(warning: long, descriptive post about eye correction surgery)
Just figured I'd make a post, partially to document it, but in case anybody else is thinking about/was curious about this too.
I went in for Photorefractive keratectomy surgery, or PRK on June 19th. This is similar to Lasik, but...hurts more and takes longer to heal (LOL my eyes were BAD)
Basically, the difference is...
Lasik, they create a flap, but leave a side attached, laser the inside of the cornea, then flip the flap closed again.
Lasek, they create a flap, remove it entirely, laser the inside of the cornea, then place the flap back on again.
PRK, no flap is made at all. They use a solution to remove the outer layer of the eye, then laser the entire cornea.
Because there is no flap to protect the insides of the cornea from exposure, you wear a bandage contact lens for a few days, and you have to re-grow the outer layer of your eye. It takes about 3-6 days to re-grow an initial layer, but it takes around 3 months to re-grow it back to normal again. You won't be able to see 20/20 until your eye is fully healed. Because of this, the majority of healing from Lasik only takes around 24 hours (no "regrowing" time is needed, just a bit of tolerance), but PRK takes about a week of dealing with the bandage and a few months before you're able to see again.
Why PRK over Lasik? My eyes are bad enough that they needed the extra tissue to work with, that would have been excluded had they made the flap. (The flap is around 150 microns, or however thick that is, but it's not used at all for the correction, and I needed the extra tissue to reach the amount of correction I needed)
For Reference, my eyes were -8x2.5, and -6x3.5 (near sighted and fairly strong astigmatism -- I've not been able to purchase contacts from that widely advertised 800 number place cause they only carry up to 2.25 astigmatism). My eyes were at the cutting off point to stay within the warranty they provided for guaranteed vision. They were assuring me that the surgery was still doable though, as they just had a case of a girl who was -12 (no astigmatism) that they had just done a month earlier, so I'd be okay.
Anyway, here's how it went.
Friday 19: I did "the world's most perfect vision test" -- this was kind of scary because if I guessed wrong, my vision would be set to "wrong" forever! It was a lot harder than normal vision tests, because a lot of the time, it'd look exactly the same, or slightly different, but I couldn't tell which was better or not.
They gave me an anti-anxiety pill, and some drops and I waited for the pill to kick in.
I'm not a recreational drug user, so about 3 minutes after swallowing the pill, I'm thinking to myself "I wonder what it's going to feel like? Is my jaw going numb? I think my face is going numb! Maybe it's just my head playing with me since I have no idea what I should feel like, because this is WAY too early for any sort of drug induced reaction" Sure enough, 15 minutes later I feel completely normal, as it was all in my head.
About 45 minutes later, they take me into the room, and I'm lying down. "Just keep staring at the flashing green light...and here we go!" "Just keep staring at the flashing green light" (feel pressure as he puts hardware stuff on my eyes...) "Just keep staring at the flashing green light" (like 20 drops of cold liquid dropped into my eye and drips down the side of my face into the tissues they put in the hairnet)
wait 20 seconds
"just keep staring at that flashing green light"
I see him rubbing stuff...mysteriously exactly as one would imagine how vision would be when somebody is pushing on your eye. (kind of like looking at a carnival fun house mirror?)
"just keep staring at that flashing green light"
More random poking and prodding in my eyes...I'm just staring at that green light and sometimes thinking "I can't see it, you're blocking it!! ooh that looks clear...i think...maybe? .. ooh muddled up again now"
Then he puts like a giant magnifying glass thing over my face
"Okay we're about to start the lasers, just keep staring at the flashing green light"
I stare at the flashing green light...the light turns red and blinks kind of. Almost like the evil eye that you're not supposed to look at, lest it steal your soul at in Lord of the Rings. Like all veiny and everything (probably seeing the reflection in my eye, who knows), and all I can think of is "stare at the soul eating red fiery eyeball thing that's blocking my green light...don't move...don't freaking move...want to blink, NO! don't blink! how long is this going to last? I want to twitch, can't...twitch...must ... not ... twitch ... keep ... staring ... don't ... move... how long is this going to be ... " ("twenty more seconds") "omg i hope I haven't twitched yet... evil red fiery eye ... is it over yet? ... "
(I think it's around 60 seconds of the laser itself...anybody who has done a staring contest knows that even 20 seconds is difficult to hold, but this wasn't just a game, it's lasers in the eyes!)
(and yes, you can smell burning during this process)
"Okay we're done...we're going to cover up your eye and do the other one"
whole procedure was probably under 10 minutes for both eyes.
walked out of there with a bag full of drops and a prescription for some eye-nerve killing anti-seizure meds. Not that I'd have seizures, but the side effect of having deadened pain receptors in my eyes does help with the pain
Pain...wasn't as bad as expected, but I was on a lot of pain meds.
June 20, Saturday morning:
I was expecting to be in a bit of pain since most of the surgical meds would be gone. I measured around a 3-4 in pain on a scale of 10 before I popped a pill and doused my eyes with drops. Eyes definitely feeling dry and definitely feeling ilght sensitive. Everything's blurry, but occasionally I can kind of make out the clock. Pain is very similar to having a spec of dust stuck on my contact lens, which normally I can take the contact out, clean it, and put it back in...but I can't with the bandage lenses.
I had a "next day appointment" that morning, and had my friend take me. I was thinking I'd just want to go home and sleep, since that's "what everybody else says" but I ended up taking my friend out to lunch, and we...went shopping for clothes for a bit >.> (don't tell my doc that I didn't immediately just go home and rest *cough*)
June 21 Sunday, still dry, not a whole lot of pain. Maybe a 1-2. Most of that is just feeling excessive dryness. I tell a ton of people "oh the pain wasn't bad at all!"
Left eye is mega foggy. Almost like a movie/cartoon fog where you can barely make out that shadow walking towards you? This is expected as the cells start to regrow on the eye. Kind of looks like putting petroleum jelly on a glass surface, and trying to look through it.
Sunday night: Apparently, the dryness should have been taken better care of. I got greedy since I got two boxes of 5 individual use re-wetting drops so I wanted to make sure I'd have enough for the long haul, so I was trying to save them as much as possible. Well, my eyes dried out, and when I blinked, the lens moved while stuck onto some of the cells, and it tore the cells in my right eye. Ow. MAJOR pain that night. Pain level around a 7 or 8, but I took a pain killer med, and it settled down to around a 4-5 for the rest of the night. Could not really open my eyes or handle any light at all though. Was better if my eyes were closed in a dark room, although that gets really boring fast. Yay for hours of comedy central presents recorded on our DVR.
June 22 Monday, still some major pain although not the piercing pain from Sunday night. Very distinct burning sensation in my eyes. Ice pack to face all day, with eyes very cautiously closed all day.
Right eye is now foggy, left eye clearing up pretty well.
June 23 Tuesday, I found out the reason for my pain on Sunday night/monday (the dryness and tearing) and was told that I needed the bandages in for another couple of days. During the vision check, I realize my right eye has some really awful double vision. so much so, that when I looked at the list of letters, it looked like there were no gaps between the letters in a row...just letter on top of letter on top of letter. I was told that because of that tear in my right eye being straight down the middle, that's what caused both my extreme pain on Sunday night as well as my double vision.
June 25 Thursday, I had the bandages removed. Still cautious about the eyes, tried to go to the mall to celebrate but left after 15 minutes...wayy too much air circulation in the building, my eyes were dying. I'm technically legal to drive, he says. I still feel like everything is blurry, I say.
June 26 Eyes still feeling dry, went in for my "1 week after" appointment. He checked my vision to make sure that the blurriness was due to healing and not due to a bad correction. He said I was about where I should be, and it looks like it's been corrected correctly. We'll still have to wait the couple more months for everything to clear up. He gave me 4 boxes of drops to prevent dryness. <3
Today (June 29) I drove myself to work. Things are blurry -- I can't make out street signs until I'm like...2 cars away from the stop light. But I can see cars, and I can see whether it's red or green. I drove by a school zone, and honestly -- I could see people on the sidewalks, but I couldn't tell whether they were kids or adults since they weren't in focus, and without a height reference, all I could tell was that they were there.
Pain is pretty much gone besides dryness, and there isn't anywhere near the dryness I had early last week. Now, it's just the waiting game for the vision to clear up. The major discomfort right now is I've got hypersensitivity to light. Even when the sun is down and all the lights are off, the television is honestly too bright for me to comfortably watch without sunglasses on. I'm more susceptible to UV damage, so I need sunglasses on for another 3 months at least when outdoors -- I'm not sure how cautious I should be if I'm indoors but the sun's shining through the windows. But either way, everything is megabright. (Think -- you just walked out of a dark movie theater after sitting in the dark for a few hours, and it's now noon. You know how your eyes hurt for the first 20-30 seconds until you get used to it? It's like that, except constant.
The first few days after surgery, I'd wake up around 5am (mostly due to the pain meds wearing off and so I'd just wake up) and have to put on sunglasses to get back to sleep cause it'd be too bright in the room.
At this point, I'd do it again. Pain was minimal for the most part. Discomfort is minimal for the most part. I can see hints of really good clarity for the first 3 minutes after putting in the rewetting drops. My eyes don't feel constantly dry, so I don't feel so desperate to use the drops anymore (and being worried that they'll run out before I'm done with them). It's just the extreme light sensitivity and constant blurriness (I'm around a 20/30 to a 20/40 right now...which is kind of hard to understand unless you see it. But think about looking at a picture book, and that one picture that's a good shot, except the entire thing is out of focus. Not just barely out of focus, but definitely out of focus...but not so bad that the entire image is a splotch of color -- you can still make out the face and smile, but you can't really see the freckles very well. That's about how well I see right now, with everything about that blurry.)
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Anyway, I thought it might be an interesting read for anybody who has thought to do vision correction surgery. I had walked into the consultation expecting them to say "nope, your eyes are too bad for Lasik. Sorry" or "Oh...well you can have Lasik...but I dunno...might be cutting it really close." and just be satisfied with the knowledge that I can't have it. If my vision stays where it is, I will definitely need glasses, but it should continue to steadily improve over the next couple of months. Reading gets frustrating, but if it's big enough I can generally see it with minimal problems. (Definitely not as easy as seeing normally, but it's not that much worse than "rather frustrating" level. I really want to squint or rub my eyes to fix it, but I know that neither will help. so instead, I just set the zoom settings on my computers up a bit.)
Hope somebody gets something out of this, rofl, although maybe nobody will end up reading this 9 page essay, haha