July 24, 2024
Immediately after surgery, vision was a blur and that was to be expected. The whole process was pain-free and the longest part was just getting the light dose of anesthesia and waiting for the eye to get numb before surgery.
Once the eye is ready, you are wheeled into one of two stages. The first is to have your natural lens broken up by a laser and the second is to then go and have the lens fragments removed (suctioned) and inserting the replacement lens. The whole process was finished in about 15 minutes.
In my case, I opted for what’s called a “light adjustable lens.” Rather than being a fixed lens, these lens can be adjusted by uv laser up to 3 times to refine the prescription to suit me. The lens that’s implanted already has a prescription but due to my having lasik some 23 years ago, my cornea is not of a uniform shape. Using a light adjustable lens, they can compensate for those irregularities.
As the implanted lens is sensitive to uv light, I need to be vigilent about wearing uv blocking glasses for the duration of the adjusting period, which doesn’t begin until 3 weeks after the second surgery on August 6 (too much uv light can cause the lenses to be ‘fixed’ prematurely). They issued a clear set for indoors and a tinted set for outdoors. These have to be worn during the entire time I’m awake. To complicate the timeline, I’m taking a vacation in mid-September and my ophthalmologist is taking a vacation in late September, stretching the end date to October 14.
Here are my other gotchas:
– no highly physical activity for 1 week after surgery (yes, that means no pickleball!)
– I need to wear an eye shield while sleeping to prevent me from rubbing my eyes at night or other incidental contact with the eye for 1 week after surgery
For me, I think I will be forgoing pickleball until the lenses are finalized. It’s going to be rough but there’s too much risk of me losing my glasses during play. On the upside, I think I’ll be able to resume golfing as soon as August 13, but I’ll have to reassess my availability based on how my vision is.
So as of the morning of day 1, things are looking promising. I’d say the blurry vision has reduced to where it’s no longer like looking through heavy fog to more like light fog or wet glass. I don’t plan on reporting out everyday but will provide updates as milestones are reached.
Here’s to a brighter future!
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