Bottom Line: My experience getting a kind of vision correction surgery called PRK, part 5.

Please read my disclaimer. Basically, none of this is intended as medical advice, just a description of my experience and the thought process behind my decisions. To find other posts in this series, scroll to the top and hit the PRK tag under the post title.

Day 6

The world is a much cooler place when you get to see it in HD. My glasses were great, but ever since I’ve gotten used to not being able to wear my contacts much, I’ve noticed that every time I do wear then, everything looks even better than with my glasses. And it’s not that things weren’t crystal clear with my glasses — they were. Maybe it’s that lack of peripheral vision. Not sure. Whatever the reason, I’m ecstatic that I get that feeling all the time now. Who knew the world had a Blu-ray edition?

One thing is driving me nuts though. I cannot stop trying to adjust my glasses. Any time I feel something on my nose or on top of my ears where my glasses used to sit, I instinctively push my invisible glasses back up my nose. Probably looks like I have some kind of odd tic.

As far as a review of the day, it’s been pretty darn good, with one small exception. When I first wake up, my eyes have been really dry, so I put in some lubricant drops first thing. Today, I had an odd experience when I tried out the new lubricant eyedrops I’d gotten at my checkup. My right eye became immediately painful and red with the first drop, and my left was fine. The drops are the same basic type as the others (some kind of methylcellulose), and I was using them without issues yesterday evening. The only difference I can think of is that these are in a larger multi-use container, and therefore likely have preservatives, whereas the other ones are in little one-time-use tabs, and are preservative-free. I was instructed to use preservative-free ones immediately after the surgery, but I didn’t really think it would make much of a difference. And who knows… maybe it was something else entirely (like I said, I had been using them the evening before without problems). Very weird.

The redness and pain went away over the course of about an hour, and the rest of the day has been virtually pain free. They still feel slightly dry, but not too bad. My vision seems really good today. Not quite perfect, but if I weren’t paying attention, I probably wouldn’t notice much of a difference between my vision today and with my glasses a week ago. It’s a wonderful feeling! I’ve already enjoyed a run and a couple workouts at the gym without having to wipe sweat off my glasses every few minutes. I’m hoping that next week I might get in a day of flyfishing, and maybe even a mountain bike ride!