Siena was being stubborn this morning and resisting a change of clothes. LRH wasn’t making any progress, so I tried a bribe thinking it would make her comply immediately.
Me: “Siena, if you let me change your clothes, I’ll give you a piece of yummy beef jerky.”
Siena: “No daddy, I candy”
Needless to say, my bribe quickly turned into a negotiation. This kid never ceases to amaze me.
I brought my camera to the range yesterday with the intent to capture some muzzle blasts from pistol rounds. The idea was originally inspired by my friend who has a Bersa Thunder in .45 and some +P rounds. The results were amazing, to say the least.
The process is fairly straightforward provided you have solo access to an indoor range or can find a safe place outside to shoot with low lighting conditions. You’ll need a good SLR camera with support for bulb exposure, a solid tripod and some patience. Follow the tips below:
Here are the results:
Left Eye: post-op day 17
Right Eye: post-op day 3
Just a quick update on my right eye. Its going much like the left eye did – the worst day being yesterday accompanied by lots of pain, blurriness, and ghosting. Today its been mostly pain free, but the blurriness still remains. Hopefully if my eye is healed enough, I’ll get the bandage contact lens removed tomorrow and I should be seeing very clearly by the end of this week. I also get to reduce the application of Pred Forte in my left eye to two drops per day tomorrow.
It will be interesting to see if my right eye reaches 20/20. My surgeon had to make a decision on how to treat my right eye because my optical perscription determined with the phoropter differed from wavescan data by 0.34 diopters. He decided to under correct by 0.25 diopters, opting to trust the wavescan machine. Either way, its better to be under corrected than overcorrected and I should know where I stand by the end of the week.
My iPhone 3GS has video capture capability and I plan to use this frequently whenever my daughter does something cute.
Siena loves plaing the piano and I think she’s quite good at it already. In a few years, hopefully she’ll still be interested and actively taking piano lessons.
Left Eye: post-op day 15
Right Eye: post-op day 1
After two weeks of suffering monovision, yesterday I finally had a PRK performed on my right eye. The procedure went much as it did for the left eye with the only difference being my immediate post-op vision was blurry and smudged with an almost grayish glow. The staff in the surgery room assured me that every eye is different and my vision would clear up soon. They were right. A few hours after the procedure, the blurred vision was gone. Strangely, the ice-cold eye drops didn’t cause as much pain this time, while my post-operative pain was much greater than the left eye. On my way out of the surgery center yesterday, I threw my crazed, scratched glasses in their trash. You have no idea how good that felt!
This morning I had my day 1 post-op doctor visit while en route to the FIRST Robotics Competition in Portland. Amazingly, my visual acuity was 20/25 and it has remained very sharp throughout the day. My surgeon noted that my epithelium had healed about 30% and again asked me to take the Pred Forte and Zymar four times per day. I also have some Bromday drops for pain, though these drops apparently slow the healing process so they are to be used sparingly. While my right eye vision was excellent throughout the day, I am starting to see my visual acuity worsen significantly, both for distance and near vision. As with the left eye, the healing epithelium causes a sharp but temporary decline in vision as it slowly covers the surface of the cornea.
I had my visual acuity checked for my left eye this morning and it was still at 20/20, though just barely. This is not an unexpected result since my visual will continue to fluctuate for the next few months.
Yesterday I had my one week post-op appointment, although it was day 11 after the surgery. The vision in my left eye tested to 20/20 +2 (Meaning I had 20/20 vision but was able to read two of the characters from the 20/15 line). They told me that my visual acquity is excellent given that my eye is early in the healing process. This is welcome news although I understand PRK has a very long healing process and my vision will continue to fluctuate in the coming months. These visual changes can be attributed to both the steroid eye drops and dryness. Apparently, toward the end of the day, the eye tends to dry out creating subtle disturbances in vision. I haven’t experienced any symptoms of dry eye, however if I treat with preservative-free drops, my vision becomes crystal clear again (at least temporarily).
My surgeon didn’t notice any signs of haze or infection and asked me to discontinue taking the antibiotic eyedrops. He asked me to taper my dose of the steroid drop. Three times per day this week, two next week, etc. He was still able to see the gray-colored collection of cells where the epithelium fused, though I am not experiencing any visual disturbances. Early on, this created some ghosting and a smudge-like blur effect.
I’m scheduled to have my right eye lasered this Thursday and if all goes well I’ll be free of glasses.
