Posts Tagged ‘PRK’

• The new normal

  Date: 2008.10.27 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 1

  Last Thursday I went under the laser and got my vision corrected. Most people that get corrective surgery get LASIK and notice immediate results. Due to the thickness of my cornea and the military’s restrictions on LASIK I got PRK, a surgery that requires much longer recovery times. At the moment, I am sitting 3 feet away from my monitor and I can see what I am typing – unaided. My vision is still quite blurry but I have been told that it will improve with each day. My vision will probably stabilize in a month. This is the new normal and its kinda weird.

  The surgery was bizarre – they numb you and mess with your eyes for fifteen minutes and then its all over. You don’t feel anything and you really don’t feel any pain until 6 hours after the surgery is complete. The pain, as best as I can describe, feels something like getting 20 eyelashes in your eye at the same time. They give you good dope and numbing drops to deal with the pain and after a while its not that bad.

  I’m extremely sensitive to light and my eyes do get tired quickly. I did get the “bandage” contacts removed earlier today so that should help with the fatigue of my eyes. Things will only get better over the next few days.

  The recovery process sidelined me last weekend and prevented me from going to a dog race in eastern Washington. There won’t be another race until January but at least I’ll be able to see that one with my own eyes.

• Two weeks until I go under the knife

  Date: 2008.10.09 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 1

  I finally got a chance to head to the naval hospital in Bremerton for a pre-op consult. I’d been up for almost twenty hours by the time they started some of my tests so it took a few times to get the results right. If I had been working on dayshift, I wouldn’t have experienced any of these problems. The doc recommended that I have PRK on my eyes instead of LASIK.

  The first four days of recovery will be the worst as I will be wearing a contact lens bandage while the cornea of my eye heals. Some people experience minor complications with the surgery but they are rare at best. I’m just hoping that I’ll be able to snowboard and drive without glasses. If I have to carry a pair of glasses around to read I won’t complain – its got to be better than fogging up every time I walk into a building from November to March.

  I’ve got to run around some paperwork for command approval but they’ve already approved the initial part and I don’t know why they wouldn’t approve the second. I’ll only be out for four days initially and then should be able to drive and get around as normal.