I feel like those movies when a person goes into confession with the priest. Forgive me, father, it’s been a week since my last blog post. A lot has happened because part of that was spent enjoying the holiday celebrations with my family and cooking for 14 people on Christmas Day.
I started at 6:30 a.m. when my son woke us and his baby sister up to see what Santa Claus brought under the tree. He was good though, teaching sissy that they had to take turns opening presents so we could all enjoy what Santa brought. After breakfast, I began all the preparations to make a huge holiday meal and pretty much stayed in the kitchen until everyone arrived. I love cooking and am pretty good at it, so it was an enjoyable time.
Many of the days leading up to Christmas were spent healing my eyes from LASIK. I’ve had poor vision most of my life. I remember when my teacher told my mom I needed glasses. I was 13 years old and, unfortunately, had already spent a lot of my childhood being picked on for being chubby and sensitive and artistic. When it came time to select my glasses, I cried and begged for contact lenses. I remember saying to her…”Mom, the kids are all so mean, please don’t give them another reason to call me names.” Fortunately, she allowed me to get contact lenses in addition to glasses, even though we didn’t have the money for the extra expense, and I’ve been wearing them ever since.
I’ve been interested in LASIK for at least a decade. For some reason, I decided this was the time to take the plunge. I did my research, found a good facility, checked to ensure the doctor had excellent credentials and was licensed, that the facility was in good standing with the Better Business Bureau and read everything I could in the company’s literature and on the Internet. What I failed to do was get more information on monovision. The topic came up during my eye exam to see if I was a good LASIK candidate.
Monovision is when your eyes are corrected differently with the laser. One is corrected for distance and the other for reading. The theory is that our eyes change as we age and without the correction, we will still need reading glasses. They gave me an example of what my vision would look like and it seemed great. The pre-op doctor told me that some people’s brains have trouble adjusting to monovision, but most adjusted fine.
I had no idea that I could have gone to my eye doctor and asked for monovision contacts to see how I would adjust. I wish I had done that because it would have changed my decision. My bad for not knowing all the facts.
I’m 11 days into LASIK now and my eyes are healing well. The first few days were rough. Not seeing well, not adapting to the monovision change and serious dry eyes even with all the drops. Apparently, my eyes healed quickly and the drops given after the surgery dehydrated my eyes which caused my vision to stay wonky. I’ve been taking Restasis for 5 days to get moisture back into my eyes from the inside out and things are looking up (pun intended).
We went on a nature walk the Saturday and I was amazed to see the snow-capped mountains in the distance from my right eye as clear as I’ve ever seen. It was magical. Reading is getting a little better out of my left eye, but being on the computer is really tough. I have to start writing my book manuscript soon and I pray all heals before that deadline lands.
I have another follow-up appointment this week to see how the Restasis is helping. I know for a fact LASIK worked, but there’s still more fine tuning to do. I’m seriously hoping my brain will switch soon to monovision and all will be well. This is a lot of personal stuff, which I rarely share on my blog, but I know there are some folks who are worried about me. I wanted to let them know I’m doing better every day even though it is frustrating to not be 100%.
I seriously hope many of you are still enjoying time off this week or still more family time leading up to the New Year. Best wishes!
