Laser Surgery, Round Two

| posted in: life 


Yesterday I had another follow-up visit with the doctor at LasikPlus. What I find so fascinating about this experience is the surge in declarative statements after the fact. Things that I felt should have been clearly stated prior to my procedure are only just now being said to me.

  1. You were far sighted before. Nearsighted correction happens on day two. Far sighted correction can take months to stabilize.

Gee, now I take back all the nasty things I’ve said about my friends who had this procedure and raved about it on day two.

  1. “Not using enough artificial tears damages your eye. The cells up front are dying.”

Oops. For the first few weeks I could tell when my eyes were getting dry and I’d put some artificial tears in to lubricate them. Recently however I haven’t had the dry sensation, but I have been having blurred vision, particularly with my left (distance) eye. Turns out it is dry, and the dryness is causing damage. The cells on the surface of my eye are dying and causing the light entering my eye to be refracted in odds ways, resulting in blurred vision. I’m back on the drops at least 6 times a day for the next few weeks to reverse this trend. To be fair I was told to use the drops, but I didn’t realize that I would need to use them for three months. The doctor insists that eventually I won’t need them any more.

The good news is that my near eye (the right one) has healed enough so that a “touch up” procedure can be performed now. The original procedure was successful, but my eye healed far stronger than intended, so the touch up is to back the nearsightedness down to a useful level. While it is handy to be able to read 4-point text two inches from my face, it’ll be more useful to read the computer monitor at arms length.

The doctor wants me to wait two more weeks before having the second procedure performed, so it’ll be late June or early July before I can (hopefully forever) shed myself of glasses.

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Mark H. Nichols

I am a husband, cellist, code prole, nerd, technologist, and all around good guy living and working in fly-over country. You should follow me on Mastodon.