Friday, January 30, 2009

Trauma...LASIK gone awry :(

So Wed, I had LASIK eye surgery. I was hoping to say bye bye to glasses FOREVER. Well, after my surgery, as I was hearing other patients rave about how much more they could see just minutes after getting it done..i was sitting there wondering why my vision was even worse. Everything was a white fog with blurry everything else from what I could see. The "fog" is normal and it "should go away by morning". They told me the best thing to do was go home and take a nap for a couple of hours. So I did. I woke up, still white and foggy and blurry and now the numbing drops had worn off and my eyes were killing me. I stayed awake for about an hour, couldn't see anything or even attempt to watch tv (it was just a fog of blur) and threw in the towel and went back to bed. (In the mean time I had to put 3 different kinds of drops in my eyes). Thank goodness for Samantha to help take care of Ally.

So the next morning I wake up...fog gone...blurry vision even worse. AND I was in excruciating eye pain. You know how it feels when you have an eyelash caught in your eye? Well it felt like I had an entire eyeball full of eyelashes in both eyes with little rusty knives scratching my eyes everytime I moved an eyeball or an eye lid. I could barely open my eyes and it hurt like hell when I tried. I went in for my 1-day post op appt, and describe to her my misery (I'm still wearing the ugly sunglasses they sent me home with the day before). The nurse writes down all my symptoms and asks me to try and open my eyes to look at an eye chart. (It wasn't a paper eye chart...she turned the lights off and had a projection on the wall of various letters).

They were all blurry. She tried another slide...I could tell all the blobs were bigger, but yet they were still blurry. So finally she just put one gigantic letter on there and I said, "I think that's an 'E'".... So basically I WAS suppose to see this:
But instead..I was seeing this:
Not good.

So she goes and gets the doctor and I hear her whispering, "......not normal......."

So the doctor comes in and I tell her how miserable I am and how this should be the new torture for getting prisoners to talk...so she puts numbing eye drops in my eyes and asks if its any better. OH YES! Relief at last!! I asked her if I could take a gallon of that home with me but unfortunately it prevents the eyes from healing so that was a no.

Then she puts dye in my eyes and takes a look.
Well, I guess my cornea's were not re-attaching the way they were suppose to and I had "corneal abrasions" in both eyes and my vision was 20/150. (almost legally blind). I started to sob because I had already had one annoyingly bad thing after the next go wrong every single day this week (in fact my sister joked that maybe I shouldn't be doing the surgery with all my bad luck). The doc put contacts in my eyes to prevent my eye lids from creating worse abrasions and to hopefully let my corneas heal. So I have an appointment today and then again on monday. I can't drive or go to work. I'm depending on my family to drive me where I need to go. The good news is, I'm not as blind today as I was yesterday (hence me being able to do this post) and i'm not in pain anymore. My vision is still blurry but not as bad and its hard to focus... My vision is more like this now:
Here's hoping that it eventually it improves to the first chart.

I have a new found compassion for the blind........

4 comments:

Jenny said...

Oh April! I'm so sorry. Please call me if you need anything. I would be happy to give you rides, take Ally for awhile or do anything else you need. How horrible. I hope it gets better very soon.

Erin said...

Wow, what a story! I've always wanted Lasik, but now I'm not sure I still do! I'm sorry you've had to go through that! No fun! Hopefully your eyesight gets better soon. Keep us posted! How's Ally's head?

Sean Dahl said...

Wow...can you read THIS?? That sucks. Did you go to Mr. Hoopes? Or did you take the lesser reliable road? Either way, I'm sorry that you are experiencing these problems. I've now known two people that have had nothing but problems with their lasik surgery. My supervisor at work had to go in for a second surgery, because of problems she was having. Sheesh. Maybe glasses aren't so bad, after all...

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