Eye, eye...

Update on the eyes which are now in their second week since the surgery:

Over the weekend, the feeling of still wearing contact lenses or of having something in my eyes lessened considerably, to the point where I feel virtually ‘normal’ again. I even put on a bit of mascara today, although I still don’t feel quite like they are ‘my’ eyes and I won’t be practising any vampy eyeliner techniques on myself just yet.

Eye drop administration has now gone down to four-hourly, which feels less like there’s something actually wrong with me. It was quite a routine with three different drops every two hours.

I did two three-hour drives over the weekend. The first, which was during daylight, felt a little odd as I was constantly checking to see how well I could see at different focal lengths – wing mirrors, rearview mirror, dashboard, and so on. The second drive, which was partly in the dark, two days later, was fine and I barely gave my vision a thought. In fact, night driving was a huge improvement on before, because my vari-focal contact lenses caused quite big haloes and starbursts, which worried me and often made me switch to glasses for driving. But I used to find that, when I had just switched from lenses to glasses, the vision wouldn’t be sharp for the first few hours, so this was often not much help. So, night driving is definitely much better since the surgery and this ticks one of my boxes for having the op.

My left eye’s focus is still not as sharp as my right. My right now feels slightly over-corrected, if that makes sense, but I really feel that I haven’t arrived at the end point yet. I get glimpses of extremely sharp vision in both eyes which I hope is the potential that will be achieved when healing is complete – about three months. I also have to remember that eye drops also have a blurring effect on the vision and at the moment, my vision fluctuates quite a lot during the day, although it is starting to settle a little now.

I’ve bought lots of pairs of cheap Primark magnifying spectacles. I didn’t want to spend too much right away, as I’m not sure where I’m going to end up but not being able to read in bed was annoying me and my +1.00 dioptre glasses weren’t helping at close range, although they’re find for distances of about 10-15 inches. One forgets quite how close you hold a book when you’re lying down. At 52, presbiopia (age-related long sightedness) was always going to be an issue but my eyes aren’t bad for my age. A fact my optician put down to the fact that I’m quite fit (often cycling 40 miles a week), which leads to a good blood supply, which aids muscle fitness even in the eyes – surprising, isn’t it?

Appearance-wise there are also improvements. While they were never awful after the surgery, my eyes are starting to look less bloodshoot now. The bruising of the whites under my upper eyelids and the couple of spots of darker bruising in places around the pupils are really starting to fade. Everyone has told me that I am the only person who would notice this and perhaps this is true. But noticing it, is the clearest way for me to actually gauge the healing that is taking place. It  never worried me.

Related to this is one of my reasons for wanting the surgery – my eyes were always a little bloodshot from wearing lenses. People would sometimes ask me if I was all right, when I’d just been cycling to work in the wind. After a day staring at a monitor, I would look awful, as though I’d just completed a flight from Australia without any sleep. I had taken to wearing more and more eyeliner to combat this. I could have switched over completely to glasses but, after wearing lenses since I was 15, I wasn’t really going to go there, I just wasn’t. Now I feel almost completely happy, wandering about with barely any eye make up, as the white of my eyes are no longer the same colour as my skin. Another huge improvement. Box ticked.

So, I didn’t intend to go off topic in such detail but I’ve found the couple of blogposts that I found on the subject of laser eye surgery very interesting – far more so than the endless clinics blathering on about their services – so perhaps this will be useful to someone out there at some point.

I’m also concerned not to worry anyone contemplating this procedure. I know I blogged a couple of slightly emotional posts last week.