Okay, here goes...
I was going to go out there the first weekend with my buddy and the second weekend with my girl. Everything went fubar, though. My buddy canceled on me the day before we were going to leave because his girlfriend was having some sort of emergency. I couldn't get anybody else to go on such a short notice -- mostly because the majority of them were graduating that weekend.
Needless to say, I drove myself to San Diego on Thursday. I had an eye exam at 5:30PM. That was normal. They checked my vision, perscription, did a topographical scan (I don't know the real name for it), dialated my eyes...the whole bit. I have anisocoria (one pupil slightly larger than the other...occurs in 25% of the population), but neither they nor the Navy/Marines seemed to care. Anyways, I drove to my hotel after that, got some Chinese takeout from some dive on Mira Mesa....that was a bad idea. Ugh.
So, I had surgery in the morning, my mom came down from LA and drove me to and from the hotel. She was pretty flipped out about it -- I really wasn't worried at all. I mean, what is there to worry about? I had zero control over the results...anyways, they prep me, swab my eyelids with iodine or something similar, give me a handful of meds to "relax" me, and then hand me a bunch of candy and hot chocolate while I wait for the doctor. Finally I go into the operating room, I lay down and the doctor clamps my eye open. I look at a little light while the assistant counts down from 10. Then they do the other eye and that was it. I get up and look at the clock on the wall and it's perfectly clear. It was pretty awesome.
The next part was not so awesome. In fact, it was an extremely uncomfortable weekend. I was very sensitive to light -- even in a dark room, if I looked at the LCD screen of the clock radio it was irritating. People say the pain feels like "sand in your eye," but I disagree, it's worse. Thank god for those pain killing eye drops. I was petrified that I was going to run out before I saw the doc again. They also had me on lyrica and vicodin, neither of which really did much for me. In fact, Sunday night the pain was so bad that even after taking two vicodin and going to bed, I still woke up every two hours after the pain eye drops wore off.
Overall, though, I had to stay in a dark room until Sunday morning. By then I could be outside for short periods of time (about as long as the pain killing eye drops lasted). I even went to the HiHo on Sunday afternoon to try to get some polarized sunglasses, but the Oakley store is super expensive.
Anyways, Monday came and they took out the contact lens bandages (which was the source of major irritation for me), but the doctor says that my left eye is healing faster than my right eye, so he decided to put a fresh contact back in my right and told me to come back on Wednesday. Furthermore, he took away my pain killing eye drops because they were "slowing down the healing process." Apparently it's normal for one eye to heal at a different rate than the other, but I was not ready to spend the night with no pain killers, much less two nights. So I talked him into letting me come in the next day instead of Wednesday. That night was terrible. My left eye was fine, but my right was very very very painful. And I had no pain meds except the lousy vicodin. It was so terrible I called up my buddy who's in AF pilot training and asked him to tell me this shit was worth it.
The next day (finally) comes and I have an appointment with the other doctor. I convince her to discuss the possibility of keeping the contact lens out so that I can drive back to Arizona. She says that ultimately the only thing that matters is my comfort level and that taking the lens out isn't going to affect the healing process. So we decide to take it out and I drive back to Arizona. At that point I was 4 days post-op. Driving wasn't too bad, it was a little bright and I had to use a bunch of the regular eye drops to keep things lubricated, but otherwise it went without incident.
So I get back and the girlfriend cooks me dinner and....err, anyways, ultimately she tells me that she's not sure if she should go with me the next weekend because (a) she doesn't like driving and (b) she isn't ready to meet my family. Hell, I don't blame her for the second part...I wouldn't want to meet them, either. I was disappointed, but...I understood, given the circumstances. So I arrage to have my buddy go with me, but ultimately I ended up buying airfare to San Diego for Saturday morning and came back Saturday afternoon. The checkup went fine...I have 20/20 both eyes, 20/15 left and 20/40 right. The Tuesday before that I had 20/25 both eyes, 20/20 left and 20/100 right. Obviously it's getting better. Double vision comes and goes in the right side, the left side is pretty solid. Driving at night is annoying, EVERYBODY has their brights on, but I refrain from flashing them because I know that's probably not the case.
I have to go back in a month. Maybe I will get her to go with me then...
I was going to go out there the first weekend with my buddy and the second weekend with my girl. Everything went fubar, though. My buddy canceled on me the day before we were going to leave because his girlfriend was having some sort of emergency. I couldn't get anybody else to go on such a short notice -- mostly because the majority of them were graduating that weekend.
Needless to say, I drove myself to San Diego on Thursday. I had an eye exam at 5:30PM. That was normal. They checked my vision, perscription, did a topographical scan (I don't know the real name for it), dialated my eyes...the whole bit. I have anisocoria (one pupil slightly larger than the other...occurs in 25% of the population), but neither they nor the Navy/Marines seemed to care. Anyways, I drove to my hotel after that, got some Chinese takeout from some dive on Mira Mesa....that was a bad idea. Ugh.
So, I had surgery in the morning, my mom came down from LA and drove me to and from the hotel. She was pretty flipped out about it -- I really wasn't worried at all. I mean, what is there to worry about? I had zero control over the results...anyways, they prep me, swab my eyelids with iodine or something similar, give me a handful of meds to "relax" me, and then hand me a bunch of candy and hot chocolate while I wait for the doctor. Finally I go into the operating room, I lay down and the doctor clamps my eye open. I look at a little light while the assistant counts down from 10. Then they do the other eye and that was it. I get up and look at the clock on the wall and it's perfectly clear. It was pretty awesome.
The next part was not so awesome. In fact, it was an extremely uncomfortable weekend. I was very sensitive to light -- even in a dark room, if I looked at the LCD screen of the clock radio it was irritating. People say the pain feels like "sand in your eye," but I disagree, it's worse. Thank god for those pain killing eye drops. I was petrified that I was going to run out before I saw the doc again. They also had me on lyrica and vicodin, neither of which really did much for me. In fact, Sunday night the pain was so bad that even after taking two vicodin and going to bed, I still woke up every two hours after the pain eye drops wore off.
Overall, though, I had to stay in a dark room until Sunday morning. By then I could be outside for short periods of time (about as long as the pain killing eye drops lasted). I even went to the HiHo on Sunday afternoon to try to get some polarized sunglasses, but the Oakley store is super expensive.
Anyways, Monday came and they took out the contact lens bandages (which was the source of major irritation for me), but the doctor says that my left eye is healing faster than my right eye, so he decided to put a fresh contact back in my right and told me to come back on Wednesday. Furthermore, he took away my pain killing eye drops because they were "slowing down the healing process." Apparently it's normal for one eye to heal at a different rate than the other, but I was not ready to spend the night with no pain killers, much less two nights. So I talked him into letting me come in the next day instead of Wednesday. That night was terrible. My left eye was fine, but my right was very very very painful. And I had no pain meds except the lousy vicodin. It was so terrible I called up my buddy who's in AF pilot training and asked him to tell me this shit was worth it.
The next day (finally) comes and I have an appointment with the other doctor. I convince her to discuss the possibility of keeping the contact lens out so that I can drive back to Arizona. She says that ultimately the only thing that matters is my comfort level and that taking the lens out isn't going to affect the healing process. So we decide to take it out and I drive back to Arizona. At that point I was 4 days post-op. Driving wasn't too bad, it was a little bright and I had to use a bunch of the regular eye drops to keep things lubricated, but otherwise it went without incident.
So I get back and the girlfriend cooks me dinner and....err, anyways, ultimately she tells me that she's not sure if she should go with me the next weekend because (a) she doesn't like driving and (b) she isn't ready to meet my family. Hell, I don't blame her for the second part...I wouldn't want to meet them, either. I was disappointed, but...I understood, given the circumstances. So I arrage to have my buddy go with me, but ultimately I ended up buying airfare to San Diego for Saturday morning and came back Saturday afternoon. The checkup went fine...I have 20/20 both eyes, 20/15 left and 20/40 right. The Tuesday before that I had 20/25 both eyes, 20/20 left and 20/100 right. Obviously it's getting better. Double vision comes and goes in the right side, the left side is pretty solid. Driving at night is annoying, EVERYBODY has their brights on, but I refrain from flashing them because I know that's probably not the case.
I have to go back in a month. Maybe I will get her to go with me then...
