Lasik Update
Good news, bad news, and good news. To recap, the left eye was "enhanced" for the 2nd time, back in November. The good news, my left eye is now in the 20/25 range, which is an entire page or more on the eye chart from the 20/50 where it was seeing back in January. Additonally, there doesn't appear to me much residual. It's maybe a quarter unit nearsighted, but if it behaves like the right eye, that should disappear over the next year.
The bad news, there is no residual, and thus, no prescription that will make my left eye see better. By all rights, I should be seeing 20/20 out of that eye. The ghosting and contrast issues, which make it seem like I'm wearing a dry, dirty, smudged contact lens all the time, is all related to the initial flap problems. Rather then laying back down in a nice sphere, the outer flap wrinkled in this lattice like pattern, as if it was trying to form a sphere using large square polygons. That surface has still not fully healed, and it's like looking through one of those dimpled shower doors. The good news, it will probably heal slowly over time resulting in vision improvemnts. How much improvment there will be and how long it will take are complete unknowns. Quite literally, I am the sample size of 1 with this particular case. Similar cases they have seen like this have not been this bad, produced this much distortion in people's vision, or been complicated by needing 2 enhancements.
The right eye, which was last done over a year ago, has continued to improve. It's now less than a quarter unit farsighted, and there are no significant side effects to report. For reference, the right eye had been on the order of 5/8's farsighted about 6 months ago. The starbursts and halos out of the right eye are pretty much on par with my old contacts, if not a little better and clearer even. Dryness issues have also cleared up in the right eye as well.
Interestingly, since this is the one year follow-up, I was asked if I would still choose to have had lasik. I answered with undecided. If it was just the right eye, no problem, hell yes. But with the left eye...it still needs some improvement before being acceptable. Meaning also, that I'm 1 of only 2 out of several thousand that had lasik done last year that didn't get results that were acceptable enough to do it again. The second had an accident within 24 hours after his surgery where he hit his eye and messed things up. Let this be a lesson to all, never stand near me in a lightening storm.
The bad news, there is no residual, and thus, no prescription that will make my left eye see better. By all rights, I should be seeing 20/20 out of that eye. The ghosting and contrast issues, which make it seem like I'm wearing a dry, dirty, smudged contact lens all the time, is all related to the initial flap problems. Rather then laying back down in a nice sphere, the outer flap wrinkled in this lattice like pattern, as if it was trying to form a sphere using large square polygons. That surface has still not fully healed, and it's like looking through one of those dimpled shower doors. The good news, it will probably heal slowly over time resulting in vision improvemnts. How much improvment there will be and how long it will take are complete unknowns. Quite literally, I am the sample size of 1 with this particular case. Similar cases they have seen like this have not been this bad, produced this much distortion in people's vision, or been complicated by needing 2 enhancements.
The right eye, which was last done over a year ago, has continued to improve. It's now less than a quarter unit farsighted, and there are no significant side effects to report. For reference, the right eye had been on the order of 5/8's farsighted about 6 months ago. The starbursts and halos out of the right eye are pretty much on par with my old contacts, if not a little better and clearer even. Dryness issues have also cleared up in the right eye as well.
Interestingly, since this is the one year follow-up, I was asked if I would still choose to have had lasik. I answered with undecided. If it was just the right eye, no problem, hell yes. But with the left eye...it still needs some improvement before being acceptable. Meaning also, that I'm 1 of only 2 out of several thousand that had lasik done last year that didn't get results that were acceptable enough to do it again. The second had an accident within 24 hours after his surgery where he hit his eye and messed things up. Let this be a lesson to all, never stand near me in a lightening storm.