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I can see! Sort of..
Nov. 14th, 2008 04:34 amThe Lasik yesterday went well. The procedure itself was a little more uncomfortable than I was expecting-- they numbed my eyes, but there's a part of it that kinda pinches on the eyelid for a minute. But overall, it wasn't bad. I found the endless pictures of my eyeballs beforehand to be more annoying than actually having the procedure itself.
Recovery is slower than certain friends led me to believe (reading a water bottle across the room 15 minutes later? No), and for a while your vision gets worse afterward, which is disconcerting to say the least. Right after getting up from the table, there's a bit of a haze to the world, and that haze gets worse before it gets better. The doctor told me that's normal, and due to the dilation plus the initial healing. Now, 15 hours later, most of the haze has lifted, though there's still some halos around lights and using a computer is fuzzy. In a darkened bedroom with just the moonlight, items are crystal clear. In the family room with the light on and a laptop in front of me, there's a lot of haze. Still, I can read the channel on the satellite from across the room, as well as the non-illuminated digital clock, which reads "Way Too F'ing Early, Why Are You Up?"
My sleep schedule is royally screwed up right now. You're supposed to go to bed and sleep for 8 to 10 hours after having the procedure. My surgery was scheduled for 1:30pm, though it didn't actually occur until more like 2:15. We left the doctor's office at 3:00. Add an hour drive home, and you have me going to bed at 4pm. With the valium still in my system from before the surgery ("to help you relax", courtesy of the nurse), and the darvocet when I got home (the doctor wanted to give me a codeine-based pain-killer, which I don't react well to, so we compromised on the leftovers from the thyroid issue earlier this year), falling asleep was nooooooo problem.
Staying asleep, on the other hand, became an issue around 8pm. I ate dinner, and decided that listening to an audio book in the bedroom with the lights off and my eyes closed would serve roughly the same purpose as sleeping (which I'm convinced is less about speeding the healing process and more about making you skip the worst of the haze and the tearing up and the itching). I made it through 3 CDs of the book before I was ready to sleep again around 11pm.
I still have a "bug-eyed monster" look going thanks to the eye shields they gave me to prevent me from rubbing my eyes (something I do a lot even without the extra scratchy feeling from having my cornea peeled open and then put back into place). It's held in place with medical tape, which makes my skin itch after a while. I think the tape is probably the worst part of the recovery, honestly-- everything else is a minor annoyance, but the tape gets in your hair (ow!) and it makes the skin underneath it itch like crazy.
Overall, I'm pleased with the results thus far, and consider it money well-spent (assuming the haze continues to get better; since it's much better than it was at 4pm when I went to bed, I have no reason to believe that it won't continue to get better.)
Recovery is slower than certain friends led me to believe (reading a water bottle across the room 15 minutes later? No), and for a while your vision gets worse afterward, which is disconcerting to say the least. Right after getting up from the table, there's a bit of a haze to the world, and that haze gets worse before it gets better. The doctor told me that's normal, and due to the dilation plus the initial healing. Now, 15 hours later, most of the haze has lifted, though there's still some halos around lights and using a computer is fuzzy. In a darkened bedroom with just the moonlight, items are crystal clear. In the family room with the light on and a laptop in front of me, there's a lot of haze. Still, I can read the channel on the satellite from across the room, as well as the non-illuminated digital clock, which reads "Way Too F'ing Early, Why Are You Up?"
My sleep schedule is royally screwed up right now. You're supposed to go to bed and sleep for 8 to 10 hours after having the procedure. My surgery was scheduled for 1:30pm, though it didn't actually occur until more like 2:15. We left the doctor's office at 3:00. Add an hour drive home, and you have me going to bed at 4pm. With the valium still in my system from before the surgery ("to help you relax", courtesy of the nurse), and the darvocet when I got home (the doctor wanted to give me a codeine-based pain-killer, which I don't react well to, so we compromised on the leftovers from the thyroid issue earlier this year), falling asleep was nooooooo problem.
Staying asleep, on the other hand, became an issue around 8pm. I ate dinner, and decided that listening to an audio book in the bedroom with the lights off and my eyes closed would serve roughly the same purpose as sleeping (which I'm convinced is less about speeding the healing process and more about making you skip the worst of the haze and the tearing up and the itching). I made it through 3 CDs of the book before I was ready to sleep again around 11pm.
I still have a "bug-eyed monster" look going thanks to the eye shields they gave me to prevent me from rubbing my eyes (something I do a lot even without the extra scratchy feeling from having my cornea peeled open and then put back into place). It's held in place with medical tape, which makes my skin itch after a while. I think the tape is probably the worst part of the recovery, honestly-- everything else is a minor annoyance, but the tape gets in your hair (ow!) and it makes the skin underneath it itch like crazy.
Overall, I'm pleased with the results thus far, and consider it money well-spent (assuming the haze continues to get better; since it's much better than it was at 4pm when I went to bed, I have no reason to believe that it won't continue to get better.)
