LASIK Eye Surgery...1 week update...

It has been a little over a week since I had my LASIK surgery. So far, I seem to be recovering pretty well. The doctor said I can stop using the medicated eye drops and just use the artificial tears. I don't seem to be having a problem with dry eyes, but then again, I've been using the drops religiously as directed. I should still be careful not to rub my eyes and no swimming for a month. I don't know how to swim anyway.

I guess the first thing everyone would want to know is how well am I seeing. The short answer is I can easily read the 20/20 line on the eye chart using both eyes! In fact, I can almost read 20/10 using both eyes. These Lasers are really an amazing technology when you think about it.

I can read the 20/20 line using just my right eye. I am not quite able to read the 20/20 line using just my left eye (it's blurry). I can see the eye charts better using both eyes than I do when using just one eye. My left eye seems to be under corrected by a quarter to half a degree when compared with my right eye. Perhaps it's still healing and will improve?

During the day, I can say I am seeing better than I was with contacts or glasses even though my left eye isn't quite at 20/20 (at least not yet). I've always felt my prescription was a little off with both my glasses and contacts no matter which eye doctor I went to. Every eye doctor I've gone to gave me a different prescription and it was one of the concerns I had before doing the surgery. If every eye doctor and optometrist was getting different numbers, how would they know which numbers to plug into the computer? I am seeing better during the day than I've ever seen before with contacts or glasses. Although my left eye seems to be off slightly, the correction I got with LASIK seems to be closer to the right one than I got with glasses or contacts! Pretty amazing stuff.

At night, the results are not as spectacular as during the day. The main issue is that there is a halo around every light source. The brighter and closer I am to the light, the larger the halo around the light is. This normally isn't a problem unless you are looking at a lot of light sources like a bunch of car headlights. Another situation is if you are looking down a street with a lot of bright street lamps. There is a halo around each light and it creates glare and can make it difficult to see.

I've spoken to other people who've had LASIK and some of them still see halos even years after their surgery. Supposedly, the custom wavefront technology is suppose to solve this problem, but as of now, that is the only major problem with my vision. They told me this should improve with time as my eyes are still healing.

My eyes are still bloodshot (especially my left eye), but that seems to be healing slowly by the day. This is caused by the pressure they apply to your eye when they cut the flap. This can break some blood vessels, and I got a really bad case of red eye like this:

It looks ugly and nasty and it was a lot worse in the days right after I had surgery, but it does not affect my vision at all.

LASIK is really a life changing procedure if you had really bad vision like I did. Being able to see without glasses or contacts has really improved the quality of life. I have worn contacts for over 20 years and they have always been a pain. Before disposables, cleaning the lenses was always a chore. I could only wear them for about 14 hours before my eyes dried out and sometimes they would come out of my eye and I would lose them. Disposable contacts were a big leap forward as it did away with the cleaning solutions. But I still had problems when I fell asleep in them (accidentally) and my eyes would easily get irritated. I had many problems when backpacking in Europe for 2 months last summer. Sometimes, I would be on a train, bus, or plane for 10-15 hour with no place to wash my hands to take out my contacts. Halfway through my trip, I broke my glasses so there was no way for me to see unless I had my contacts in. I love traveling and this makes life easier since it's one less major thing I need to worry about when trekking around the globe.

I will post more updates in the next few weeks on the halo situation...