LASIK report

You know what, it’s pretty hard not to rub your eyes – not so much resisting the urge as remembering to. The eyeshields do help, though.

As of yesterday morning, my corneas were 95% healed, which is apparently unusual the day after surgery. My vision was 85% healed, whatever that means – more clearly, it was 20/22 and expected to get better over the next few days.

Part of the operation was actually a bit scary; good thing Bozoette warned me about the worst part. First they rechecked my vision, then they put in a bunch of eyedrops to numb my eyes and had me wait for those to take effect. Next they took me into the surgery – this being Taiwan I had to take my shoes off first and put on some sandals – and had me lie down. Above me was a unit with four bright white lights, two red ones, and a central green light. They put in even more eye drops, positioned my head where they wanted it, then the doctor taped my upper and lower eyelids open. Next he inserted a little eye speculum (what else would you call it?) so I couldn’t blink and poked around a little. (With all the numbing, I couldn’t feel any of that and not blinking didn’t hurt.) Then came the worst part: he took a thing like a tubular lens or spotting scope, pushed it down onto my eye hard enough to hurt the eye socket a bit, then thing went black and there was a bit of stinging as it cut the corneal flap. Then I could see the lights again, but fuzzy, I could hear the laser hum and smell sort of a slight burning (like you sometimes get when the dentist is drilling). After that stopped, the doctor ran a couple small spatulas over my eye presumably to smooth the corner back in place, took out the speculum and ripped off the tape (ow). Repeat on other eye. They tell me it takes 15 minutes per eye; I was mostly watching what went on as far as I could and reciting things to calm myself.

After that they led me out of the room and had me rest for half an hour or so until the numbness wore off. I was expecting everything to be crisp and clear at that point, but things were actually a little fuzzy and dim. They rechecked my eyes again, called a cab and sent me home. I did take sunglasses but didn’t have a major problem with light on the way home, and if I still couldn’t see perfectly it was a lot clearer than before the procedure. I wouldn’t really have wanted to drive, though.

Aftercare was more complex than I expected. I knew the rules about no water in my eyes for a week (I have to dab around with a washcloth to wash my face), no rubbing my eyes for three weeks, no swimming for a month. The harder part was the instructions not to read or use the computer for the rest of Friday or Saturday. Today (Sunday) I’m allowed to but I’m supposed to stop when my eyes get tired. On Friday and Saturday I was also supposed to keep my eyes closed as much as possible to let them heal. I have to wear safety glasses during the day for 10 days to 2 weeks – that will be fun to explain at work, though they do remind me not to rub my eyes – and tape on eyeshields at night for 3 weeks. On Friday they gave me antibiotic eyedrops to take 4 times a day and lubricating eyedrops for every 2 hours, plus pills four times a day: painkillers, antibiotics and something to keep the latter from upsetting my stomach. At the visit Saturday morning they added another sort of eyedrops to wash out my eyes night and morning and a multivitamin pill. No more painkillers, though, and I don’t think I needed them even on Friday.

Tomorrow at work it may be rough not to over use the computer; today I still notice my eyes tiring after a while. Time to go back to my audiobook, I guess. ( I ended up listening to The Woman in White – after all that time I’m only up to section 8 of 38, so maybe I should have picked a shorter book. However, there’s always erging time to kill.) I have a feeling I should really try not to read books / computer screens for too long at a time anyway, so I don’t foce myself back into nearsightedness in future years.