Laser Eye Surgery

Photos below are not for the faint of heart! Beware! They're not that bad really.

Here I am (my feet) laying on the table under the big laser!
Do they look like they know what they're doing?

Step #1 - retractors! Actually they did put freezing drops in first.
Kevin took these photos from off the TV screen in the viewing room.
Yes that is my freaky looking eyeball! All 10 year old boys might be very interested!

Step #2 - they put some more drops in. "Please look at the red dot". "Keep looking at the red dot"......... I am trying to look at the red dot but it looking more like a blurry mass of lights. This is some metal ring that they put on my eye around the cornea just resting on it, then filled it with some other liquid, timed it for 30 seconds, then it turned into a jelly kind of stuff. Kevin thinks it softens the corneal layer or something, pretty good for a guy who never took biology!

Step #3 - scraping off the jelly goo. I could see like a little spongy thing rubbing
on my eye, very weird! I would not like to have brain surgery!

Step #4 - lasering! They turn on the laser and it makes these loud noises and a nice burning smell. Kevin could see lots of little red dots (lasers) moving around on the cornea part. I hope they did it right! And then for the left eye!

Step #5 - washing it out with lots of cold liquid felt so good! Off to recovery
for 15 min. of darkness and you're done!

Me outside in my cool shades 30 min. later

So not here I am on post-op day 4. Friday night and Saturday were a little tedious! I had a little mild panic yesterday wondering if they had screwed up and put the wrong numbers into the big laser machine because I had such cloudy vision all day. It was worse than not wearing my glasses. Friday was very scratchy all day and I used the max. dose of pain drops. I guess I had not expected that I would have that much of a recovery time. People had told me that it pretty much was good from the first day or so. The people at the clinic had said that day 3 and 4 are the worst for vision because the epithelial layer is growing back across the center of your line of vision. So I was holding on to that and then took a long nap to make it all go away. Today is much better but still my vision is only about 50% better. I had the PRK which has more recovery than Lasik, so I have to wait until I see the guy here on Wednesday . He'll take out the "bandaid contact lens" that stays in for a week. My friend says it is really good once that is out.

So there's my story. Hope you enjoyed all the gory details.