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