PRK Journal, Day 14

Tomorrow it will be two weeks since I had PRK surgery to correct my vision.  There has been great improvement in the past week.  Distance vision has improved almost every day and is now near (but not quite at) 20/20 in my distance eye.  There's still a hard to describe lack of sharpness that's not the same thing as acuity.  I don't know if this is a monovision effect or what, but it also gets better every day and isn't really that noticeable now unless I'm looking for it.  On about day eight the road signs finally started becoming legible.  Close up vision isn't quite as good, though also improving.  It tends to start out reasonably good in the morning and degrade somewhat over a day of computer use.  I've been able to bump up the screen resolution and bump down the font size, though it's not yet comfortable at the full resolution I had before.  But I can work without any major issues now.  I have much less need for the artificial tears--maybe 4 or 5 times a day I feel the need compared to 30 or more times a day last week.  Also I'm definitely reading with my left eye, as planned.

Overall I'm feeling much more encouraged than I was a week ago.  Other reports I've read have people still not experiencing good vision even after three or four weeks.  I think doing a quantitative test every day has been helpful.  It's really hard to decide how well you're seeing just using words.  And when your vision changes every day it's hard to remember exactly how it was a day, two days, three days ago.  The target test has forced me to see that there's been consistent improvement, even if slight. Seeing a target from five inches farther away than yesterday isn't a big difference, but cumulative improvements do add up.

The acuity graph shown is an estimate, based on an assumption that my daughter's contact-corrected vision is 20/20.  She can see the target at 12.5 feet.  I'm now at about 11 feet.  The graphs should be taken as having error bars on the order of a foot or so, since it's hard to exactly pinpoint where the target comes in to clear view.  Also I've been taking the measurement first thing in the morning, when things seem to be at their clearest.  I've been losing 6-12 inches by the end of the day, only to regain that loss and more after a night of sleep.  Hopefully that daily regression will stop as things settle in.

The graphs show what I reported earlier: with surgery on Wednesday, vision on Friday and especially Saturday went south very quickly, rebounding after that.  Days 6 to 9 showed a lull, with steady improvement thereafter.

I've had no issues with night driving, in contrast to some.  No halos.  Bright sunshine is still a little too intense without sunglasses, which I'm supposed to wear for a summer anyway for healing purposes.