PRK – Days 0 to 3

On Tuesday November 13 I had laser eye surgery (PRK) done at the excellent London Eye Center.

The appointment wasn’t until 3:30pm so I took the morning to bum around downtown Vancouver, one of my favourite places. I hung out at Starbucks, walked around a bit, went to Chapters to pick up some books on screenwriting, then took the Seabus over to North Vancouver. I arrived at the clinic a few minutes early so I could finish paying and fill out any papers they had for me to sign.

The technicians checked my blood pressure and heart rate, then the doctor rechecked my prescription, just to be sure they’re setting up the laser correctly. I was called into the laser room where I lay down on a comfy platform and was rotated under the laser. The doc prepped my eye by using a solution to remove the epithelium layer from my eye, this was painless due to the freezing drops they’d put in earlier, but did look pretty weird, you can see the skin coming off as the doctor uses a little sponge on a stick to pull em out.

The actual laser treatment only took 16 seconds for the right eye and 18 seconds for the left eye. There isn’t much feeling to the whole process. The only way you know something is happening is the sound of the machine (whirring and click noises) and the smell, which is something like burnt plastic (people say burnt hair, but I’ve never burnt hair so I can’t say).

After the procedure the technicians are back to recheck blood pressure and pulse and give me information on the post-op procedures, basically lots of drops and a strong recommendation to go home and sleep. There were four types of drops; 1 freezing for pain, 1 tears for moisturizing, and 2 types of antibiotics.

Andrew drove me home and I crawled into bed shortly after we got in, it was really hard to keep my eyes open, though they didn’t really hurt. I slept for a bit over an hour by which time Andrew was back with T3’s and the sleeping pills I’d been prescribed. I’d woken up because of pain so I hit my peepers with a round of drops, downed a T3 and crawled back into bed.

Tuesday night, I did not get much sleep. I woke up often in pain, the best I can give as a description is a sunburn on my eyes. I woke frequently put in the freezing drops they’d given me and then try to get a few more minutes sleep.

Wednesday was much like Tuesday night, painful with fits of sleep. Andrew was a prince here, seriously. He kept me setup with drops and T3s and darkness whatever else I moaned for over the day. By the early evening I was starting to lose hope, there hadn’t been any change in the pain, not improvement, just no change at all, which really wore me down. Andrew called the clinic and the technician (Al) gave him lots of information and reassurance about the different types of healers and what to expect next. Apparently I’m a very fast healer and so had just gone through the healing most people do in 3 days in just 24 hours. By 9pm the pain was rapidly diminishing just as Al had predicted. Wednesday night I got some sleep, it was great.

Thursday I had no more pain, so pleased. I had some pretty strong light sensitivity and couldn’t keep my eyes open for more than a few seconds, but I was out of pain and tickled pink. We drove into North Vancouver for the first of several followup appointments where my healing rate was checked and confirmed to be very fast. Got some refills on the drops and headed back home. I was pretty comfortable Wednesday afternoon and evening, napping periodically. I couldn’t see really anything, just blobs of blurry colours.

Today, Friday, was pretty good. I started the day with a nice hot bath and then puttered around the house. I’m able to use my computer pretty comfortably, using the tears drops frequently to keep my eyes comfortable. In the afternoon I went for a walk to the mall near my house to grab some coffee, look for some new clothes. All fairly comfortable, my vision is improving but isn’t great to be sure.

Tomorrow I have another followup in North Vancouver where they take out the ‘bandage’ contacts that I’ve had on since the procedure, which I’m definitely looking forward to, also they’ll check out the healing state, decide what drops I need to continue with.

I’ll post another update in a few days.