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.

Its been a week and a few days since my PRK surgery, and my eye is healing quickly. I don’t have any near vision blurriness anymore and I’m guessing my distance vision is at least 20/20 since my left eye’s visual acuity is equal to my right eye with the corrective lens. In just 48-hours the initial post-operative farsightedness has resolved itself. In fact, because the vision in my left eye is so superior to my right, I recently became left-eye dominant at all distances. In the past few days, when I was experiencing post-op hyperopia, I had difficulty reading a computer screen with my left eye. Even at that near distance, the text on the screen was almost unreadable, so I resorted to covering my left eye in order to work without a headache. Now that I’m left-eye dominant, my right eye is seeing blurry text, while my left eye is sharp. In order to focus with my right eye, I have to cover my left and then concentrate on focusing with my right. Just crazy. My solution is simply to wear my old glasses with the left lens removed. This way, both eyes have the same prescription.

The optical aberrations seem to have abated as well. I don’t have ghosting issues anymore, in any lighting condition. I still see very faint halos and starbursts in my left eye, but they are significantly less intense than my right eye with corrected vision. My glasses, for some reason, create very large starbursts from bright light sources (e.g. headlights of oncoming traffic). Even without correction, my untreated right eye still produces more visible optical distortions than my left. Perhaps this is due to the wavefront technology of the Visx laser.

I’ll learn my exact visual acuity on Monday. Fortunately, my vision is fluctuating much much less throughout the day. I find that my left eye is at its worst in the evening. This may be due to the steroid drops, as I’ve read that eyesight tends to stabilize once the drops are discontinued. For now, I can’t wait until next Thursday when I have the right eye done. I don’t know how much longer I can stand such lopsided vision!

My vision has fluctuated quite a bit today from blurry in the morning to less blurry in the afternoon. Now its back to “more” blurry but roughly equal to my uncorrected, un-lasered right eye. This greatly reduces the feeling of dizziness from the past few days. I didn’t experience any pain today either, so I’m definitely on the mend. I have noticed that my eye tends to worsen after an application of steroid eye-drops, but I can’t discontinue these drops since they slow the healing process and prevent scar tissue from forming.

Earlier today, at my post-op checkup, my surgeon removed the bandage contact lens after convincing himself that I had healed enough. He explained the epithelium had mostly regrown except for a small spot of opaque cells in the center. I should expect the healing trend to continue and these cells to smooth out and become more transparent in the next few weeks. At the appointment, my vision tested to 20/60, a definite improvement from the day before.

As for the optical aberrations, I don’t notice the star bursts or ghost-images anymore, although the halos persist. Rather than a solid ring of light, they appear as a soft, warm glow around light sources. I also notice that my distance vision is much crisper than my near vision, though both are blurry. This may be a sign that I had some mild presbyopia that was hidden by my nearsightedness, or it could mean that I was slightly over corrected by the laser. Hopefully this will also resolve during the healing process.