Week 2: Slow and Steady Improvement

Symptoms

• Big improvements in my vision by the end of the second week.

• Very dry eyes in the morning and also occasionally throughout the day

• Moderate light sensitivity

The day after the contact bandage was removed (Day 8), I was in a cab on the way to work and was looking out the window and all the sudden realized that I could read the signs on the store fronts! I was afraid that my regression in eye sight the day before would set in for a few days, but it looks like a night of sleep and the lack of a contact bandage allowed my eyes to take a big step forward. This was a pleasant surprise. At work I was able to turn the scaling down to 175%, from 200% (at 1920x1080 on a 27" monitor). All day I felt like I had a spec of dust on the middle of my eye ball. I applied the artificial tears whenever it bothered me, but it wasn't more than a handful of times.

Now that a week had passed, I was cleared to stop wearing the protective sunglasses at night, which I was very happy to get rid of. I'm a side sleeper, which made wearing glasses while sleeping very annoying. Also, the doctor had me start putting "night time tear goop stuff" in my eyes before I went to bed. That's the actual medical name. The goop stuff was like Vaseline for your eye balls and was really thick. You wouldn't want to put it in at anytime other than right before you went to sleep because it really blurs your vision.

My week was pretty boring compared to the past week where I had a lasers shot into my eyes.

On Thursday (Day 8), I had some meetings with clients in New York that I was able to make it though with no problem. Reading small text on papers was still really difficult, but if I concentrated enough, I could pull it off. That said, I started to noticed that looking at small text up close would very quickly give me a headache. The eye was starting to feel smoother and less rough to the point that I hardly noticed it felt any different.

On Friday (Day 9), I was supposed to travel to Chicago for work, but many of my co-workers felt uncomfortable with me getting on a plane. I asked the doctor if I could travel, and he said it was fine and to come prepared on the flight with eye drops. I decided to stay back in New York anyway and ended up doing my meeting remotely. Everything was still a little blurry at this point, but besides some dry eyes when I woke up in the morning, I was feeling pretty good.

Over the weekend (Day 10 and Day 11), I took it easy, watched some NFL playoffs, and hoped my eyes would keep improving.

On Monday (Day 12), I noticed that my vision had improved substantially over the weekend. I was able to turn the scaling on my computer screen back to 125%, which was great as I was getting sick of all the scrolling I had to do in Excel.

Tuesday (Day 13) didn't see much improvement over Monday but at this point the changes in my eye sight were very minimally incremental.

Wednesday was the two week mark (Day 14). I made a day trip to Boston for some meetings at work and didn't have any issues flying (although, LGA to BOS is a very short flight).

With my eye sight having reached a level where I felt I could be fully functional and productive on Day 12, I would again encourage anyone thinking about getting PRK to plan to take off 12, or more, days before returning to work.

Day 7: One Week Checkup

Symptoms

• Dry eyes in the morning

• Some light sensitivity

• Improving, but still blurry vision

I was beyond excited for my one week checkup so I could get that darn contact bandage out of my eye. The feeling of waking up with a contact in your eye is never one that I enjoyed. As a contact wearer, I never, ever, slept in my contacts and hated how they dried out in your eye. As other side effects started to minimize, the dry contact in my eyes became the number one annoyance on day's 5, 6, and 7. Also, I had read from multiple other people that they had their contacts taken out on day 5 or 6, so I was a little annoyed that my doctor waited for seven days.

Before I even had my surgery they had me set up my appointments for the first week. The one week follow up was scheduled for 4:30 PM because I (stupidly) thought I would want to work a whole day and then do this. Two days post-surgery I had a change of heart and rescheduled for 10:45 AM, which I arrive promptly for.

In my head I had built up the assumption that the contact bandage had healed onto the eye and taking it off would be like peeling a sticky band-aid off your skin. The first thing the nurse did when she came in was put some eye drops in my eye, slide each contact over with her finger and take it from the corner of my eye... just like taking a normal contact off. Huh. That was easy. Then she checked my eye pressure with this little handheld instrument that she poked my eye ball with, which was not fun and I don't recommend. Having your eye ball touched, even lightly, is no fun after PRK as you can imagine it is very sensitive. My vision was checked and it was not very great. I think I could read the 20/50 line, or something around there. Dr Mandel said that I'm a boring patient and everything seems to be on track, which is good.

Without the contact in my eye, it felt different, but not necessarily better. I could feel that my eye was still a bit rough from the surgery. I used a lot more eye drops for the rest of the day. Also, my vision seemed to get a little worse throughout the day, but not terribly so.