On the outside, I try to project an image of having it all together. But underneath that, I'm kind of a disaster. Hence... the name of the site: GlossyVeneer. Let’s start off with the positive aspects of my PRK surgery journey. I try to not write about every miserable feeling I experience because I don’t want my blog (my memoirs?) to only be bad. Though I do tend to keep those unhappy feelings locked inside when it would be advantageous to vent them. But I digress, that’s not what I was writing about. I was talking about the positive things with my eye at this time.
1. When I wake up in the morning, the world is amazingly clear.
2. I am not in any kind of pain.
But my vision gets blurry pretty rapidly, usually within about 30 minutes of waking up.
I had another follow-up appointment today, most of my appointment was with Julius, the guy who is going to be an ophthalmologist and is doing an internship/residency/whatever at my eye doctor’s office. He’s a nice guy and was very attentive, plus he explains what he’s looking at/for more than the technicians in the office.
The appointment started off with Julius wincing as he grabbed the rolling stool to take a seat. He then explained how he used some glute machine at the gym and got a little competitive with the older woman next to him and he pushed too hard. He has a very blunt sense of humor and is able to laugh at himself without insulting himself. I like him.
He had me cover my left eye and asked me to read the letters on the screen. I was slowly reading letters as I could make them out, when he said “Don’t squint. If you can’t read them, just let me know.”
“I can’t read them.”
He made the letters bigger, ending up with a screen that had just 4 letters on the screen, 2 letters per row, one of the biggest settings.
E H
X R
“Can you read those?”
“Um, yeah… but they are fuzzy around the edges.”
“Hmm… well, that’s not good. Let’s take a better look.”
He put some fluid on a small brush or paper thing and dabbed that on the surface of my eye. “I’m staining the surface of your eye so I can see the texture better.”
He then took a look at my eyes through one of the countless tools they have at their disposal and said, “Yep, that’s what i thought. The surface of your eye is still very rough. And the concentration of all the rough spots are right in the center, making it impossible for your eye to truly focus. We’re going to have to work harder to crack this!”
He told me to hang on while he went to look for something and left the room. When alone, tears of frustration sprung to my eyes. He walked back in and said, “Are you crying? I can deal with kids crying, but I don’t know what to do about women crying. Don’t be upset. If I stop smiling and joking with you, then you will know to be upset.”
He gave me a new lubricating eye drop to use, Bausch & Lomb Soothe, it’s got a lot more lipids in it than other drops (read: mineral oil) to help soothe the rough surface. He told me to put the drops in every 15 minutes. I blinked and looked at him increduously, “Are you serious?”
He laughed and said, “Yeah, I want you to put in drops all day! No… I was just teasing you. Checking if you were paying attention. Put them in every hour or two.”
He asked me what I do for a living. I responded that I do web work, stare at a computer monitor all day. He cringed and said, “Yep, most people don’t blink as often as they need to when staring at a monitor. What about an air vent, or a fan? Do you sit under either of those?” I responded that I sit directly under my ceiling fan. He told me, “Turn that off, you shouldn’t have the air blowing right down on you when you’re already not blinking much from a monitor.” Fall better get here fast because my office is the hottest room in the house anyway! But I’m willing to try anything.
He got me some more Flarex drops, since I have to keep using them. He also said that the Flarex is the most likely cause of my drastically different sized pupils lately. Since it is a steroid my eye is constantly engaged from the medicine.
My actual doctor came in next and took a look. He said, “It looks like it is healing right, just at an extremely slow rate. The surface is still full of peaks and valleys, very scab-like. I’m really glad I didn’t really want you to get both eyes done at the same time, you would be incapacitated.” He told me that he’s only had one other patient in all of his years that has healed as slowly as I have been and that woman had both eyes done at the same time. She ended up taking a whole month off work because she couldn’t do anything!
He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic, doxycycline, to help make sure my “tears are as pure as possible.” I read that is sometimes prescribed for acne; so if nothing else, maybe it will help clear up some of these stress-induced zits that have popped up. The doctor told me that I also have his permission to kick Kevin whenever I’m feeling really frustrated because he gets to have such a quick healing process compared to me! Then he told me I have to come back on October 12 to see how I’m doing.
So maybe by the end of the year I will be able to start this process on my left eye. Sheesh!
