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Posts Tagged ‘surgery’

PRK Post-op day 19

I had another appt two days ago.  Since stopping the steroids, my left eye has come back from 20/150 down to 20/40.  My right eye is still holding steady at 20/40.  He started me on some NSAID eye drops and I’ve already noticed some pretty significant improvement.  He gave me some contacts to help me out during work hours, which really helps me.  I just hope I don’t have to have another surgery.

PRK Post-op day 12

Saw Dr. Vishteh again yesterday.  It was the first time he actually checked my refractive powers.  Before then, he just checked my visual acuity with the snellen charts.  Unfortunately, he found that I had gone too far in my left eye.  I started at -6 and now I am at +2!  He gave me a contact so I can function on my rotations, and he told me to stop my steroid drops.  He says that stopping the steroids can help bring me back from the hyperopia side of things.  I hope he’s right, because I can’t see much at all without this contact.

PRK Post-op Day 7

Yesterday I woke up and my vision was getting great.  I went to my appointment, and it was 20/30 in the right eye and 20/50 in the left.  After he took out the contacts, it got a little worse, though.  It’s still getting a little better each day, though.  Now that the contacts are out my eyes are a lot less irritated, but they are still really dry.  It also stings now when the steroid drops go in. 

PRK Post-op Day 5

I woke up this morning wanting to claw my eyes out, but my vision is 200% better!  I’ve got an appointment to get these contacts out tomorrow. 

PRK Post-op Day 4

Please excuse any typos – I can’t see the text on the screen at all.  I’m just blindly typing.  My vision is getting worse, and my eyes are always dry and scratchy.  I’m hoping it’s just the contacts.  The whole reason I did this was because my eyes hate contacts.  I can’t wear contacts for 8 hours without my eyes being completely bloodshot.  Already I[‘ve been wearing these things for 5 days straight.  I hope it gets better.  I can’t drive like this let alone work. 

PRK Post-op Day 3

Another appointment with Dr. Vishteh today.  He’s not happy with the way my eyes are healing, so he’s going to leave the contacts in until Friday.  He says that my vision will improve a lot when they come out.  I sure hope so.  I’m still at 20/60 in both eyes and I still reach for my glasses when I wake up because everything’s so blurry.  I don’t have much pain, just a little dryness and scratchiness from time to time.

PRK Post-op day 2

Still no pain.  I woke up this morning and wanted to rub my eyes because they were dry, but that’s it.  My vision seems a little blurry today, but Dr. Vishteh said it would get worse before it got better.

PRK Post-op day 1

Still no pain.  I do have a little dryness and discomfort, but no pain.  I saw Dr. Vishteh today and my eyesight is 20/60 in both eyes.  He says this is good for the first day, and it will get better over the next month. 

Just hanging out at the house with the family today.  I’m trying to be vigilant about the aftercare regimen: every six hours I have four different kinds of eyedrops to use, and I have to wait ten minutes inbetween each one.  I even get up at 2 AM to do drops.  I’m not going to screw up a $4000 procedure because I forgot to do some eyedrops. 

PRK – Operative Day

Last night was crazy.  Lara started getting some really bad nausea and vertigo, and we were really concerned because it started just after her first cervical epidural injection.  Marlene was a real life-saver, and she drove all the way out from the coast to help us out.  I took Lara to the ER, and all they did was give her some drugs.  Funny story: Lara was wearing black nailpolish, and when they gave her some diazepam they wanted to monitor her so they put her on pulse oximetry.  The pulse ox read 91% on room air the whole time, and it kept setting off alarms, but nobody ever came in to check the monitor or silence the alarm.  Finally, I had to silence that sucker.   

So, I went into Dr. Vishteh’s office this morning.  I was the first surgery of the day.  When I got back in the room, they started giving me aftercare instructions for LASIK.  I told them that I was having PRK, and they started trying to tell me that I was getting LASIK.  Then they kept asking me why I wanted PRK.  Finally I had to say: “Look, I want PRK.  I called and scheduled my appointment for PRK, give me PRK.”  You’d think when you pay four grand for something they wouldn’t argue with you.

I went in to the back room, they anesthetised my eyes with some topical, and then they taped my eyelids open and put a speculum in my eye.  He put alcohol on my eye to kill the epithelial cells, then scraped them away.  I felt some pressure, and it was a little uncomfortable, but not painful.  Then he dried it off and started lasing.  It was a lot of lasing, because I have a strong prescription – about 2 minutes of smelling my burning flesh.  Afterwards, he rinsed my eye out, threw on a contact lens, and I was done!

I slept most of the day, but I wasn’t in pain at all.  My vision is pretty blurry, and I can barely see the computer screen, but I can see!

Surgery

I was staring into the open wound of the appy I was assisting on, and I started to daydream.  This was one of those great music-filled sexual-overtone John Dorian type of daydreams.  Out of the corner of my consciousness I heard the surgeon’s tone change to frustration.  “HOLD THIS CLAMP! JESUS!” he said.  I had to perform a quick triage on the two retractors and suture I was already holding to figure out which one I could safely let go of to grab the clamp he was waving in front of me. 

As I held the grossly inflamed and possibly record-breaking appendix up for a photo, I thought about how I could regain some favor.  Suddenly I remembered a surgeon’s only weakness: his ego.  I made a comment about his knot-tying prowess, and he agreed and started to brag about his skills.  Mission accomplished. 

I started to drift back into my daydream when I remembered a story our chief resident had told us about when she passed out in surgery.  “Remember: don’t lock your knees.” she said.  I was feeling a little woozy – mostly because with each breath into the mask my glasses would fog up.  My solution was simple: stop breathing.  I had to force myself to take a few deep breaths.  Then I went back to unlocking my knees and stretching my legs out. 

It was really hot under those lights, and the big gown doesn’t help.  All the sweat from my back had consolidated into a single trail marching down my asscrack.  As I stretched my legs the sweat lubricated my buttcheeks and they slid past each other.  I am a human retractor with a sweaty ass, and surgery sucks.