Part IV: The aftermath
Eight days later. This has changed my life, for sure. I am so thrilled that I can see! It still catches me off guard. Many nights, I will lay down to sleep and as I am just about to fall over that edge into a deep sleep, I wake up in a panic. Oh crap! I forgot to take my contacts out! Oh...right...nevermind. Back to bed with you!
I am experiencing some of the side-effects to LASIK, but almost all are improving daily. I see halos and starbursts at night. The halos remind me of coming out of a pool after swimming for several hours - lights have large halos around them. This is dissappating and halos are getting smaller and less bright daily. I expect it to be gone in a month or two, but I certainly do not feel comfortable driving at night at this point. My near vision seems a little messed up too.
Whereas before LASIK, I could set my screen resolution at 1600 X 1200 and see text crisply and clearly (albeit I was sitting close to the screen), now I am at 1024 x 768. That has improved alot, though, and I expect that will get better as time goes on and my eyes heal. Sometimes my eyes will be fine and suddenly go blurry then clear out again 30 minutes later. That is pretty typical as well, and I've talked to others with LASIK who said not to worry - it will go away.
The only side-effect that really concerns me is that I see ghost images at long distances. This may also be why I have some blurriness up close, but the ghosting is harder to see at close distances. I noticed this the other evening when driving to get some dinner. When I looked at stoplights that were about 1/2 tp 1 mile distant, something was wrong. So I covered my left eye and focused again at the stoplights. Where there are supposed to be two, I saw four! The ghosted set was just slightly up and to the left of the original object. I covered the other eye and got the similar results, but this time the ghosted image was up and to the right! I am seeing double vision out of one eye. Freaky. It's not a problem for objects that are closer, because the ghosted image overlaps the real image to the point where the ghosting is imperceptable, or just a little hazy. Trying to remember some college physics, the only thing I can think of that would be causing this is perhaps the way light enters at the edge of the flap - if the flap is not aligned perfectly, then the light is refracted slightly differently, resulting in two images on the back of the retina. Or perhaps the flap and cornea dont align like they used to and slightly different indices of refraction between the 160 micron flap and remaining cornea leads to two images. Dunno. I just hope it goes away, but I am thinking it wont. Snells law and indices of refraction - blah.
I've had some vision headaches over the past week, but those seem to be less frequent. Mostly I think it was caused by eye-strain from trying to read at work. The first day back, I had a pounding vision headache after 1 hour, and asked Corwin if he had any non-visual work for me. The funny thing is, my job is so dependent on reading - white papers, training manuals, documentation - that he had a hard time figuring out things for me to do.
Anyway: Generally happy. Will be much happier when some of the side effects go away. I can't wait until my first caving trip where I will not be worrying about losing a contact, or my first time swimming in a pool and being able to see. Or basically doing anything active where losing a contact or glasses would be disorienting or dangerous. Like driving, or walking. Yeah. This is cool.
I am experiencing some of the side-effects to LASIK, but almost all are improving daily. I see halos and starbursts at night. The halos remind me of coming out of a pool after swimming for several hours - lights have large halos around them. This is dissappating and halos are getting smaller and less bright daily. I expect it to be gone in a month or two, but I certainly do not feel comfortable driving at night at this point. My near vision seems a little messed up too.
Whereas before LASIK, I could set my screen resolution at 1600 X 1200 and see text crisply and clearly (albeit I was sitting close to the screen), now I am at 1024 x 768. That has improved alot, though, and I expect that will get better as time goes on and my eyes heal. Sometimes my eyes will be fine and suddenly go blurry then clear out again 30 minutes later. That is pretty typical as well, and I've talked to others with LASIK who said not to worry - it will go away.
The only side-effect that really concerns me is that I see ghost images at long distances. This may also be why I have some blurriness up close, but the ghosting is harder to see at close distances. I noticed this the other evening when driving to get some dinner. When I looked at stoplights that were about 1/2 tp 1 mile distant, something was wrong. So I covered my left eye and focused again at the stoplights. Where there are supposed to be two, I saw four! The ghosted set was just slightly up and to the left of the original object. I covered the other eye and got the similar results, but this time the ghosted image was up and to the right! I am seeing double vision out of one eye. Freaky. It's not a problem for objects that are closer, because the ghosted image overlaps the real image to the point where the ghosting is imperceptable, or just a little hazy. Trying to remember some college physics, the only thing I can think of that would be causing this is perhaps the way light enters at the edge of the flap - if the flap is not aligned perfectly, then the light is refracted slightly differently, resulting in two images on the back of the retina. Or perhaps the flap and cornea dont align like they used to and slightly different indices of refraction between the 160 micron flap and remaining cornea leads to two images. Dunno. I just hope it goes away, but I am thinking it wont. Snells law and indices of refraction - blah.
I've had some vision headaches over the past week, but those seem to be less frequent. Mostly I think it was caused by eye-strain from trying to read at work. The first day back, I had a pounding vision headache after 1 hour, and asked Corwin if he had any non-visual work for me. The funny thing is, my job is so dependent on reading - white papers, training manuals, documentation - that he had a hard time figuring out things for me to do.
Anyway: Generally happy. Will be much happier when some of the side effects go away. I can't wait until my first caving trip where I will not be worrying about losing a contact, or my first time swimming in a pool and being able to see. Or basically doing anything active where losing a contact or glasses would be disorienting or dangerous. Like driving, or walking. Yeah. This is cool.