I’m back again with an update to my Lasik story. If you haven’t read the first part, I urge you to do so here.
I had a follow up with my Lasik surgeon a couple of weeks ago, and they were still concerned about the blurriness of my right eye. It was not healing like it should, and my vision was still pretty terrible just in that eye. The bright side of that is that my left eye took over and was working double so I barely noticed the degradation. Brains are weird, y’all.
Not sure how y’all feel about graphic stuff, so here’s your content warning. I plan to get pretty graphic with the treatment plan and what actually happened. I also might use some graphic language, so let’s up the content rating to at least PG-13
We came to a treatment plan that included removing the surface cells that didn’t go back down properly the first time. They were apparently not healing as they should. The surgeon was fairly confident that the corneal flap would not need to be lifted, as he thought everything was surface-level. There was an asterisk in the plan that said something along the lines of “if we remove the cells and still see some weirdness under the flap, we would have to lift the flap and scrape out the nasty” (obviously not verbatim, friends, but that was essentially the laymen’s terms as I heard them).
I went there exactly 4 weeks after my initial procedure. I had to (again) have a driver there with me just to cover their butts, liability-wise. They numbed me up and went to work scraping those pesky surface cells. That procedure was worse than the actual Lasik procedure, if I’m honest.
With Lasik, there was a good bit of anxiety around it. That’s normal. You’re fully conscious and people are messing around with your eyes. It’s enough to make anyone’s stomach roll. However, once you’re at a point of tapping out and saying stop, the procedure is over. It’s very quick, and I can’t be more thankful for that. This procedure of scraping the surface cells off, however, was not quick. I think the initial scraping of the surface cells took at least 10 minutes. 10 minutes of my eye being held open by a retractor and being fully conscious as I watched an instrument come closer to my (already screwed up) eye. It was so long that the numbing drops actually started to wear off.
Let me tell you….the panic that swept over my body was unreal. I was physically curling into myself and they were barking at me not to move. All I could do was yell “I can feel it” and they stopped to re-numb my eye. It was pretty damn traumatic. After that, the surgeon had to physically place one of his hands under my chin to keep me from trying to move away subconsciously. I don’t know how anyone can come back from that, if I’m being honest.
Once he was done scraping the surface cells off of my eye, he wanted to check out how the surface looked. He put an orange drop thing in my eye to highlight the surface of the eye, and after a minute, he sighed and said “I….I don’t think we’re done. We need to lift the flap.”
Dread. That’s the best way I can describe my feelings.
I asked the surgeon if I could go out and talk with Scott for a few minutes, and he was kind of hesitant. My reasoning was to let him know that the plans had changed and that we’d have to be there longer (it had been about 45 minutes so far, and they originally told me that it would only be a couple of minutes tops). The surgeon said “it’s only going to be a couple more minutes”, but relented when I was insistent.
Once I got back into the procedure room, they handed me a couple of stress balls (I was going through it) to squeeze during this part of the procedure. The surgeon walked me through the steps he was going to take – lift the flap, scrape the surface cells, replace the flap, add a bandage contact to allow my eyes to heal.
After what felt like forever, he was still scraping away at my eye. I was starting to get extremely anxious and having a hard time staying still. When I told him as much and asked for an update where we were in the procedure (if I knew where we were, I could talk my mind through how much we had to go) and he flat out said “no”, letting me know he was having trouble lifting the corneal flap. I just had to sit there and deal with it.
To his credit, he gave me a couple of quick breaks to gather myself. I was having a really hard time staying still, and he was mostly patient with me. Once the bandage contact was placed (what felt like hours when in reality it was only about 15 minutes), we went back into the exam/evaluation room to look at the progress. I let out a huge sigh of relief when he said “well that looks pretty darn good”. We then scheduled a follow up for the following Tuesday.
I went into the Lasik procedure thinking that I would be able to work for a little bit. I work from home Fridays, so I was going to take a quick hour nap and then finish my work day. Since the corneal flap was lifted, it essentially set my recovery back to the beginning in that eye. I had to take the rest of the day off work.
The Tuesday after my procedure was my follow-up. He told me that everything looked like it was healing well and wanted to see me back in another week to remove the contact (if it didn’t fall out between Tuesday and that appointment) and check my progress. When I did the vision test, I was seeing four lines better than I was BEFORE the procedure the Friday before. Definitely a reassuring comment given everything that it took to get there.
As I’m writing this, the day before my next follow up, I’m feeling extremely encouraged at the progress that my eye has made. There is still a slight bit of fuzz around the edges of my world when I cover my left eye, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it was, and it’s better than it was when I was wearing glasses.
Would I still recommend Lasik, you ask? If you could guarantee that you won’t have to deal with the stuff that I’ve gone through, then 100%. A good friend of mine had a smooth and seamless recovery, and he would tell you that the recovery is a piece of cake once you’re past the first day or so. If you’re typically part of the 1% for things, then I’d take a few extra minutes to really think about whether the potential rough recovery is worth it.
If I knew then what I’d have to deal with, I’d probably pause. I’m still trying to process everything that has happened surrounding this recovery, including the time off that both Scott and I had to take to make this happen, so I can’t give you a straight answer. Everything was rough and I’ve had a lot of mental struggles with the recovery. I love being able to enjoy life without glasses, and I love finally being able to wear my cute sunglasses when I’m out. It’s also so nice to be able to wake up in the morning and just be able to see right away, and it’s AMAZING to not have to wear glasses or contacts when I play sports. Overall, my confidence about my appearance has gone up, which is also a huge perk in my eyes (ha! get it?).
I’m still leaning toward a ‘yes’ recommendation, but that might change depending on how tomorrow goes 😉
Thanks for reading and coming back around to my story. I still greatly urge anyone who is considering Lasik or PRK to get all sides of the recovery story, and I hope mine helps you make a more informed decision about your eyes!
The Mediocre Homemaker 