PRK Day 10

It’s now been ten days since the surgery. I’ve gone into the office the last two days as well as today, but have been unable to work full days. The fact that 99% of my job includes reading and writing on a computer screen has really sunk in. I can handle enough for a while, but my eyes get too fatigued and the doublevision/ghosting seems to increase over time.

Still, I’m not disappointed at all, as I continue to see improvements every day. I just wish they would start coming faster I’m driving still, but try to keep my time on the road under ten minutes and within daylight hours. Yesterday I came home at lunch time and took an hour long nap, and my eyes were rejuvenated afterwards and I could work another 4 hours. Today, I skipped this rest period and went to lunch with the guys, but could only make it an hour into work afterwards before the fatigue made me pack up and head home.

It’s frustrating for sure, because I think that I lost a good 3 hours of work today looking into a problem that was caused originally by me misreading some piece of code and trying to fix a problem that wasn’t there. Grrrrr….

As for vision – the right eye is doing better and the ghosting is less pronounced but still blurry to an extent. Large fonts are a must, but they’re starting to clear up to the point that, come Monday, I’m hoping to be able to take the screen size down a notch. Things like this are cause for celebration with my new eyes, as I edge ever closer towards that (fingers crossed) 20/20 vision I’m hoping for.

The left eye is worse and the ghosting/double vision is more significant. Today I realized that with just my left eye open, if I focussed through the page I was reading, the two images resolved themselves. This is more of a chore than it’s worth, as I think I overworked my eye muscles doing this from time to time today.

Vision seems to be best when the eyes are thoroughly moistened. I’ll usually use the rewetting drops and close my eyes for a while, and things are much clearer when I open them back up. For a little while, at least. After several minutes, things start blurring up and separating again.

So in all, I’m happy with the progress so far. There are some blogs that I’ve read of people who take weeks to get to such a point. I have no doubt that in time, the ghosting and double vision will go away and I’ll forget what it was like to ever have this screwy eyesight. The sooner that day comes, the better.

The Atheist’s Object of Worship

Today I was delighted to flip through the channels and find that my favorite Catholic broadcaster (EWTN, I think) was having a round-table discussion on why so many young people today are drawn to Atheism. The discussion naturally included a self-proclaimed former atheist and homosexual, now cured and turned Catholic, as well as several members of the clergy with an adamant conviction that Atheism is in itself a growing religion rivaling Catholicism.

Amidst the discussion, one of the priests made a comment that since people are born with a inherent need to worship something, that Atheists themselves attempt to fulfill this desire in different ways; namely, through drugs, alcohol, or homosexuality, to name the first things that came to the minds of these clergy. The former homosexual atheist described how he indeed worshiped his homosexuality.

While this generalization doesn’t surprise me due to its origin, it nevertheless offends me as an unbeliever and atheist. I partake in my fair share of alcohol and steer clear of the harmful drugs, and I see no need to scrutinize the sexual relations of consenting adults, so none of these so-called sins offends me. What makes me cringe is the feigned piety of these holy men proclaiming that anyone not sharing their belief is somehow a slave to any mortal desire not approved by the man in the white hat.

It seems that many religions are unable to cope with the possibility that what they hold dear might not be absolute truth, and thus draw the conclusion that their own assumptions hold true for the rest of humanity. That they have some base need to grovel at the feet of an imagined deity does not infer the same necessity within me, or within anyone else. It was the same in my youth in the fundamentalist church. We were often told of this same basic human instinct, if such a word could be compatible with a designer. They said that we’ll all end up worshiping something to fill that god-shaped hole.

I wholeheartedly deny such accusations. I worship nothing. I see no need to prostrate myself before anyone or anything. Likewise, I see no need for you, or for those misguided clergy, to lay all they have at the feet of an imaginary immaterial specter. Sure, I have my interests and obsessions, but after leaving Christianity, I found the god-shaped hole myth to be a lie.

One of the clergy on the show made a comment that we all needed something to fill that empty Wednesday afternoon with. I guess he’s invoking the old idea of idle-hands being the devil’s playground, but such an assumption is laughable. The idea that worship is in the same boat with how I spend my time is absurd. If their idea of the need for worship were expanded to something one feels compelled to do, or something one likes to do, then the idea certainly makes more sense but at the same time, also loses its religious sting.

Excuse me while I prepare a burnt offering to my xbox. It gets angry when I don’t slit the throat or drain the blood just right.

PRK Day 7

It’s been a week! This is a major accomplishment in the life of my new eyes. Today I got the bandage contacts out and was told my eyes were healing perfectly. Still, that doesn’t mean my vision has stabilized yet, in fact it is anything but perfect.

My vision actually worsened a little after the bandage contacts were out, and my eyes have felt rather dry and scratchy all day. I’ve heard that other people have had this experience of worsening vision without the contacts, so it seems to be a natural occurrence.

I’ve noticed that the quality of vision is best after resting my eyes for a while or using the rewetting drops, but that they degrade after some time of usage. Reading is still blurry and harder now since my left eye seems to be experiencing bouts of double vision.

I actually drove today, and went out on the road to the store. It wasn’t so much blurry as it was somehow smudgy. My adventure took place after resting my eyes for a while, and I noticed that at first driving was clear and natural, but after a while the smudges became bigger. With a sense of accomplishment, I came back home having taken one step closer to independence. It seems the only things that I’ve been looking forward to in the past weeks have been the every-four-hour marks so I can put in another round of prescribed eye drops. That has been my life for the past week.

That, and reading the entire set of audiobooks for the His Dark Materials trilogy (that’s the trilogy starting with The Golden Compass). I’m just about finished and will probably write another blog on that topic entirely. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the series. It was a great read and an excellent counterbalance to the jesus-loving Chronicle of Narnia books, for, as you may know, the core intent of the main characters in this series is to kill god. I hope I don’t spoil anything by saying that in the end, goodness prevails.

But back to the eyes. I think I might try to drive to work tomorrow if my vision isn’t too doubled or smudged. It will be a welcome task although it will probably only be for a  few hours of squinting at a computer screen.

PRK Day 5

It is nearing the end of the fifth day after my PRK laser correction surgery. Every day is a slight improvement over the previous. I am now able to read smaller print, although it is all still blurry and smudged. I’ve been able to reduce the font size on the monitor to normal, although I still have the monitor size itself blown up to 800×600.

The blurriness I’m experiencing now isn’t exactly like it was when I didn’t have my glasses on. Somehow there is a level of clarity unlike the bad vision I had prior to the surgery. And every so often I’ll move my eyes and have a brief moment of clarity on a small part of my eye which is gone a second later. Two more days and I’ll be able to get the bandage contacts out. I’m pretty excited for that. It’s just like sleeping for a week with normal contacts in. Your eyes just have this weird nasty feeling to them when you wake up and it follows you throughout the day. They say it’s good for you, so I guess I believe them.

Yesterday I spent some time with visiting family which was only supposed to be for an hour and turned into an evening. My girlfriend drove and had to lead me around blindly sometimes when we were walking into the wind, but it was nice to get out. I probably should have called it a night earlier on, because about halfway through the evening, at a restaurant, my eyes started to get really tired and irritated. Still, I wanted to go visit my couple-months-old niece with the rest of the family, so I stuck it out. The majority of the time I kept my eyes closed, and the entire evening I had my awesome sunglasses on that were given to me by the eye doctor.

It was a relief to finally get home later on and lay down in a dark room. My entire eyeballs sort of throbbed from the overuse and were entirely exhausted. I was looking forward to a night of sleep, but somehow that sleep remained elusive.  For whatever reason, I could not get to sleep, and became so angry at this that I really couldn’t get to sleep. I wandered the apartment in the dark and came to rest on the couch and listened to an audiobook for several hours. Sleep didn’t come until around 3:30 and then it was very fitful.

I spent most of today trying to catch up on this missing sleep, and it wasn’t until mid afternoon that I was fully myself again. Part of me thinks that the lack of sleep came from being out all yesterday afternoon and evening. Oh well, I got through it. Now after writing this my vision is beginning to lose focus again, so I think I’ll call it a day for computer work. I had originally anticipated that I might be able to go to work tomorrow (Monday), but I can see now that this isn’t going to happen, and it possibly won’t happen the next day. I write software for a living, so there’s going to be a lot of staring at monitors that I’m just not up to. Hopefully I’ll be able to work soon, as I’m running out of audiobooks to listen to and this cabin fever is starting to get to me!

PRK Day 4

It is now the beginning of day four after the PRK surgery. Both eyes are now worse than the night before in vision acuteness. Everything is blurry again, up close and far away. The left seems a little clearer but not by much. There isn’t really much pain besides the annoying feeling that there’s something in the eye at different times.

PRK Day 3 – Nighttime

I’ve reached the end of the third day after my PRK surgery and am feeling hopeful about things to come. They warned me that days 2 and 3 would be the worst. Day 2 was horrid, but today started better and things noticeably improved throughout the day.

Instead of the constant burning of day 2, today’s annoyance was intermittent periods of feeling like I had something in my eye. I kept asking my girlfriend to look for something, but she couldn’t see anything and my eyes weren’t red or bothered. I called the doc’s office and they said it was normal to have the feeling of a foreign body and that it would pass. It came and went, usually limited to the left eye. Strange, as most of the pain from yesterday was focussed on my right eye.

Much to my relief, my vision has sharpened ever so slightly. The right eye is now noticeably sharper in vision than the left. I can actually see the words I’m typing, albeit in an enormous font. Baby steps. I took several walks today, and the cold, brisk air relieved some of the discomfort.

There were passing moments when it seemed my vision would clear up and I could almost read some print on the bottle of eye drops, only to have it disappear as I attempted to focus. Small setbacks that will be overcome in the next week. I’m happy with the progress so far. It isn’t instantaneous, and opting for PRK is not for the faint of heart. The gradual improvements are like little milestones and make me feel excited for what’s to come. At times it’s almost like a slow wave, from blurriness to a sudden short moment of clarity, back to blurriness. I think I’ve made it through the majority of the pain, although I’m sure the discomfort and foreign body sensations will probably linger at least until I get the bandage contacts out – and that is still four days away. Still, I’m excited to see what tomorrow brings.

As a side note, I was just outside walking in the dark. Most things are still very blurry, with minor moments of semi=clarity. However, every light seemed to have its own gargantuan atmosphere, or halo, reminiscent of comet Holmes. This too is expected to pass, but its duration varies in patients.

I’ll end with a funny little story – The first day after the PRK surgery, you go back to the doctor and they do a quick checkup which includes trying to read the standard eye charts across the room. He tossed up the chart which should be easy to read by anyone, though all the letters looked like they had been smeared with ink. He asked which line I could read and I said I could read the third line perfectly, but when I tried, I failed at every letter. I didn’t know I failed, and said I couldn’t really make out the fourth line, but tried and somehow managed to get all the letters correct. Go figure. He laughed but I didn’t find out about it until my girlfriend told me today.

PRK Day 3

It’s been three days since my PRK surgery. I wasn’t able to write anything yesterday due to the amount of pain and light sensitivity. It was prety rough. I had all the blinds drawn and all the lights out, but that was still too bright.

They said at the eye place that day 2 was going to be the worst, and so far they were right. What I don’t really understand is why they didn’t give anything for the pain besides saying that tylenol and advil would work. I’ve read other blogs where people would either get some sort of pills or eye drop to deal with the pain, but these guys kept saying that over the counter drugs would be fine. Well, I made it, though it was pretty painful.

Today is the thrid day, and it is remarkably better. I can open my eyes and deal with light to an extent. However, my eyes are getting tired from all the light and I think I’ll go lay down again for a while. This morning, the pain is more directed towards a scratched-eye sensation, rather than the burning of yesterday.

My vision is very blurry, much like looking through a few sheets of saran wrap. I can barely read anything on this monitor, even with the resolution and font sizes at their fattest. Getting closer to the screen ndoesn’t really help, and I’m probably mimsspleling a ton of words. I wholeheartedly apologize for that

This blurriness is expected for this day. My vision is worse than the first day, but they said it would happen. The reason it gets progressively worse and better is due to the fluctuations of the outer cornea growing back. It’s the same with the pain, som times it’s fine in both eyes, then one or the other eye will burn for a while, off and on.

Well, I’m gonna go lay down for a while and listen to an audiobook They said yesterday and today would be the worst for pain, ,and I made it through yesterday and today seems much better. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. I can’t wait to see again!

PRK Day 1

Yesterday afternoon I had the PRK Laser Vision Correction surgery. I was pretty stressed out beforehand, and took the Valium they offered me to calm my nerves. I’m glad I did. It was a little odd having several people all poking and prodding at your open eyeballs under the laser.

The procedure took maybe five or six minutes. The PRK surgery differs from LASIK in that rather than creating a flap on the outer cornea layer, they chemically (or mechanically) remove that outer layer. For me, they used some kind of chemical that ate away at the outer layer. You don’t feel any burning because your eyes are numb from some numbing drops.

After that, they poke and probe your eye with various instruments, then all of a sudden it’s laser time. You just keep your eye focussed on a flashing red light and hear this ticking sound and smell the faint odor of burning flesh (yum). I think they had the laser on me for about 30 seconds per eye. I’ve heard they sometimes count down the seconds, but htese guys just said when you are halfway done.

They shoot cold water on your eyeball a couple times in the surgery, and that one seemed to be the biggest shocker. Each time they did that it startled me because of how cold it was.

During the procedure it felt like I wasn’t looking straight ahead the whole time, it kinda felt like my eye moved or twitched a little. I asked the doc afterwards and he said that my eye was fine and hadn’t moved at all. I have heard the same from other people, and the machine has some tracking mechanism built in so that it will shut off the instant it detects eye movement.

And that was it. They placed bandage contacts on my eyes and sent me on my way with a load of eyedrops and instructions. I went to sleep for about four hours. Rather, I kept my eyes shut and slept intermitantly for four hours as instructed. There was only a minor amount of pain akin to a scratch in your eye or something that you just can’t get out. Nothing more than an annoyance.

In PRK, you are very light sensistive the first several days, and I’ve gotta keep most lights off in my apartment and wear the ultra cool shades they gave me.

Today is the day after, I just woke up from a nights sleep. Things seem a little clearer and it’s a little light less sensitive to light. I’m writing this blog but can only partially see what I’m typing, even after enlarging the font up really big. I know from other people’s experience that there will be a lot of fluctuation this first week: someitmes you’ll see better, then the next day it will be worse. I’m sure it will be frustrating, but at least I know that’s coming. I’ve also heard that the second and thrid days after PRK are going to be the worst as far as pain goes. They didn’t presribe any pain meds besides over the counter stuff (Tylenol PM and Advil PM).

PRK is supposed to put you out of work for a week because of the fluctuations, pain, and light-sensitivity. I got it done two days before thanksgiving, so I’ll only miss a few days of actual work. I’ll keep this blog updated in the next couple days and weeks in the hopes that other souls may stumble across it.When I was researching PRK, I read a lot of blogs from people who had undergone the procedure, and that helped make my decision.

Origin of Species

I am no scientist, but I had to see what all the fuss was about. Armed with admittedly feeble evolutionary knowledge, I decided to read The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.

I didn’t know exactly what to expect. What was it about Mr. Darwin that got the Christian panties all in a ruffle? Having shed my previous burden of religion, I was intrigued by this book and wondered what scathing blasphemy would be contained therein.

What I found was a book of science filled with long and tedious explanations and examples. I didn’t actually read, read the book, I listened to it on audiobook. I didn’t think that I would have the gusto to make it through a full text-book, but knew that I’d be able to force myself to listen to it while driving and working out (Yes, I do listen to nerdy books about evolutionary biology while lifting weights, I’m just that cool).

I didn’t really see anything controversial about the book. From what I had heard about it back in my religious days, I would have expected serpents to jump out of the mp3 player as soon as I turned it on. In reality, it is very dry. It builds up the evidence towards the theory of natural selection, explaining how we have selectively bred species of all types of domesticated animals for all of our existence. The Origin of Species only mentions the word Evolution once that I can recall, and that was in the last word of the end of the book.

I find it ironic that almost every non-religious argument towards evolution was brought up by Darwin in the book with his explanation. He stated that he had fought long and hard with his own theory with similar hard questions – such as the seemingly small amount of intermediate forms in the fossil record, or the long time necessary for his theory.

Darwin never outright attacked any religion as your Sunday School teacher would have you believe. Instead, his statements were, for the most part, neutral and limited to the facts, along with fact-driven speculations. Every once and a while he would mention that those who believed in distinct creation of species had a lot of explaining to do about how and when and where certain species were found in proximity to others in nearby habitats. There was never any outright attack or mention of any gods. It was simply a very focussed work on his theory of natural selection.

Perhaps Darwin had more controversial works later in his life which demonized the man. If he did, I think I’ll read the cliff notes. It was hard to focus on such a dry, scientific book. But it had to be done, although I’m glad I don’t have to take a test on it. I could never be a biologist, with all those crazy species names and genres. It’s truly mindboggling. I’ll stick to writing software.

Who Else Kissed Dating Goodbye?

Back in my church-going senior highish days, there was a book that was all the rage titled I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. Does anyone else remember this book (mid/late 90’s)?

It’s a how-to guide for Christian Courtship. It advises against the traditional one-on-one dating scene in favor of traditional courtship. He emphasizes group socialization and never being alone with the significant other in order to avoid those all-too-evil physical moments. As I recall, the only alone-time he advocated involved walking side by side with your significant other in front of her parents house within plain view of the parents.

It’s so funny looking back on that, and how much the church and other religious organizations praised the book. I didn’t take too much of it to heart and thought the courtship idea rather comical even at the time. However, it did sort of warp my view on relationships. For a few years I avoided relationships because in my skewed mindset, they weren’t endorsed by god.

I have no regrets now, because I’m with the best girlfriend ever. During college, it took a while to get out of that weird anti-relationship funk. I finally realized that my prayers to a complacent god who would just drop a girl in my lap were just a pipe dream. You can’t go through life sitting back and expecting a deity to bring opportunities on a platter. I think that’s a given for the nontheists, but it’s something I never figured out till my waning years as a Christian.

Does anyone else remember that book?