Friday, March 8, 2013

PRK Journal, Day 3

At 1AM I awoke and said ah, there's the pain I was promised.  The right eye had the feeling of a piece of dirt stuck on it.  It was very unpleasant and made it impossible to sleep.  I got up, detached the plastic eye shield and added some artificial tears. Looked at the computer for a couple of hours.  The pain subsided and I was able to get back to sleep.  This morning the left eye had some pain, not as bad.  In general, today isn't painful, but is less comfortable than yesterday.

I had another checkup appointment this morning.  Surprisingly I am now legal to drive thanks to the right eye.  That's really sort of scary, to think that lots of people are driving around seeing as poorly as this.  I'm not planning on driving until Monday unless things get noticeably better before then.  

Epithelium on my left eye is regrowing faster than the right, though both are progressing normally.  Vision is supposed to degrade for the next couple of days before getting better again, thanks to the irregular regrowth of the epithelium.  It does seem worse today, and the vision target test reveals that.  The left eye is now quite poor.  They're constantly reassuring me that this is all normal.  I guess people tend to get discouraged or panicky. thinking the surgery was a bust.

There were five other patients in the waiting room who also had PRK on Wednesday.  We exchanged reports.  One guy has had a noticeably harder time.  He is extremely light sensitive, has to wear his sunglasses inside and can't look at a screen.  He also had serious pain on both days, with some relief this morning.  Makes me feel lucky.  I was able to take a walk (in sunglasses) in bright sunshine yesterday.  The doc did tell me that today (Friday) is usually the worst for pain, with improvement tomorrow.  Sunday is usually pain-free.  Again, we'll see.

Comfort: pain in the right eye last night for a couple of hours, a little in the left this morning.  Eyes generally feel very tired and need a lot of artificial tears.
Photosensitivity: not much.  Need sunglasses outside, inside is fine.
Target: Both eyes: 49 inches.  Right eye: 49 inches.  Left eye: 30 inches.  Considerably worse than yesterday.
Closeup vision: Still blurry, still using megafonts on the computer.
Driving: legal, but I'm not doing it yet.
Working: not yet.

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