Alex's Laser Beam Vision

Alex:
It is early August, and as a sort of personal adventure worthy of a blog post, I finally went ahead and let somebody slice at and laser blast my eyeballs, and I actually paid them to do so.  I figure I'll document how things are today and then make updates over the next few days or possibly weeks...  or however long until my eyes recover and then develop the super-powered x-ray vision that I'm pretty sure they promised.

Leading up:  I've pretty much had the same glasses for 10 years.  My prescription has barely changed and I'm not huge on going to the doctor, so I've had the same specs for ages.  I've had a pretty good idea I would get Lasik at some point anyway, so another reason not to bother getting new glasses.  Laura recently heard about a free seminar through her school at a local eye surgery place (Flaum Eye Institute, associated with the U of R), so I figured I'd check it out.  The people there seemed to be pretty reputable, having done a lot of research in the field to improve the process and not just a business to churn out patients.  So I went for a free exam, slept on the idea (for about a month), and then went in today.

D-Day:  So, I just returned from the surgery.  I'm on the couch with safety goggles and sunglasses over my eyes and tissues stuffed under the underside to soak up the tears as my eyes are very watery.   I'm keeping my eyes closed and typing blind and will have to review this later.  The surgery was pretty quick, but pretty tense as I was pretty apprehensive about the eye flap business.  It really didn't hurt at all, though they feel a little raw right now (kind of like if you spend a whole day out in the sun on the beach without sunglasses they'll feel a little dry and maybe sunburnt, that's about how they feel now, just a little more so).

D+1:  It is now Wednesday morning.  I went in for a checkup this morning and things are looking okay.  I don't have to wear the goggles during the day anymore, but I now have 3 kinds of drops to use.  Currently I'm in a dimly lit room wearing sunglasses with my eyes partially open.  My vision is much sharper, slightly sharper than when I was wearing my glasses.  I'm a little weirded out by my inability to focus on close objects.  I used to be able to read up to about 2 inches from my eyeball, and now I can't make my eyes focus any closer than about 6.

D+2:

Today my eyes were doing better, but it was a little rough day.  I worked all day and I've been fully opening my eyes, so they got pretty dry.  I had to increase my moisturizing drops from hourly to whenever I felt like I needed it -- maybe 30-45 minutes.  I wore my sunglasses all day, less so for brightness problems and more so because they shield any drafts and keep my eyes from drying out as fast.  We had our last kickball game and didn't have a full team, so I played the whole time, closing my eyes as much as possible.  They're not terribly uncomfortable, I'm just really picky about my eyes and paranoid about the eye-flap.  People thought I was blind walking down Park Avenue with Laura at night with my sunglasses on.  That was probably for the best though, since I was keeping my eyes closed half the time. Still, I put up with a lot of "I wear my suuunglasses at night..."

D+3:

By Friday I'd pretty well stopped with the sunglasses.  I put them on a little at work to keep my eyes shielded from draft, but that was about it.  I noticed some halos or starbursts last night around bright light sources.  If the image to the left shows, I'd say that before I was between a 1 and 2 before without glasses (due to blurriness), maybe a 2 with glasses because of the funkiness of the glass, and now I'm between a 2 and 3.  I think it will get better as they heal, and as I stop using the horrible steroid drops.

 

Here is a shot of my eye gear.  The surgical office gave me the black bag with most of this stuff in it.  My old glasses are on the far right.  It's disorienting to look through them now.  The brown cap bottle is antibiotics, and the white cap bottle with the red X is the awful steroids to keep my eyes from healing too fast.  They're like putting drops of whole milk in my eye -- they're very cloudy white, and leave a horrid salty bitterness as they run down my tear duct into the back of my throat that I can't gargle away.  I'll be glad in a couple more days when I'm not using those 4 times a day.  The big goggles are still worn at night to keep from pressing or rubbing, and are taped to my face using the roll in the top left.  That is some crazy tape that sticks to skin like nothing I've ever seen.  The first night we used a bunch, worried it would come off.  After ripping off the tape along with some hair and skin I realized I only need to touch a half inch of tape to my face on either side.  The wipes at the top are a soapy alcohol mix designed to help remove the strips of glue the tape leaves on your face.  They work okay, but it takes a few passes with rinsing in between, and then maybe a little rubbing alcohol when you find a few glue gob stragglers hours later.  The little vials are artificial tears without preservatives, to be used hourly or as needed.  They gave me 15, and I bought 60 more on Thursday.  Currently going through a little over 2 per day, that should last me a while.  Lastly, they gave me a DVD of my eye surgery.  I want to watch it, but I'm going to wait for my eyes to heal a little more before doing so.  If I see that flap being cut and lifted, I might think that every little tickle is it coming loose.

The one thing missing from this package is possible some kind of shower goggles.  I'm careful not to get soap in my eyes, but just regular water is obnoxious if you can't effectively wipe it away.


D+4:
I did some driving today.  It felt pretty natural.  On the way out it was sunny and I wore sunglasses, so it felt pretty normal since my face was all wrapped up.  The way back it was dimmer so I drove without some form of glasses intentionally (not forgetting them somewhere) for pretty much the first time ever.  Whoa!  The few times in the past that I drove without glasses it was weird and would cause my eyes to water.  I was worried that without them could be rough, but it was no trouble at all.

I still have a little redness from the surgery.  Some capillaries get busted when the suction cup attaches itself to your eyeball so it can start slicing the flap.  Now you see why I don't want to watch the DVD just yet?  At least I got the laser cut flap, so there was no blade involved.

Laura pointed out the white in the corner of my eye here.  Yeah, that's the steroid drop again.  It leaves a film on my eye that slowly collects, so I'm always wiping it away.




D+5:
I realize that some of you jerks have natural perfect vision and probably can't understand all this fuss.  It's probably similar to how I can't imagine being deaf, colorblind, or having no sense of smell.  Here's a couple of pics I just took as an example.  The first is clear, the second is blurry -- nothing fancy, just an unsteady hand in low light.  The second is a little worse than my overall vision before, but is actually probably pretty close to what my left eye was (the worse of the two).








D+6:
Pretty okay today.  I have noticed that it takes a little effort to focus sometimes, and my eyes will feel tired.  What's really weird is that I can't seem to relax them.  It's like they have a new resting focal state and I don't know what it is, so I can't quite stop them from working.  It's pretty mild, and I only really notice when I'm sitting around and nothing else is going on.  I'll ask about it tomorrow at the one week checkup.  I figure I'll keep adding to this post for the first week, so most likely it will be published tomorrow.  See you then!

D+7:
Had my one week checkup and no biggie.  They said my eyes appear to be a little dry so I need to use more drops (I've been missing the hourly drops a little with work and all) and give them a some rest periodically.  The focus and tiredness issue was very scientifically referred to as "the wah-wahs".  It's apparently my brain trying to adjust to the new image, and will go away with time.  I'm showing 20/15 in both eyes as of today, and things should get better as they heal more.

Now I'm going to see how long it takes for the glasses imprint on the side of my head to disappear...  I'll let you know if anything else interesting comes up.

-The Lorax