease at U of Michigan, even though several sources had been encouraging me to do so for months. I flew out and spent a full day meeting with a team of doctors there, capping the day with meeting "the" expert. I felt so relieved, I can't even express it. I even scheduled my surgeries for a couple of months in the future before I left.
When I got back to the DC area, I had my primary doc put in a referral for the surgeries. It was denied because they hired a new eye surgeon at Walter Reed and they wanted me to see her first to see if she could do the surgery. But she couldn't see me until the end of November - 2 months in the future and after my scheduled surgeries. So, I walked into the ophthalmology department and asked to speak with the commanding officer, who happened to be the department head that day. He is a very experienced ophthalmologist and spent at least 30 minutes talking with me and was wonderful.
In the end, it came down to having the military insurance cover 100% of my treatment and surgery costs and trusting the new surgeon or going to the U of M doctor and picking up thousands of dollars of the cost, because military insurance wasn't going to pay it.
One of his main points that convinced me to go to U of M to the expert, was that
you never know what will happen exactly with eye surgeries, that things always can happen that are unexpected. Everyone's body is different and responds differently. If something unavoidably didn't go as expected with one eye or the other, if I had the surgery at Walter Reed, I would always question it and wonder if things would have been different/better if I went to the U of M. If the same thing happened after surgery at the U of M, I would never second-guess my decision to go there, because I knew I was in the hands of the top surgeon in the nation for this issue.
It was that point that convinced me to go ahead with the U of M, even though the costs are causing havoc to our budget this year. The peace of mind in trusting my doctor is worth it.
With eye surgeries, especially structural ones, no one can predict 100% what will happen, what your recovery time will be, and whether or not future surgeries will be needed.
Even my two eyes responded very differently to the same surgery - it was fascinating. Extreme swelling with one, but very little bruising. It looked normal within 2 weeks. My other eye, took a shorter surgery (2.5 hours as opposed to 3.5 hours), but was literally black and blue from eyebrow to my cheek for a full month. That eyeball also turned in, so I can't drive until I have strabismus surgery to straighten it out. But I was prepared for the high probability that I would need that surgery. Same type of surgery of both eyes, same surgeon even, but a different outcome for and reaction by each one.
I hope that you find a surgeon that you trust and that can give you realistic information. Trust is invaluable.