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Wednesday, April 24, 2013

I'm Ready to Laugh About It Now

So remember how last year I got lasik?  Well, it's been almost a year and I realized I never gave an update on how it's been.

In a word?  Wonderful.

How good is it you ask?

Let me tell you how good.  We went on a family camping trip on Easter weekend and Kate threw up in the tent the first night and had diarrhea the second night.

I still thought it was a great camping trip.


No seriously. Going camping without contacts or glasses for the first time was so liberating that I still thought this was one of our better camping trips, stomach bug and all.

We had a lot of fun.  The non-sick kids and I went on a short hike and tried fishing for the first time:


And because it was Easter weekend, we participated in a few Easter egg hunts.  Inks Lake State Park where we camped had one on Saturday morning and Kate was feeling well enough to go.  Some of the eggs had regular candy, but a few had tickets for prizes.  Kate made out like a bandit:


Kate's love language is gifts.  I think God knew my little girl was having a rough weekend and sent some extra love her way that day :)

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If anyone is wondering how my recovery from lasik went, here's a little run-down:

The two weeks of no contacts and lots of eye drops beforehand was a pain.  But the surgery itself was fast.  A little uncomfortable, but no pain and very short-lived. M got to watch through a window and I'm kind of jealous. Immediately after the procedure I could see very well.  I had fairly clear vision with a milky layer over it of haziness, especially when looking at bright lights.  The Valium they had given me made me very slow-moving.  M drove me home and we ate some lunch and then I went to sleep for most of the day.  The next morning I went to a follow-up appointment with my optometrist. I had something like 20/40 vision that first day with still a fair amount of haziness. But I could drive no problem.

I went to pick up my kids from my parents' house, but I was still a little sleepy.  I fell asleep sitting upright in a chair out by the pool.

For the next few days my eyes were pretty dry, my vision was still plagued by pretty bad haziness when looking at bright lights, and I had a wicked headache.  But I still don't know if the headache was from my vision, or from getting a really bad crick in my neck when I fell asleep in that chair.  I tend to get neckaches easily and they tend to manifest themselves as headaches.  But by the end of a week, the headaches were gone and my vision was great except in super high contrast situations (like looking at bright lights in the dark/at night).  My final post-op optometrist appointment put me at 20/15 in one eye and 20/20 in the other.

One of the first few nights, I complained to M, "How does anyone ever go to sleep when there's so much to look at?"  It took about a month before I stopped thinking I had forgotten to take my contacts out before bed.  This seriously happened EVERY NIGHT for about a month.

Now at almost a year out, I never even have to think about my eyes anymore.  They are never dry - better in fact than they were pre-lasik (because contacts made my eyes dry).  I can see great.  The only halo-ing/haziness I have is still tons better than what I experienced with contacts in.  And when I describe what I see to M (who has naturally good vision), it sounds like my vision (including a tiny bit of halo-ing) is no different than his.

In the end, it was worth every penny.  (And it was a lot of pennies. I am deeply grateful we could afford it and that M didn't balk at doing this for me.)  It totally falls into the categories of things in your life that it's very easy to take for granted unless you force yourself to stop and think about it.  But I'm pretty sure being able to forget you had it done is totally the sign of a successful lasik procedure!!!

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