PRK: Final Assessment and Grade Assignment

The results have been solid long enough to draw a conclusion: My left eye is pretty good. The right eye is a little low-powered. When I get up in the AM, I see fine. As the day wears on, they both decline a little. The end result, though, is that the right eye brings down the combined vision quite a bit. Squinting is normal. The final checkup at the eye center said that my eyes were 20/20 (left) and 20/20 right, but I don't see how that's possible when my right eye is noticeably weaker. I guess if you get one letter on the 20/20 line, it counts for 5? 20% is passing nowadays? Glad I"m not in school anymore.

Well, the doc and I had a sit down and did some number crunching. He says that re-touching the right eye is possible, but that the laser has a +/- .5 diopter variance and that it's possible to overshoot and make the right eye +.5 farsighted which would mess up the intermediary distances. His summary "if it's not a clear choice, don't make a choice." He offered to re-measure my eyes in 6 months, but I am not sure what that will get us.
I also asked about why I see less well in flourescent lights and low lights? The sub-doctor believes that this is b/c there is some necessary scarring that occurs when the laser cuts and this may be refracting light although this may not be noticeable during high daylight when the amount of light available makes the small amount of lost light unnoticeable.

Final summary: I'd give my final results a 92 or 93.

Pros:
Before I was near blind without my contact whether day or night or twilight. Now I can see well enough to do most everything a modern man would be required to do w/out contacts: work on a pc, drive during daylight hours 100%, read books, newspapers, etc. The TSA won't have to worry about my bottles of saline as I pass through airport security ever again.

Cons:
There is some difficults distinguishing contrasts between forms at twighlight or in low-light scenarios, including flourescent-lit rooms. This matters to me, as I hunt and well, those pesky elk don't like to get out of dark timber much except early AM or early PM. Night driving is a little difficult in areas where I'm not familiar, b/c the weaker right eye makes reading street signs from a distance very difficult. Also, the loss of vision b/c of the scarring in low light environments means that items on the perifery of my headlights (pedestrians, animals, etc) aren't as apparent.

I would probably still have the PRK surgery done, if I were offered a chance to do this again. I would definitely choose to do the eyes one at a time, if I were going to do the surgery.
Thanks for reading, good luck.

ac

Sign out, maybe

I'm about 3 months in now. The eyes are both pretty steady. I still see excellently in the AM, but much weaker late in the day. Flourescent lighting is a problem. Working on a PC still tires them, probably b/c I am older.
In general, I am happy with the way this turned out. Still, I am considering having one of my eyes, probably the right, "tuned" as it is a hair weaker than my left. Both are a little bit under-tuned. I understand this theory of conservative cutting and I don't disagree with it, but the right is a hair more off, so there might be room for improvement there. If I stop now, I would still be happy. Driving at night in the rain can be less than ideal, but not so much so that I feel like I'm endangering anyone.

But today, my daughter accidentally poked me in the eye while dressing. It was quite a jab and her finger actually got up under my eyelid a bit. At the very least, I'm completely happy with my choice to do PRK over lasik.

5/7 week update

did my checkup and luckily, I had very dry eyes when I did this last friday. I say luckily, b/c now I know what my eye strength is towards the end of the day when things go south. I am -.3 in one eye and -.5 in the other. The Doctor told me that this was not all bad, as being slightly nearsighted would be a way to buffer the onset of wearing glasses as my eyes gravitated to farsightedness. I didn't buy that. A couple alternatives were floated. 1. keep the eyes wetter, since the vision is good in the AM and probably things wear out later. 2. wear light-prescription glasses later in the day. I scuttled #2 immediately, as the goal here is to NOT wear glasses.
We discussed re-cuts. I asked the Dr. what the percentage of success/failure (overshoot or undershoot) was for this particular establishment on 2nd cuts. She didn't know but would ask. OK. I'm probably not going to worry about the -.3 eye. The -.5 would be the fixer-up-er. I still have a little ghosting that comes and goes with wetness/blinking. I"m not terribly concerned either way yet; I am minorly inconvenienced by my level of nearsightedness where previously I was unable to function w/out glasses. If we stopped where we are, I would probably have better vision than 90% of the world's population through history.
I would probably have to take some drops into the field with me when camping or elk hunting, but since I wouldn't be looking at a computer screen all day, I expect my vision would actually be better outdoors.
Next checkup in 6 months. The ghosting/dry eyeness *should* be gone by then. The head doctor should call to talk about options next week or so.

Tidbits I picked up

I picked some info during the checkup on Friday. First of all, the eye sight is doing well. somewhere around 20/25 combined. My doc says I'm on the high edge of the recovery curve and that it usually takes longer. FYI: this was my 5/3 week checkup.

Some Answers:
A: why do I see best in the first 30-60 mins of the AM? 1. B/c I use a computer, my eye lenses don't focus far and like lifting a weight. It's easy at first, but gets harder as the day progresses. I was recommended to take several breaks from work each hour and stare at some object in the far distance. Also, keep the eyes wet. B/c my eyes aren't used to focusing this far on their own, since they had help in the past, this will need to be worked on. never knew there was rehab involved, but I guess I will work on this. They are the doctors.

B. Why do I see better on some days than others. Answer: depends on the daily amount of swelling. As a general curve, the eye swelling should be decreasing over time. Therefore the amount of variance in my daily vision should reduce over time, but some days the eyes will be more swollen than others.

Update 3/5

3 week semi-versary for the left eye; 5 weeks for right.
the combined vision is pretty good today.
If it were yesterday, I would have given the results a C. Today, I would say B. It's weird that the vision is a little better out of my left eye than my right. But. combo is solid today.
Unstable is the new stable.

Check up tomorrow at the doc's office will be able to put numbers with the results.

Unstable is the new Stable

My last blog from Saturday the 28th was very positive. If I had written a blog on Sunday, it would have been much more negative. Monday was more promising than Sunday, but less than Saturday. In general, each day gets better, but they all follow a similar pattern. I wake up. I can see well. I look across the field across from our house and I can pick out the individual slats in the rail fence about 250 yards away. I can see the Continental divide very clearly. At some point in the next hour, perhaps b/c of the cup of coffee I drink (I don't know), my vision degrades to pretty good. I can read my PC okay while working. Eventually, though, it fades out. Last night we went to a pro hockey game and I had lost a goodly amount of detail toward the end.
Today, the vision was pretty good. The 2 week semaniversary is tomorrow for the left eye. I can see pretty well. I suspect that the period of improvement in my vision in the first part of the day will become longer as the eyes heal.

I poked myself in the eye today b/c I fell back into my habit of adjusting dried contacts by hand.

Back on the Bike

Right eye:85% or so. Left eye: 60%. Combo: 90%. Good enough to get out and ride a bike in a group. After 4 weeks of no riding, it's good to start returning to normal life. I take eye drops with me and re-wet my eyes a couple times each ride. Recovery is over the hump and I would consider my 7-10 day forecast for viable vision with a reworked right and a newly lasered left to be on schedule.