[Annelle]

(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.)

---
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

[Lucy]

wow, that was really interesting. it's something i might consider in the future if my eyes do get worse (i'm -2.25 and -1.5, solveable with glasses for distances) and if they can show its safe.

[Annelle]

yeah, before you even think about surgery you should make sure that your prescription is stable for at least a few years.

When it first started getting popular, they did it on everybody who could afford it, but then they're realize that kids who had it done at 18, 20, 23...if their eyes weren't matured all the way (eyes continue to grow/change/mature until your 20's) then they'd get fixed to 20/20 and then their eyes would grow some more and then they'd need glasses again. Kind of like a pair of jeans. If you're buying your last pair ever, you don't want to buy them based on your height when you're 14. Wait until after your growth spurt ends and then buy em.

I think Lasik and PRK got really popular late 80's/early 90's...so the data on safety is only around 20-30 years old yet. (Not a whole lot of info on super long term effects) but there's a lot of people who got it done 10-15 years ago who are fine now.

One thing they did warn me -- if I wait too long, I'll also be dealing with presbyopia, which all people get when they get old. (basically, the eyes get physically old, and they have a harder time focusing...it's why all old people tend to need reading glasses eventually) Anyway, that starts hitting people in their 40's, so if you wait until you're 45 to do the surgery -- you might end up still needing reading glasses in a year or two. If you have the surgery when you're 25, you'll have a good 20 years before having to worry about that. (the surgery can only help near sightedness, far sightedness, and astigmatism. it can't reverse age)

[Lucy]

interesting!

the optician told me my eyes might actually sort themselves out by the time i get to thirty. i'm 20 in about two weeks and my prescription has changed nearly a whole degree in my right eye over the space of two years, making me need a -2.25 instead of the -1.25 that i originally was. so right now they're getting worse, but apparently short sightedness can fix itself.

but meh, if it doesn't, i'd try contacts first and see how i got on with them. i don't mind wearing glasses, it's just a bit of a pain sometimes.

[Annelle]

My prescription has progressively gotten worse every single time I went to the doc since I was like 5.

But about 3-4 years ago, I'd leave with the doc saying "well, doesn't really look like it's changed much!" The last two years, I moved across the country, and I've gone to the same doc both times, and he said my eyes were pretty much exactly the same as last year, so he referred me over to the Lasik center. (He didn't want to send a referral last year, since his didn't have official proof that my prescription was set)

The first time it was the same, I was kind of in shock thinking ... well maybe it's only a slight difference, and not worth getting new glasses. The next time I'm like...ooh! maybe I'll be eligible for surgery soon! I don't remember if there was an extra year in there or not before I moved.

If your eyes aren't terrible, it might not be worth it for you. (personal decision here) and contacts are great, too, I've worn those for years.

But my eyes are so rough that even contacts were difficult for me (because of the severity of my astigmatism, if the lenses budged a half a degree, my vision was completely out of whack. same with if my eyes got dry, or if the wind blew the wrong way...I'd have to go back in and twist the lens to be able to see again). Glasses got bad because they were so thick that I'd actually get scars on my nose if I wore them long enough. If you've got no astigmatism, then you shouldn't have any problems at all with contacts, at least vision problems.

(Also, considering my contacts cost me $400/year, 40 more years of contacts is over $15,000!! so I saved money in the long run!! haha)

[Maysie]

I really enjoyed reading this. Laser correction is something that I'm looking into in the next several years. I just HATE the hassle of dealing with contacts/glasses and not being able to see in the mornings when I wake up! I'm glad you're healing well and that it really does sound like the way to go

[pinksugar]

I've also had PRK, and I'm jealous of you - my pain level was 11/10! man it stung like a *****. But not for that long. It was painful after the initial numbness wore off and was really painful for about 3 hours, I took everything they let me have and then closed my eyes in the darkest room of the house and had a nap. When I woke up, I pretty much felt fine and could see really well.

They were painful on and off for a few days but basically, I could see! it was awesome. Even though it was really painful I don't regret it for a second. It's interesting to read your experience vs mine. Thanks for posting!

[Roxie]

I've considered surgery and had gotten pretty serious about it, but I love choosing different frames and even though most the time, glasses are a liability, they are fashionable!... I think. lol. I don't know if my eyes get worse or better as I've never asked and my mum does all the talking. Apparently, one eye is better than the other and one is football shaped, that's all I know. I might get surgery one day, but right now, I'm happy with changing my frames whenever mine begin looking dated.

[Annelle]

I've also had PRK, and I'm jealous of you - my pain level was 11/10! man it stung like a *****. But not for that long. It was painful after the initial numbness wore off and was really painful for about 3 hours, I took everything they let me have and then closed my eyes in the darkest room of the house and had a nap. When I woke up, I pretty much felt fine and could see really well.

I was on, let's see...

antibiotic drops
painkiller drops
rewetting drops
(They also gave me an anesthetic drop to use within the first 24 hours if I had immense pain, but with caution that it does drastically slow down healing, so not to use it too often, nor past the first 24 hours -- I didn't have enough pain to use it. They did say it's the exact same anesthesia that they use during surgery so it completely numbs any pain or feeling in the eye though.)
and an anti-seizure pill, which they said has a side effect that deadens the nerve endings in the back of my eyes for pain. It's FDA approved for epilepsy and not for eye-pain, but it seems to work well for it.

It seemed to help a lot when I had taken it on Sunday night, so that might have been what kept it mostly at bay over the weekend.

Apparently, one eye is better than the other and one is football shaped, that's all I know.

football shape means astigmatism

[Annelle]

Today marks week 3 since the surgery.

There's been a marked improvement from week to week.

I'm able to tolerate indoor light for the most part, although sunlight coming through the windows is still bad. (If I'm staring in the direction of an open window, I'll need to close the blinds, put on shades, or just move away from the window)

I'm supposed to avoid UV exposure to my eyes for at least 3 months post-surgery, so sunglasses outside all the time, which isn't a bad habit regardless of surgery.

I know I was looked at weirdly a few times when I was in a fairly dimly lit room (restaurants for example!) and refused to take off my sunglasses! But it was too bright for me still! haha, it makes me give a bit more respect to people I see indoors with their sunglasses on -- they might have just had surgery! they're not all just insane! LOL

Anyway, current vision:
If I'm not paying attention, and don't try to concentrate, things almost look clear! They told me it'd take 3 months before reaching my final vision, so I'm not too worried that things aren't perfectly clear right now, but it's getting pretty good. Looking across the room, I can tell what every object is, but I just can't see any details. (I don't know if anybody else does this...but you know when you get kind of tired/daydream, and you're looking at something, and then you relax your eyes and stop paying attention, so that things kind of go out of focus? Kind of like that vision I suppose)

I'm at a point where I can see people who normally never wear glasses have my level of vision, and just don't ever take out their glasses because they don't want to deal with the hassle or "looking like a nerd" unless they needed to sit down to read.

If text is bigger than an inch in size, I can see it with no problems at all...and I almost can't tell that it's out of focus. If it's smaller than that, I can definitely tell it's out of focus. But it does mean that if I'm out and about and not needing to read, I'm able to function fairly normally. (But, I should still point out, you'd be surprised how often you end up reading stuff or trying to see small details on stuff all the time.)

Honestly one of the things that's got my body in shock is falling asleep. My contacts do NOT allow you to sleep in them. In fact, normally if I had my eyes closed for more than 10 seconds, they'd start drying out and get "stuck" in a bad position, throwing my vision out of whack. If I start getting drowsy, I had taught myself to wake myself up, and get those contacts out because I will severely regret it as soon as I wake up. If I have already done that and I have my glasses on, I need to make sure the glasses are off, because I don't want to break them in my sleep.

I've caught myself trying to wake myself up to make sure my contacts/glasses are taken care of, and it takes me a second to realize -- I have nothing to take care of...I'm allowed to just go asleep being able to still see things like the clock and tv. Something I don't really EVER remember being able to do. lol it's just a huge shock to me like every single night.

[Eyeztalk]

Thanks for posting this! Great read <3

[Princess Grace]

Thank You for sharing this with us: I just got an appointment for PRK in September. It took me 15 years to decide, because I had read early days horror stories about people with chronic photophobia or conjuctivitis...I am myopic, astigmatic and you name it, I got a pair of glasses which I wear only for a couple of hours in the evening, but I'm sick of all the solutions, lens cases, etc.
I feel better now after reading your stories...So it stings, eh? Why do I alwyas run into people, of late, who tell me that they had it done, their eyes burned for about 20 minutes and walked off seeing like the Bald Eagle??

[Annelle]

lol -- there's a few different surgeries that people do to get eye correction. I had to explain to a few different people that PRK is different. They were all like "well my (friend, sister, cousin, etc) got it done years ago and they were fine after a few days"

There's Lasik, Lasek, PRK, and something that implants a lens into your eye. Might be more, but the only thing that most people know is that a surgery for correcting vision exists. They likely don't know "how" it works, or that there's a whole list of types of surgeries that can be done. My boss was even asking me "So why is your recovery taking longer than normal? One of my girl friends had your surgery and was fine in a few days." (her friend had the implantation surgery) I was told straight up by my doc, "your recovery will take 3 months. I've had other patients come back irritated that even after telling them 3 months, that they weren't able to see anything after a week. As long as you are realistic about recovery, you will do fine. You WON'T be able to see very well at all for at least a few days (barely even functioning status -- and he was correct. We're used to seeing 20/20 because we can depend on our glasses/contacts to give us that 20/20)

As of last week (at my 1 month post-op appointment), I was 20/30 in my right eye and 20/40 in my left.

Lasik stories I've read the next morning was pretty bad (they sleep the rest of the day of surgery), but by that afternoon/evening they're able to see great. I was also told that the implant surgery people recovered fairly quickly too. The thing about PRK is that you actually need to regrow that outer layer, which takes time.

I learned recently (probably should have done more research on my part, honestly) that with Lasik -- that flap doesn't actually heal itself up. It just stays there permanently cut, and everybody just hopes it won't move out of place. The reason my doctor doesn't do Lasek is that there's absolutely nothing to at least make sure the flap is still attached to the eye, whereas with Lasik, at least if it tries to move, there's a small piece of the flap to prevent it from falling completely off.

I guess basically you're now forever needing to be more careful around your eyes, as any eye damage could cause flap displacement.

With PRK, no flap was made, and the cells that were removed all grow back on their own, so it's technically "safer" post-healing.

I mean, granted, most people go throughout their lives without major eye injuries, but everybody's been accidentally jabbed before, and everybody knows somebody who's gotten a black eye. Makes me kind of glad I went the PRK route in that case.

And definitely no -- Probably week 3 was when I started feeling confident about my vision.

Week 1 was horrid for vision -- that's when everything was growing in and I felt like somebody had put jelly all over my eyes and fogged everything up and made everything unbelievably bright. Week 2 the fuzziness/jelly feeling was dissipating, and able to see well enough to not only move about from room to room but be able to tell what I was moving around. I couldn't read the labels on anything, but I could see that there was in fact a label with writing on it. (before, I definitely wouldn't have made out words, and I may not have made out a label)

I'm down to using the wetting drops maybe one bottle every few days (I have the sensitive "single use" things so that they can be used as often as needed, without preservatives which can harm your eyes if you overdose on them. One "bottle" has like...6-7 drops worth in it) During week 3 I was using about a bottle and a half per day. (I'm at the end of week 5 now)

I've been told to avoid opening my eyes under water, but I'm fine with pretty much everything else. (Good with swimming even as long as I keep my eyes closed under water. He told me I could wear swimming goggles, he just said don't go scuba diving or something, because of the additional pressure.) I noticed this morning when I first woke up that my eyes really didn't want to open for a good 5 minutes or so. (might have been the sudden brightness from being asleep all night to daylight?)

I'm now able to read the words on the backs of my makeup bottles and such with minor difficulty. (without any difficulty, I can read them about as well as I was able to read them with great difficulty on my last post. Still not perfect vision, but still really clear) I feel like I can actually focus on things and have certain things come in "clear" now...but it's like...a lot of things in my peripheral vision tell me "still blurry"

Don't expect a fast recovery. I'm actually kind of excited at how far I've come along within the first month. I'm at a point now where if I had this level of vision all my life, I probably would have never known I wasn't of "normal" vision. I can read small print, and see distance. (Distance is actually better than close up, because you expect close up to be clear, and distance is far away so you don't expect to see every little detail, so it's less noticeable.)

Yeah, from what I remember, on Saturday, it felt like I had an eye lash or a piece of makeup or dirt stuck on my contact lens. Like the biggest piece of dirt ever. And normally I take out my contact lens, rinse it out, and I put it back in and I'm okay. I couldn't pull it out, since the bandage contact lens was there and I couldn't do anything about it. It's definitely a survivable pain.

[Chaeli]

Thank you for this thread. I've always had great eye sight but the past year or so it has been down hill. I hate the thoughts of having to wear glasses and have thought about asking about surgery as an alternative so I now have a CLEAR picture of what to expect and would be much more prepared to deal with the post op days and weeks to follow as well.

[Dalylah]

Very interesting and informative. Thanks for sharing

[primary1]

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