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The Prodigal Son Returns (Part III)

May 23, 2018 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
Good News: My eye doctor said that my eyes progressed well and that I am ok with resuming all normal activity today - a week earlier than originally expected!

Bad News: I am very out of shape!

PRK (photorefractive keratectomy, NOT Lasik) surgery is really interesting. I want to go through the details of the procedure and recovery:

Day 1 (surgery day): The surgery itself is very fast, like a total of 2 minutes. They put numbing drops in my eyes and then I lied down under the laser machine. There were a bunch of red, yellow, and green lights shining above and it felt like I was about to be abducted by aliens. The first step and most painful part was when the doc went and quite literally scraped off the epithelium layer of my eye with some device that felt like he was using a power sander. Then he turned on the laser which let off some weird sounds and smells and then it felt like the aliens were actually abducting me. Then they put these extremely annoying bandage contacts in my eyes to help the epithelium heal.

Immediately afterwards, my eyesight was better (not perfect by any means) and my eyes were still numb so there wasn't any pain. But then like 20 minutes later while I was in the car...

It felt like someone doused my eyes in kerosene and lit them on fire. I got some codeine pills that helped but not really. I just went and lied down on my bed for a really long time listening to music and PMT. Not much I could do because I could barely open my eyes. I couldn't really sleep at all either because it's kinda hard to sleep when your eyes are on fire. This burning pain lasted a total of about 28 hours. not fun.

Day 2: Not much different than the first day except that the fire was slowly going away. My eyesight had gotten WORSE, which was normal and expected but you always have that suspicion that maybe the procedure didn't go perfectly. But as the burning sensation went away, the discomfort of the contacts rolled in. And again, I didn't do much except listen to podcasts and music all day which gets old really fast.

Day 3-5: My eyesight was getting slowly better but the discomfort of the contacts was getting UNBEARABLY worse. I just straight up was flooding my eyes with my eyedrops to help ease that. At this point, my eyesight was just ok enough to play some vidya. Well, actually a lot of vidya. I'm still very bad at Fortnite but it's fun to play with my brother and it passes time well.

Day 6: REJOICE! I finally had my bandages contacts removed! NO more discomfort or anything. Eyesight still is garbage though, which is still normal. I also got suuuuuper baked with my brother.

Day 7: My eyesight was good enough to drive. I still can't read any signs but I know Eden Prairie/Minneapolis very well so was really not a problem.

Day 8: Today. My eyesight is the best it has been - I am probably at about 87% vision. It has been a very weird feeling though to get in and out of bed without dealing with contacts or glasses like I have for the past 12 years. My vision is going to continue to very slowly get better, with it reaching 100% in about 3 more weeks. Slow process which is annoying but what can ya do.

Although the doc said it's ok for me to swim/bike/run, he said I still need to do my best to limit the amount of sweat and water in my eyes for the next week which is also very annoying but again, what can ya do.

So although I am very out of shape (legs felt soooo bad on this run) I am happy to finally be back working my way into things earlier than expected.