Yo ho ho...

Supposedly I'm making a lot of progress. Until today I'm not sure I would have agreed.

Saturday (procedure +1): Recall in above post - it was really rough being outside. Even with my eyes closed and sunglasses on, the daylight felt way too bright. My eyes were dry, and it was a bit tough to read. As expected, it was an ordeal to have Marah add the cocktail of drops to my eyes.

Sunday (procedure +2): We generally took it easy here, and it was kind of a repeat of Saturday for me. While I could certainly "see", my vision was getting blurrier - it was uncomfortable to watch TV, impossible to read, and generally pretty frustrating. I'd even say boring. In the late morning, one of my eyes was in significant pain. The cocktail certainly helped, and eventually we figured out the appropriate "comfort" order to insert the drops into my eyes. To get out of the house mid-afternoon, we made some returns at the local bevy of home improvement stores.

Anyway, I think we went to bed around eight o'clock, which wasn't such a good move. I wasn't tired, and tried to read, but my vision was really bad. Substantially worse than my eyesight prior to surgery. I couldn't figure out what the right level of light was to read printed material, nor could I figure out the appropriate distance. And, since I went to sleep so early, I was up for several hours in the middle of the night, panicking over my eyesight ... wondering if I was going to be in the minority of people who end up with poor results in this non-guaranteed process.

Monday (procedure +3):

After the regimen of drops upon waking, we headed over for a checkup with the doctor. My epithelial cells are healing well and making good progress. Epithelial cells in my left eye have basically healed over and it looks like a "zipper" as they try to reconnect in-line. My right eye is healing a little more slowly, and there is still a central area without the cells. This at least explains my blurry vision. The plan is to go back first thing on Wednesday morning to have the contact lenses taken out, since my eyes will have sufficiently healed. The word from the doctor is "it will get better every day", so presumably my anxiety is unfounded, and my hopes were a bit unrealistic.

I decided to work from home on Monday rather than sit and sleep the day away ... a mix of being on the phone with colleagues, and occaisionally trying to read the computer screen for email. Concentrating on text on the computer was really tough. My eyes seem to be doing better overall - I was able to skip the optional "comfort" (pain-killing) drops today. By bedtime, I was able to read under the right lighting conditions, but opted for a large-print [it's all relative] book of Roz Chast cartoons.

Tuesday (procedure +4):
I forget if it was this morning or just before bed realized that the blurriness and frustration was likely due to the asymmetrical healing of my eyes. If I closed my right eye, I could see small text at a distance quite well. I guess my brain is trying to interpret the good-left eye along with the bad-right eye data, which is causing some of the mental focus and straining that I'm doing. Anyway, this was a great confidence booster this morning, and I hope augurs well for recovery post-contacts tomorrow. Meantime, I've considered fashioning an eye patch and finding a parrot to sit on my shoulder as I rule the high seas...