Saturday, May 29, 2010

Look with Your Special Eyes

There's still a little haze and glow and oddness going on, but I have 20/20 vision as of today. I got Lasik done yesterday afternoon, slept all evening and night in a mercifully drug induced stupor (apparently there is itching and burning, but you don't know because the vitamin V kicks in with the painkiller and you sleep through the whole thing.), then woke up being able to see. I was still a little shaky, so the friend who drove me to my appointment yesterday also drove me back this morning for the followup. I could have made it the mile to my local doc, but they were out for the weekend and I wasn't up to the trip to the Valley just yet.

I'm now trying to figure out what to do today that won't stress out my eyes. I can't do more renovation because dust in my eyes would be bad, bad, bad. I can't read because it would be a little too much strain. I can't hike because of dust. They don't want me to sweat into my eyes for a week or 4 either. So. I will probably be watching TV. The computer screen still has a little too much glow to be comfortable, but the auras should recede as my eyes heal.

When I can get back at it, my updates will include the reasons for my recent radio silence. I've been busy. Really!
More lasik info, maybe
The bathroom reno (vanity area) that got completed in time to not have any dust hanging around to mess up my eyes
Gratitude for the friend who drove me to my appointments
Total consternation about the fact that BP appears not to have given any thought whatsoever to contingency planning for the event that a well might leak
Good reads recently by: Eileen Wilks, Patricia Briggs, and Pamela Clare
Upcoming wedding trip to boston
Going to singles mixers with my neighbor
Working out with a trainer at Golds Gym (properly pronounced /"Guy-m"/ ala Homer)

Plus, I have 2 days to knock out my May baking, but we'll have to wait for next month to do the rainbow cake again because I just ordered an industrial kit of 12 food colors...

What are you all up to these days?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

How is the recuperation coming along? Are you seeing halos?

Lorraine

S said...

Glad it went so well!

As far as easy things to do while your eyes recover, does your library have any books on tape that would appeal to you?

Terri Osburn said...

Terri here popping over from Jenny's blog, as requested. Nice place ya got here.

Boss is out today so can't ask about the eye exercises, but will as soon as I get the chance and pass them along. She did say she had a really hard time right after and the doctor had to keep assuring her it would get better. I was under the impression the eyes will retrain themselves, it just takes a little time.

Now I need to add you to my list of favorites. Looks some good stuff is being talked about over here.

Angel Junior, Orion and Sammy said...

WOO HOO for you! New eyes! Hope they heal quickly!

CrankyOtter said...

Thanks for your support, all.

I suddenly have supernatural vision. I do get the "halo" glow around bright objects, but I would categorize it as an "aura". I saw more intense halos - bright with blurred edges and starbursts, along with secondary and tertiary images that overlapped the main image on far/bright objects before. Now I just see one sharp image with a supernatural glow around it. It's better and I'm not complaining.

My close vision is still wonky, but when I showed my boss, she said "you SHOULDN'T" be reading that close!!! And if you hold your stuff further out, you'll read faster because your eyes won't have to track along the line. Oh, yeah. That.

But by wonky, I mean that if I try to look at my armpit, there's significant eye strain and a greyish hole in the middle of my vision. I'm not super thrilled about that, but it's also improving every day so I don't know what the end state will be.

As for the middle distance vision (computer monitor, faces at meetings), my eyes are still not working together smoothly. And there's some oddity to the vision that's not unlike what I had with glasses but goes away when I focus but too much focusing gives me a headache. This is to be expected, my eyes were used to working broken. Now they've been fixed and they're at 6s and 7s. I'd like to do some exercises to help them adjust correctly rather than retrain them wrong. If anyone has links (Hi Terri, thanks for commenting!) to online exercises or doctors that work on this, I'd appreciate them. One guy at work recommended a speedreading training program that might work.

For another followup, my industrial sized kit of a dozen gel food colors came. Now to see what foodly havoc I can wreak with them.

CrankyOtter said...

One week on -
My eye doc was ecstatic over the condition of my corneas. I followed all the instructions for the post-op regimen (anti-inflammatories and anti-biotics eyedrops drops every 4 hours while awake, rewetting drops instead of rubbing eyes, protecting eyes with safety glasses when awake or shields when asleep for a week, not rubbing, no heavy lifting, etc...)

I seem to have developed this doublevision in my left eye which takes my vision back to 20/25, but it comes and goes. It could be due to healing or to hydration or to some weird new astygmatism. I'm to keep it hydrated, keep up the anti-inflammatory drops 2x/day for another week and we'll see at my 1 month appt if I still have issues.

It's much, much easier this week to see close up, but not easy yet to see very close (distance of looking at armpits). I asked the doc about exercises and she said the beads-on-a-string exercise will help with eye coordination so I'll give that a try for now. I just want my eyes to work togther and not fight each other so the prescription stays good.

Terri Osburn said...

Glad to hear you're improving and found some exercises that might work. Sounds like the healing is going well. Hope the double vision clears up, that would drive me a little nuts.