[sttaffy]

again, hearing about this is keeping me grateful for my good vision. i was just thinking about this thread when I was out painting today. glad to hear you came out of the procedure on the right side of the statistics, and that your recovery is continuing well :)

[techs]

Day 34. I went back from my ~1 month follow-up, and they did another vision test. The charts were much more readable this time, mostly due to a reduction in the amount of glare/double vision that I see around the eye chart. I'm now easily better than 20/20 in both eyes. My right is nearly back to being 20/10, and my left is getting close to 20/15. Again this is under very dim lighting conditions (not sure why they do it that way). Also, the doctor said I'm now healing "exceptionally well" in both eyes compared to what his database says most people experience when they get PRK. He had me reduce the steroid drop from 4 times a day to 2 times a day. I'm glad about that part, as I'm not sure if the steroid drops are really helping anymore at this point.

More generally, my vision is now perfect in the daylight. All the minor lingering issues have disappeared, and I can't find them even when I try to go looking for them. There is still some very minor fluctuation that happens under typical indoor lighting. A bit more in my left eye than in my right. In lower light levels, there are still some artifacts. The starbursts are still around, and usually still about the same size as they've always been, but they've been becoming less distinct and seem to be kind of slowly fading away. There are times when the blue LED on the TV looks very close to normal even at night, but there's still a lot of fluctuation with that now. I've also noticed an increase in the amount of ghosting/double vision I get around certain things at night. The TV is a good way to catch this issue, as whenever an image shows with alternating light and dark regions at the edge of the screen, all of the light regions will tend to extend beyond the edge of the screen, while the dark ones will be fine. The severity of this issue also tends to vary quite a bit, from completely nonexistent to moderately annoying. Usually it's somewhere between the two. My right eye seems to be mostly responsible for the problem, though the left is occasionally subject to it as well. Although I have no credible reason for thinking so, I think this problem may be somehow related to the steroid drops, which is why I'm glad they're having me reduce those. It just seems like sometimes they aggravate the issue rather than making it better, though I could just be imagining things.

At any rate, slow improvement continues. I want to see what happens when they take me off the steroid drops completely. My next appointment is in a month.

This post has been edited by techsupp0rt: 21 April 2009 - 09:31 PM

[sttaffy]

any headaches related to your brain readjusting to your new visual acuity?

[techs]

Nope. The only headache has been the really bad one two days after the surgery. Apart from that I've felt pretty normal throughout the whole process.

[techs]

Day 35. Repeated the same drive I did on day 24. Things are definitely improved since then. I didn't notice any ghosting around the edges of road signs under any conditions, and while there are still some starbursts around lights, it only takes a minimal amount of light to make them disappear. For instance, the taillights from 2-3 nearby cars or the headlights of 1-2 oncoming cars from 100 or so feet away provide enough light to make the artifacts fade, so they really only appear now on unlit sections of road with no nearby sources of light. The messy intersection from the LASIK image I posted earlier would look entirely normal now, as the traffic signal itself would put out more than enough light to keep the artifacts suppressed (well actually, as that picture appears to have been taken at dusk rather than in total darkness, the traffic signal wouldn't even enter into it...the amount of light available at dusk is sufficient to keep things clear on its own at this point).

Also, my eyes definitely seem happier now that the steroid drops have been reduced. Maybe it's all just psychosomatic, but the blurring around the edges of the TV is much reduced, to the point that I don't notice it unless I actively go looking for it, and the starbursting has gone down by about a factor of 1/2, even with all the lights turned off. There's less fluctuation overall as well. It's tempting to try stopping the steroid drops completely to see what that does. But considering that I never bothered to ask about exactly why I'm being instructed to take them, I don't think I'll actually try stopping them ahead of schedule. Definitely curious to see what happens when the drops finally stop, however, and kind of disappointed that that won't happen for at least another month.

This post has been edited by techsupp0rt: 23 April 2009 - 07:46 AM

[techs]

Day 46. The ghosting issues that seemed to be going away has come back with a vengeance. Or at least, that's what it's like some of the time, while other times are mostly fine. My right eye seems to be solely responsible for the problem. The left one actually seems to be doing extremely well. It just has some very minor starbursting around a few particular lights (the blue LED on the TV, for instance, has two very faint starburst ray going up and to the right, but is otherwise normal looking), and no other noticeable issues. I'm definitely starting to get concerned about the right one, however, as it seems like it's getting worse now. Not in terms of overall clarity (which is still excellent, and slightly better than what my left eye gets), but in terms of the artifacting that it gets. The starbursts become very noticeable at times, and then of course there's the ghosting issue, which sometimes gets pretty bad as well (even to the point where it's noticeable under bright indoor lighting). There's a good deal of fluctuation in that eye now, to the extent that right now, it's working almost as good as the left one, with no ghosting at all, when just a couple hour ago it was probably worse than it's been in weeks.

I'm not really sure what's going on with it, but my right eye will also often feel kind of like it has a piece of dirt or grit stuck in it. That's supposed to be a sign that it's getting too dry, so I started using more of the artificial tears in that eye (and I actually stopped them altogether in my left eye a few days ago, and it seems to be fine with that). The extra drops seem to help somewhat, but they definitely don't fix the issue. It's confusing, because supposedly my right eye was healing much faster than the left one, so if dryness is the issue then my left eye should be really pissed that it stopped getting the tear drops, but it isn't. I kind of want to blame the issues on the continued use of the steroid drops, but I don't see how I can do that, given that my left eye gets just as many of those, and it seems to be fine with it. I guess maybe the eye doctor will be able to figure things out when I go in for my follow-up visit in a couple of weeks. Hopefully things won't get too much worse before then. I guess the saving grace is that so long as I keep both my eyes open, things look pretty good no matter how bad my right eye does on its own. It's like my brain knows to selectively ignore the garbage information that my right eye sends it sometimes.

This post has been edited by techsupp0rt: 05 May 2009 - 06:30 AM

[Hugh]

Brains are good like that. :up:

If the right eye was to get even a little bit worse, I'd be booking in for another appointment ahead of the scheduled follow-up, post haste. Getting good or bad news as soon as possible would probably be for the best, to either stop you worrying, or confirm that you should be worried.

As always, good luck with that.

This post has been edited by Hugh: 05 May 2009 - 07:32 AM

[techs]

Quote

If the right eye was to get even a little bit worse, I'd be booking in for another appointment ahead of the scheduled follow-up, post hast

I considered it, and that's probably what I'll do it it continues to get worse. For now though, it seems to have stabilized (in the sense that the nighttime vision in my right eye is consistently poor at times, but never any worse than it's been for the past few days). The scratchy feeling has also gone down significantly since I started increasing the drops, so maybe I did just let it get too dry for awhile. I've also noticed that if I just rest with my eyes closed for 15 minutes or so, the issues will go away. In fact, when I do that, the nighttime vision becomes near perfect in both eyes (no ghosting whatsoever, and very minimal starbursting). The effect doesn't last forever, however, and after about 10-15 minutes things start going downhill again, especially in the right eye. Maybe the quality of its healing is not as good as the left one, despite the quicker pace. I guess I'll be able to see what the doctor has to say about it soon.

[techs]

Day 61. Went back in for another followup, and not much interesting happened. I scored the same on the eye test as before, and was told that I'm still healing very well. I asked about what was going on with my right eye, and the doctor said that if it was conistently worse/getting worse then that could be indicative of a problem, but that if it tended to fluctuate then there was probably nothing to worry about. And fluctuate is definitely what it does. Over the past few days, most of them have been fine, but on one or two the issues were noticeable again. It's still pretty variable, though it does seem to be trending in the positive direction. The scratchy feeling has been gone for several days now, though I don't know if that's because the eye has actually healed up better or just because I scaled up the artificial tears in that eye.

Also, I was told that I can now stop the steroid drops completely. That was yesterday, and when I woke up this morning my eyes both felt noticeably happier than they've been in the morning for quite some time. I had grown accustomed to several seconds of mild discomfort when I first opened by eyes in the morning, but that didn't happen this time. Instead they felt normal pretty much immediately, like what they used to do before I had the operation. My daytime vision is also slightly clearer and more stable (to the point where I'm again impressed with how well I can see, after just recently getting used to how well I was seeing), kind of like a slight haze that I hadn't even known was there has been lifted. I'm interested in seeing what the nighttime will be like. Of course, it's way too soon to know if any of this is significant, and maybe in a few days things will take another turn for the worse, but right now it certainly feels like there's a correlation there. At any rate, I'm glad to finally be rid of those damn drops. The rest is just patience.

[ShyShy]

It does sound like your operation went very well. And yes, patience will be a huge part of your life for the next couple of months ;)

[sttaffy]

I'm glad to hear your recovery is going well, I really am. Do you know how good your results are compared to other peoples? It sounds like you're on the right side of the statistics.

[aaronsen]

Most people usually are, I would assume. Think Swine Flu...

Good to hear it went well, techs.

[techs]

Quote

Do you know how good your results are compared to other peoples?

Not exactly, no. I've been told many times now that I'm doing much better than the average person in terms of both the speed and the quality of my recovery. Supposedly that is based upon a comparison against the doctor's own database of patient records. I have no reason to doubt the claim (and like I mentioned, I knew from the beginning that I heal both faster and better than the average person), but at the same time I have no way of verifying it either, as it's not like they're going to let me go poking around in their patient database.

Compared to what I've been able to find online, things are more mixed. There are some accounts from people who claim to be able to see 20/15 or better within a few days to a week after their procedure. I just don't see how that could be possible, unless they did their eye-test either outdoors, or indoors under extremely bright lighting conditions. And then there are other people who report needing a fairly long time to even get back to 20/20. Some people don't mention any night-time issues at all, while others report the same kind of things that I've experienced. Several people stated that their night vision started to improve rapidly as soon as they stopped using the steroid drops. Most people seem to report a more painful/prolonged recovery process than the one I went through, though there is the occasional person who claims to have had no post-op pain or light-sensitivity at all. And then there are the people who report serious, recurring issues and healing problems. Most of them are in their mid/late 40's or above, however, so they probably weren't the best candidates to begin with. I don't think I'd want to risk any sort of elective surgery at that age. Medical things just work so much better if you do them when you're still young and healthy.

Lastly, one of my co-workers also had PRK done, several years ago. From what he's told me, he had a slower recovery process than I did, and with more severe issues at night. He was legally blind without his glasses prior to the surgery, and had a high degree of astigmatism, so that makes sense. He says he sees fine now, and that the only issue he has is that if he rubs his eyes "in a certain way" they'll start to hurt. I don't seem to have that issue (or I just haven't been able to find the correct "certain way" yet), though I got the impression that his post-op care wasn't as good as mine (for instance they didn't give him any drops to use, or any fancy vitamins, etc.).

Anyways, day 65. So far so good. Things are definitely better without the drops, both in terms of overall clarity and the amount of artifacts I see, and it doens't seem like it's going to relapse like it did last time. There are still some starbursts at night, but they're very minimal most of the time. Occasionally things fluctuate a bit and they get worse, but usually if I just blink a few times that fixes it. The nice thing now is that both of my eyes are more or less on par. The left one still has slightly fewer issues at night, but it's not the sort of huge difference that there was just a few days ago. The ghosting issues are gone most of the time now, and when they do crop up, they're much less severe than they used to be. There are times now when all the different factors that are influencing my vision come into alignment, and all of a sudden I'll be seeing everything perfectly. I have better clarity then than I've ever had in my life, pre or post op. It's pretty spectacular when that happens (and even moreso when I remember that it's all happening through purely biological optics at this point), but it's not all the time yet (or even most of the time). Hopefully that will change in time.

Now that I can keep my vision reasonably stable by just blinking a few times, I'm trying to stop the artificial tear drops altogether. I only used them once yesterday, and haven't touched them yet today. So far it seems to be going fine, though I think Tuesday will be the real test. Walking to/from work seems to be the most stressful thing for my eyes that I do on a regular basis. All the time spent outdoors in the sun and the wind helps dry them out, I guess.

This post has been edited by techsupp0rt: 25 May 2009 - 12:06 AM

[techs]

Day 84. I haven't used any drops at all for the past couple of weeks. It was a little rough at the beginning, and my eyes would feel pretty funky after walking home from work for the first few days. They're coping fairly well now, they will occasionally feel a little dry and scratchy, but it's pretty mild when that happens. Walking around outside is less of an issue, even if it happens to be particularly windy out. It seems like my theory of "if I just stop the drops altogether, it will force my eyes to start taking care of themselves" is panning out. There has also been no relapse of any kind, and my low-light vision has been slowly but steadily improving. I can now watch a movie in a theater and see the whole thing correctly (previously the ghosting issues would cause the picture to overflow the screen during certain scenes). There are still some issues with things like bright LED's (and I've come to notice that color plays a factor...red and orange LED's look worse through my left eye, while blue and purple ones look worse through my right, so I think at least some of the percieved weakness of my right eye compared to the left just stems from the fact that most of the LED's present at home are blue, if they were all red I'd probably think my left eye was doing worse), but those have been improving as well. It's a very slow process, but the overall trend is definitely positive.

Also, I went to two weddings and a graduation recently, and that presented plenty of opportunites for me to test my vision under a variety of conditions. One interesting thing I noticed is that my vision no longer degrades linearly with decreasing light levels. It degrades up until the point where it gets dark enough for my night-vision to fully kick in, at which point it actually improves noticeably. For instance, under typical dim indoor lighting, I may still have some minor issues when looking at distant light sources, but if the lighting level is brought even lower, and my eyes are allowed time to adjust, then I can typically see things almost as perfectly as I can during the daytime. When walking or driving in total darkness I still have some issues with ghosting around bright/reflective things like road signs or a full moon, but otherwise my night vision is at least as capable as it was prior to the surgery. The starbursts are pretty infrequent now, even when driving in completely unlit areas, although they do reappear if I allow my eyes to become fatigued enough. The same thing happens at home if I spend too long playing games on the computer, eventually my eyes start getting a bit worn out, and the quality goes down and the artifacts start to return. They've gotten easier to manage however, and typically just letting my eyes relax for a brief time will fix most of the issues.

And as always, sex is still the quick ticket to perfect vision, though it still only holds for a brief time, maybe 20-30 minutes. I want to have Allison come visit me at the office late one evening, as there's a set of speakers there with a particularly irritating blue LED on them that still looks pretty screwed up most of the time. If that one can be made to look normal, then I think it's probably safe to conclude that once I'm done healing, my eyes will work perfectly. And if it can't, then at least it will have been a fun experiment.

This post has been edited by techsupp0rt: 13 June 2009 - 10:42 PM

[techs]

Day 94. Back for another follow-up. This time I scored 20/10 in both eyes, so I'm definitely seeing better now with the surgery than what I used to get with my glasses. The amount of haze around the eye chart is definitely less than it was on my previous visit, as well, though it's still definitely noticeable under the dim lighting of the examining room. The doctor declared that my eyes are done healing, and that I shouldn't expect my daytime vision to get any better than it currently is, which is fine because I've got no complaints about that. He also said that my night vision should continue to improve over the next few months, though it's a bit unclear to me how that would work, if my healing is really "done". I guess we'll see what happens, though there have been enough recent changes with my night vision that I'm fairly inclined to believe that it is still sorting itself out. My next scheduled visit isn't for another three months, so it looks like they don't expect any real drastic changes from here on out.

Other than that, there's not much to report. My vision is pretty much the same as it was last week, with a continued slow improvement/reduction of nighttime artifacts.

[Hugh]

:up:

Improvements from now on could be largely psychological, which would explain the "done healing" comment. You might just get more used to your night vision, which would tell your brain that it's getting better.

Trust me, I'm a doctor.

[ShyShy]

:rolleyes:

He's right though, it is now a "mind game" with how your vision will get better. It's funny how you can "tell" your brain to disregard certain disruptive aspects of your vision.

[techs]

That's disappointing if true. However I suspect there are at least some minor physical changes still going on, as I just don't see how the current amount of variation I get at night could be due entirely to psychological issues. Over the course of an hour it can go from pretty decent to near perfect to pretty messed up and back again, and at least some of the changes seem like they could be related to physical things (for example, if I rest with my eyes closed for awhile, it almost always improves things for a little while).

I certainly credit psychological effects for keeping my vision near perfect whenever I have both eyes open, no matter how poorly each individual eye may be doing, but when I close one eye or the other, doesn't that leave less wiggle room for my brain to work with? Those are the cases where I get most of the variances in quality, when I'm only looking with one eye at a time. When I use both of them my vision is pretty good the vast majority of the time.

[ShyShy]

I think part of your problem is that you are analyzing your vision too much :flowers: It may be time to just relax and not think about it (if you can).

I used to see it all the time in dispensing, people honestly didn't realize how bad their vision was as their brain had adapted over time to compensate for the varying weakness. Here's an example of the [uses booming voice] power of the mind[/]. If I use only my right eye, I get motion sickness and my colours are off. When I use both eyes, I don't have either problem.

[techs]

Quote

Here's an example of the [uses booming voice] power of the mind[/]. If I use only my right eye, I get motion sickness and my colours are off. When I use both eyes, I don't have either problem.

I have that too. The color thing, not the motion sickness one. Sometimes whites look a bit more yellowish and other colors lose a bit of saturation when looking through my right eye compared to my left. They've worked that way since long before the surgery, and continue to do the same thing now.

Anyways, day 100. Slow improvement continues. Whether it's due to physical changes or psychological ones I can't really say, but I guess it doesn't make much difference which one it is. I'm inclined to think physical, because the improvement stays whether I use one eye or two, and also because the dry/scratchy feeling has started to fade (so I think probably my tear-film is starting to approach its normal capacity). The past couple of days went very well actually, with my eyes feeling very close to normal the majority of the time, and only occasional very minor dryness. At night the blue LED on the TV looks as normal as it did during the day two or three weeks ago, and during the day it now looks nearly perfect. Sex is no longer the only way to get the artifacts to clear, as now just resting my eyes for a couple of minutes works just as well, and the effect has become more stable/longer lasting too. I feel optimistic that the remaining artifacts are going to fade, just like the doctor said they would.

One other interesting thing I noticed, is that my starbursts are actually being caused by some residual double-vision. It's a little tricky to do, but I can "clearly" see the residual object if I line my eye up perfectly with a light-source that causes starbursts at exactly the right distance (somewhere between 2 and 3 feet it seems). If I do this, my right eye will show a faint double image to the upper left of the actual object, and my left eye will show a similar double image to the right of center. As I move further away or more off-center, the residual object scatters into the starburst rays that I see (I assume because my eye automatically accommodates to keep the primary image in focus, which forces the ghost image out of focus, scattering its light). I think this explains why my right eye generally tends to see more starburst rays going to the left side of the actual object, while my left eye has them going more towards the right. For awhile I thought maybe it was more of a brain/processing thing, but it makes more sense for it to be related to how each of my eyes is (mis)directing the light. The specific orientation that I got is purely coincidental I think.

Quote

It may be time to just relax and not think about it (if you can).

Yes, that does seem to help a bit.

This post has been edited by techsupp0rt: 30 June 2009 - 08:58 AM