Road to... new eyes! (The Aftermath)

I woke up on Wednesday morning after the surgery and I knew for sure I could see. Everything in our bedroom was clear to me, yet still cloudy.

The best way I can describe the cloudiness I've been experiencing... for contact wearers, if you wear your contacts and fall asleep, and wake up, and they're all dried out and stuck to your eyes? Know how your vision is sorta cloudy? That's what it looks like. For non-contact wearers, I guess the best analogy I can come up with is that it looks like when you get out of the shower, and the bathroom is kinda steamy so it's "cloudy" in there.

My post-op appointment was at 8:15 a.m., so I got up and got ready to go the doctor (which basically consisted of changing my clothes into OTHER comfy clothes, pulling my hair up, brushing my teeth, and leaving the house). At my appointment, Dr. Hindman checked out my eyes with her little microscope thing, and then performed a basic eye test. I could already see 20/20 unassisted. Pretty damn amazing.

I was told I could stop using the steroid eye drops (which I was happy about since they stung, and I could taste them in the back of my throat whenever I used them... weird, I know). I did, however, have to start artificial tears and antibiotic eye drops. The antibiotic drops were to be used 4 times a day for five days, and the artificial tears were supposed to be used every hour or so. Whenever I'm watching TV or on the computer, I try to remember to use them every half hour because activities like this make your eyes stare and you don't blink as much as you should.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday home from work just getting used to my new vision. It would have been pretty painful and annoying to sit in front of a computer all day so I'm glad I took the two days off. By Wednesday night, I was feeling good enough to have Michael take a few pictures.

Here I am, showing off my wonderfully fashionable goggles:
Aren't they pretty?? Luckily, I only had to wear them full-time until my post-op appointment the morning after the surgery. I do, however, have to wear them to bed for 5-7 nights. It's really FUN to sleep in goggles, I tell you. I've been doing OK with it, which I'm grateful for. The worst part is that they ask you to tape them to your face using this REALLY sticky tape they give you. They don't want the goggles to move on your face during the night and bump your eye. The tape is much worse than ripping off a bandaid in the morning, and it irritates my skin, which is just great. But I'd rather be safe than sorry, so I've been following doctor's orders on it.

Here is a close-up of my right eye with the broken blood vessels:

It made a really nice look for Halloween. Even though we don't have any trick-or-treaters at our house. :( It's already starting to look a lot better, but it will likely be with me for another week or so. It's like a bruise, so it takes a while to go away.

I've been using the eye drops pretty religiously, and my eyes feel pretty good. I'm still getting a bit of the cloudiness, but I'm told that's normal. My vision is also kind of unstable. It'll be really clear at times, and sort of blurry at others. Especially if I'm coming from the outdoors (which is always really clear) to indoors and there's a change in lighting. It'll get better with time. I have a one-week follow-up appointment with Dr. Hindman on Wednesday so I'll get to ask her a bunch more questions and she'll check me out again to make sure I'm moving along in the healing process.

I'm looking forward to the cloudiness going away, and for my vision to become fabulous all of the time. But things have gone amazingly well and I really have no complaints so far. I'm really glad I had the surgery, and as long as everything heals as it should... I'm going to be absolutely ecstatic with the whole experience.

I guess that's about all I can say at this point (do you think I've said enough?? haha). If anyone out there is interested in any other information, or you have questions, please let me know. I'd be more than willing to share any knowledge or experience I have had with it all.

Road to... new eyes! (The Surgery)

Once I made the decision to go through with the LASIK eye surgery, I scheduled the surgery for as early a date as possible. That turned out to be Tuesday, October 30 at 2:40 p.m.

This was all quite the whirlwind experience, considering I had my consultation on October 17, and scheduled my surgery for less than two weeks later. On Wednesday, October 24, I received a call from Strong Vision asking me if I could come in and see Dr. MacRae before the surgery. They said he wanted to meet all of the patients that Dr. Hindman was going to be performing surgery on, to make sure they didn't have any other questions or concerns regarding the fellowship program. I went, and really, all it was was a final check from Dr. Hindman. My contacts were REALLY irritating me that day, so Dr. Hindman showed a bit of concern about that. She asked me to stop wearing my contacts over the weekend before my surgery, instead of the typical 24 hours, because she didn't want my eyes to be irritated before surgery. She double-checked my prescription by performing another mini eye exam, and then Dr. MacRae came in briefly to check out my eyes. He said they had reviewed my case and that I was a good candidate for the surgery. So back to work I went.

I'm not going to get REALLY graphic, since I didn't even really see what they were doing to me, but if you get queasy or squeamish at all hearing about things like this, you might not want to read the rest of this post (there is your warning!).

On the day of the surgery, I left work a few hours early. Michael had dropped me off at work in the morning so I didn't have to worry about leaving my car and having to go back to get it later. For obvious reasons, the doctors don't want you to drive yourself to and from your eye surgery. My boss offered to take me from work to Strong Vision. Michael wasn't able to get off work until 3:00 p.m., and since he works really close to the surgery center, it would have been out of his way to come and get me. So he met me over there when he got off work.

When I first got there, I had to finalize everything with my financing. Then I changed my clothes (comfy clothes are a MUST!) and was immediately taken back to get prepped for the surgery. The technician, Fran, came in and explained everything that was going to happen, sights and sounds in the surgery room, etc. She also began with the many, many, many eye drops I would have put in my eyes during my two-hour visit there. She began with numbing drops and I think an antibiotic drop, and wiped my eyes with iodine. Fran also put me in my lovely blue surgical cap. Michael showed up at this point, so they brought him back into the prep room to wait with me. A few minutes later, Drs. MacRae and Hindman came in to talk to me and check out my eyes. They also "marked" my eyeballs with a marker or pen (which was REALLY weird--but my eyes were numb). Then they asked the beautiful question, "did you want to take a valium?" Ummmm.... YES! Didn't even need to think about it. My stomach was already doing flips and I wasn't in the surgery room.

A few minutes later, they did move me into the surgery room, and the doctors spent a while plugging my info into the software for the laser, and calibrating the laser and so forth. At this point, I was kind of freaking out inside (just a little). My leg was shaking up and down uncontrollably. However, I found that soon, that stopped--must've been the valium kicking in. A technician sat with me and tried to distract and calm me by asking me questions about my wedding (she saw the ring). Michael wasn't allowed in the surgery room, but he was allowed to sit and look through the observation window, which he chose to do. I was surprised, because I thought the whole idea of watching the procedure might gross him out, but he wanted to watch.

Next thing I know, they had me up on the table. The taped little gauze pads to the sides of my face to catch the excess drops and saline they were going to be putting into my eyes. Then, they had me hold my eyes open as wide as I could while they taped my eyelashes away from my eyes. They said they had problems because my eyelashes are so long! It was painless, but felt weird. Then, they put these things in my eyes to keep my eyelids open. That was uncomfortable and weird, but also not terrible. My eyes kinda stopped trying to blink after a minute or two. Well, I should say they only did one eye at a time. So I didn't have BOTH eyes held open at the same time. While they're working on one eye, they cover the other with a patch so it's easier for you to focus.

Once my eyes were held open and they had put enough drops in my eyes to fill a small pond, they began the surgery. The worst part, by far, was the microkeratome, which is used to cut the thin corneal flap. It kind of suctions your eye, and it creates a LOT of pressure around your eye (like on your brow bone) so it was uncomfortable to say the least. Dr. Hindman didn't get the microkeratome positioned on my right eye correctly the first time, so she had to do it twice. As a result, I have broken blood vessels in my right eye (the white of my eye is red) that I don't have in my left. But whatever, she took the time to do it right so I'm not going to complain about some broken blood vessels.

When she cut the flap, although I could feel all that pressure, I couldn't feel anything on my actual eye. I was just concentrating on the blinking red light. My vision went dark as it cut the flap, but it came back in a few moments. Then, basically, all I was doing was looking at a light show. They kept using tons and tons of drops in my eyes, so I could tell when they were doing that, and then I could see little instruments appear in front of my eye every so often. But I was seeing bursts of green and red lights, and that was basically it. They told me when they were going to do the laser, and I could hear it, but couldn't really see or feel anything differently. I could SMELL though. That was kind of weird... it smells like burnt hair. Then they smooth the flap back into place very carefully. It was all relatively quick. Then they covered that eye, and went on to do the same thing on the left.

This is a graphic that shows basically how the LASIK surgery works:

For more details about the surgery, you can visit the Strong Vision website.

For whatever reason, the pressure/pain from the microkeratome was much more intense on my left eye. They just kept telling me to breathe, breathe, concentrate on the light, etc. and it was over in a few seconds, thankfully. Then the actual surgery for that eye wasn't bad at all, either. And it was over. I sat up, and immediately knew I couldn't really see anything. I had been expecting an immediate miracle, but they told me it was normal for everything to be really, really cloudy looking. My eyes were soooo uncomfortable, all I wanted to do was close them. They put me in front of the eye exam machine, and Drs. Hindman and MacRae took a look to make sure everything looked good. Then they took me out to a little recovery/sitting area, and a technician went over the eye drops with Michael and me. They were steroid drops to help with the swelling, and I was supposed to use them every hour while awake after my surgery. She also gave me my really stylish goggles and sent us on our way.

Michael told me he watched the whole surgery (they put a close-up of your eye on closed-circuit television) and he thought it was really interesting and amazing. He led me out to the car and we went home... I kept my eyes closed the whole time. Once home, I went immediately and got into bed. They tell you to keep your eyes closed to rest them for the remainder of the day. I couldn't see much and it was uncomfortable to have my eyes open anyway, so it wasn't difficult to keep them closed. Michael went and picked up subs for us for dinner, so I got out of bed to sit at the dining room table long enough to do that, and then immediately went back. It was so funny, though. My eyes were REALLY sensitive to light, so I wouldn't let Michael turn any lights on while we ate. We ate with what LITTLE daylight there was left, so we were practically in the dark. I mostly ate with my eyes closed. It was interesting and unusual to say the least.

My eyes just felt as if I had something in them. Like my contact had an eyelash in it, or it wasn't in place correctly. I felt this more in my right eye than I did my left. Also, the steroid drops stung like a bitch after the first couple of hours. Probably because the numbing drops were wearing off. It stung more in my right eye than my left--I'm guessing it was because of my broken blood vessels in my right, but who knows. They had me take both acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Advil) for pain. I had to take Tylenol, then two hours later take Advil, then two hours later take Tylenol again, and so on. As the night went on, when I DID open my eyes, I could tell they were getting better. I started to be able to see things at a distance (like the clock, or TV), but it was still just really, really cloudy.

At 11:00 p.m., I finally konked out for a good night's sleep.

Road to... new eyes! (The Preparation)

I know I haven't posted much wedding-related stuff lately... sorry for those of you who come here looking for that. I'm sure I'll have something to post soon, as we are currently working on finding a baker for our cake, and I do need to get a start on our invitations soon. Anyhow... there are several people out there who expressed a lot of interest in knowing about my LASIK eye surgery, so I wanted to share more information and the story of that.

First off, I should probably explain how this all came about. I wrote a post a few months back about how I wanted the surgery really badly, but couldn't afford it. I really wanted to have it done at Strong Vision, because I felt comfortable there, and the doctor is world-renowned and all that. But world-renowned = really expensive, so at first, I thought it was totally out of the question for me... at least for now. Then, I found out about a fellowship program that they run at Strong Vision. Turns out that they have a fellow there right now, through June 2008. She is already an eye surgeon at Strong Memorial Hospital, but is doing a fellowship in order to become a corneal specialist. So in reality, she's basically a student doctor, but not a STUDENT student. She performs cornea transplants, people! She knows what she's doing with eyes.

Anyway, once I found out there was a fellowship program, I was also told that the fees are drastically reduced if you allow the fellow to perform your surgery. That made me a little nervous at first, but the woman at Strong Vision told me that Dr. MacRae, the world-renowned guy who runs the place, is present at all of the fellow's surgeries, assists as needed, etc. Plus the fellow, Dr. Hindman, is a graduate of Harvard, and like I said... she has experience with complicated eye surgeries, just not refractive surgery. That made me feel better. And the fees? Well, with Dr. MacRae, the fees are $1,900 an eye for conventional LASIK, and $2,400 for custom LASIK. With Dr. Hindman, I was told they were $1,000 (I think?) for conventional LASIK, and $1,400 for custom. So basically half price. Very nice indeed. As it turned out, I ended up being one of Dr. Hindman's very first surgeries, so it was even cheaper. I ended up paying $1,000 per eye for the custom LASIK. It still sounds like a lot of money to some people, but I qualified for financing, so I will end up paying something like $56 a month for three years. Sucks to have yet another thing to pay for each month (gotta love school loans, car payments, and bills) but in all honesty? Now that I've had it done, I'm pretty sure I'd be willing to pay $56 a month for the rest of my LIFE to not have to fuss with contacts or glasses anymore. Soooo worth it. And I'm not even totally healed yet.

Once I found out about this whole fellowship business, I called and made an appointment to have a consultation with Dr. Hindman... my appointment was on October 17. I had to stop wearing my contacts for 7 days before the consultation, because apparently contacts (even the soft ones) can change the shape of your eyes. They want your eyes to be their complete natural shape when they measure and test you to determine whether you're a candidate for the surgery. So yeah, wearing my glasses for a week was NOT fun. The last time I bought glasses was 2001, so my prescription was slightly different back then. As a result of the old prescription, I couldn't see as well in my glasses as I normally could, which caused headaches. Especially the first few days. But I actually got pretty used to them, and the week passed relatively quickly. The "no-contacts-for-a-week" thing was probably one of the worst parts of the entire LASIK surgery experience. I think that says a lot.

The consultation was 2 hours, during which Dr. Hindman ran a battery of tests and measurements on my eyes. I basically just had to stare into a few different machines and not blink for several seconds. All I saw were different lights and shapes and such. These are the tests to determine whether or not a patient has any higher-order aberrations. I'm not too sure what that means, even after it was explained to me, but the higher-order aberrations have to do with how your eye sees a pinpoint of light. Your higher-order aberrations might make you see halos around lights at night, or glares, or maybe see a tail on a moving light. It's very interesting. If you have enough higher-order aberrations, or if your aberrations are severe enough, they recommend the custom LASIK for you, because not only can they fix your nearsightedness, but they also attempt to fix your higher-order aberrations... just improves your sight all around! Here is a chart that shows the different higher-order aberrations you can have:


The doctor also did a regular eye exam on me, and then ran the pressure test for glaucoma, and also measured the thickness of my corneas by touching a little sensor right to my eyes (which were numbed with numbing drops). And that was it! At the end, Dr. Hindman told me that due to my large pupil size (they're huge!) and the results of my tests for my higher-order aberrations, she suggested that I have the custom LASIK. And I wasn't going to argue.

The scariest part of the consultation, which I mentioned in a previous post, was the eight-page consent form I had to sign. It had all of these horrible things on it that could happen to you, but all of the severe ones are very rare and I ultimately felt comfortable with these doctors. I did, however, take 24 hours to think about what I wanted to do.

Obviously, I decided to go ahead and do it.

To be continued...

So far, so... fantastic

I had my LASIK eye surgery yesterday afternoon. And judging from the fact that I'm posting this, you can assume it all went well--it did.

I just returned from my post-op appointment this morning and I am already 20/20 in both eyes. Everything is still a little cloudy looking at this point, but it's all very normal and I'm doing really well. The doctor said I can do whatever I want now--read, watch TV, go on the computer, drive, etc. A SHOWER sounds nice, too.

I'll post something longer in the next few days to share the whole experience... I know there were several people who indicated they are interested in it and would like to know how it went. So I'll share specifics then. For now, I'm going to go veg on the couch and watch the daytime television I never get to see. And that's just the thing... I can SEE! :)

New Eyes

A week from now, I will have new eyes! Well, not literally. But hopefully I'll be at home recovering from very successful LASIK eye surgery.

I decided to go ahead and schedule the surgery for October 30. The more people I talked to about it, the more I heard how great it is, and I just have to put my faith in this doctor and hope that all goes well. I've done my research, I've had the testing and measurements done, and they say I'm at low risk for complications. They turn away 25% of their potential patients because they don't think they are ideal candidates... so they are picky in who they will go forward and perform the surgery on. That certainly makes me feel better. I just don't want to be one of those people in the fraction-of-a-percent who regrets that they ever had it done. So please keep your fingers crossed and pray for a safe surgery for me! I'll certainly be posting again, hopefully with the news of fantastic results.

So my appointment is at 2:40 p.m. next Tuesday. I'm expected to be there for about 1.5-2 hours for the surgery, and then I'm supposed to come home and rest my eyes for the remainder of the day/night by keeping them closed as much as possible. Can't really read, watch TV, or go on the computer, but I'm doubting that I'm going to want to. Supposedly it sorta feels like you have sand in your eyes, so I imagine it will be more comfortable with my eyes closed anyway. Plus, hopefully I'll have a few lasting effects from the Valium they give before the surgery, and I'll just want to sleep it off.

I will leave work early on Tuesday for the surgery. I took off on Wednesday and Thursday so I can adjust. You're not really supposed to sit staring at a computer screen (which is essentially what I do at work) for a few days after the surgery, so I figured I'd take the two full days following the surgery. I plan to go back to work on Friday, but that's tentative until I see how everything goes and how well I can see. My first post-op appointment is first thing on Wednesday morning, so I'll probably have a pretty good idea of how things are going by then. Less than 24 hours after the procedure!

Anyway... like I said, keep me in your thoughts! I'm nervous, but this is something I've wanted to do for a long time. Here's hoping it's worth it.

Well, we're into October

Last Friday, I finally put a deposit down for our flowers. We decided to go with Wegmans Pittsford. Well, I decided to go with Wegmans Pittsford. They're flowers, Michael really couldn't care less. So that was one other thing to check off the list. I met with them back in August to discuss what might work with my dress/bridesmaids dresses. I think we decided to go with hot pink and orange roses and pink and orange calla lilies for me, and a mixture of pink/orange roses and gerbera daisies for the girls. We'll see, though. I'm going to make another appointment for February or March to meet again to finalize everything. When I went in to put the deposit down, they were working on someone's centerpieces for a wedding the next day. They looked fabulous. So even though it's a grocery store, it's WEGMANS people! They do EVERYTHING right! :)

We saw Michael's sister, Melissa, over this last weekend. She's one of my bridesmaids, and she and her husband came up from Binghamton to visit with their new baby. It was the baby's first time meeting a lot of the family that lives up here, so it was nice for everyone. Plus I'm totally in absolute love with that baby, so I rather enjoyed seeing them, too. Here are a few pics that I love:

I *heart* my little nephew!

I also love men who love babies. This is Michael with the baby... so cute. I *heart* him, too.

Feeding little Brendan. With my lovely glasses on--ugh.

Speaking of glasses... I guess that's the latest exciting news. This morning, I went in for a LASIK consultation. That's why I was wearing my glasses in that photo. I had to have my contacts out for a week before the consultation so they could get accurate measurements of my eye. After the two hours of extensive measurements and testing, they said I'm a good candidate for the surgery. I have thick corneas, and they have no reason to believe I'll have any complications as a result of the surgery. It's still a little bit scary, so I need to think about it a little bit more. I was completely into it until they gave me the consent form--which was EIGHT PAGES of horrible things that could happen to you. Gotta love that. I know it's just about them covering their asses, and most of that stuff on there has never even happened at this doctor's office before, but it's still enough to make you need to step back and think for a minute. If I want, I can have the surgery done as early as October 30. Less than two weeks away. Pretty crazy--so stay tuned for my decision on that!

When Melissa was up, she started talking about planning my bridal shower, which was a little weird. Sort of one of those things that makes it all seem more real, and that it's really not THAT far away. She was going to talk to my cousin and matron of honor, Lindsay, about it. I'm supposedly not supposed to be involved in any of the planning for that--which is part relief, part makes-me-go-insane. I admit, I'm a bit of a control freak, so it's hard for me not to have my hand in at least SOME part of every aspect of the planning. I'm working on getting over it, though. :)

Well, that's all for now... just a few more days here and we'll be under the 8-month mark.

I soooo want LASIK eye surgery

I started researching LASIK eye surgery at some point in 2006. However, I was still scared of the surgery and wasn't sure if I wanted it, the price was high, and I gave up on it.

Well, recently, I don't know what happened, but I became interested in the surgery again. So I did some internet research, and actually signed up to go to a seminar at Strong Vision yesterday morning. So I went, and... well, it was a bad idea. Because now I really want LASIK eye surgery. And the problem is I really can't afford it.

If money weren't an issue, I would make my consultation appointment as soon as possible, and then have my surgery ASAP after that. It sounded pretty amazing, and this doctor is supposedly the best in the area, and one of the best from all over.

What I would give to be able to fall asleep at night while watching television! Or to be able to see when I get out of bed in the morning! Or to be able to swim with my eyes open underwater! It would be really nice to have it done before we get married and go on our (absolutely fantastic!) honeymoon... but alas, it most likely won't happen. I just don't have $4,000-$5,000 laying around that I can put toward the surgery, and even with the payment plans they offer... it would be a stretch to make the payments every month with everything else we are currently trying to pay for.

It just really sucks. Maybe in June 2009, after my car is paid off... :(