1st Month Post-Op Follow-up

Went for the follow-up check again last Saturday 4/4/09, exactly 28 days after my Lasik Surgery. The test results turn out to be OK. Both my eyes are slightly overcorrected, which means now I have slight far-sighted. Before I started to read the Snellen Chart, I was tested with the duochrome chart. Before any lense added, the wordings on the green background appeared to be clearer. I have always wondered what is all this green and read chart all about, so I asked the Optometrist but he refused to tell me. He said that if I know what is it about, I will tend to have biased thinking on my Lasik results.

So, as I was so wanted to know, I decided to look for it on the Internet. And this is what I got. "Over corrected myope will see the green clearly and under corrected myope will see red clearly"

23/3/2009, 2 weeks plus after Lasik

Woke up this morning horrified by the blurred vision, but luckily it turns clearer after a few hours. Talking about the Lasik complications that I am experiencing, so far nothing too serios except the expected bad night vision. The starbursting and halos are quite annoying actually, especially when I am driving at night. Well, this is a picture that I grabbed from the lasikdisaster.com website, but this is more or less similar to what I am experincing. The starburst from light source, the brighter the light, the bigger the starbursting. For dim lights, halos occur. I hope these effects will subside over time, although I dare not expect too much, since the surgeon did mentioned that my pupil is quite large.

17/03/2009, 11th day after Lasik

Found that my vision sharpen a lil bit. Strangely, I could focus on small fineprints at a normal reading distance. But I couldn't read the large wordings at distant. What's the problem? *sigh

Called mum last night, I finally have the guts to tell her about the Lasik surgery. Suprisingly, she wasn't shocked by the news. She told me that she's now having mild cataract and retina detachment. She adviced me to take good care of my eyes from now on. Aging.... what a scary thing. Mum, I hope that you will get well soon.

1st week after Lasik

Finally I did my Lasik on the 6/3/09. But my first week after the surgery wasn't pleasant at all. I felt so tired by having to strain my eyes to focus on something. the eyes simply unable to focus, so my world appearred to be blurry. Have I made a wrong decision? I don't know. I was so paranoid that I called the Lasik center yesterday that my vision is getting blurred day after day. I met the surgeon and the optometrists that afternoon and they said that there was nothing wrong with my eyes. In-fact, the test results had shown that my vision is even better than that on the 1st day after surgery. They must have thought that I was simply over-reacting. Well, I didn't tell a lie, it was indeed like that. My first day was, wow, crystal clear on my left eye, the right eye was a bit blurry and continues to be blurry to-date. However, the crystal clear on the left eye doesn't last, each morning when I woke up, I found it is has become worse than the last night. Every evening, I went home with a severe headache after straining my eyes to focus for whole day long, I even went to bed early hoping that everything will be fine the next morning I woke up. However, that wasn't the case, blurry stayed blurry. Could be, this is the healing period and it would take some time to stabilize. I really hope so. I don't wanna have this blury vision for the rest of my life after so much money spent on this.

New Vision????

Went for Eye exam at 0ptimax Seremban last Saturday, prior to my Lasik surgery on the 6th March. Made the decision of having the LASIK surgery quite abruptly. Saw 0ptimax's advertisement on the new branch promo and all of a sudden I decided that I want to have it. The promo price for Std Lasik is RM1488. Sadly, after the eye exam, I was told that I am not suitable for Std Lasik, but I need to go for the slighly more expensive Lasik-XP, which will cost me RM1888 per eye. Besides the price, the main difference between the two is the flap thickness that is going to be cut, i.e. 150 for Std Lasik and 120 for Lasik-XP.

The eye examiner told me that a normal thickness for a person is 500. Thank GOD that I am within the normal range. However, due to the correction needed to be done on my eyes, is around 100 of my cornea thickness, I need to go for the Lasik-XP. The inner 250 of the cornea is to be reserved and must not be touched.

So the mathematics are:

500 (total) - 250 (reserved) - 100 (correction) - 120 (flap) = 30

So what is this 30 for? Although I can insist that I want to do the Std Lasik, but think wisely, there is no 100% guaranteed result in LASIK. So this remaining 30 is for further enhancement purpose when needed. Of course I don't want to have the surgery twice. Anyway, having something left is always better than nothing is left.

A graphic illustration on LASIK grabbed from 0PTIMAX website

Dilation drops are used to dilate the pupils during the full eye exam. When the dilation starts to take effect, you vision will start to blurred when looking at near, however far vision is not affected. To look clearly on the things near to you, you have to take the glasses off. Ha... this is just like presbyopia (老花) which usually happen to old folks only, and now i have experieced it during young age!! This effect last for almost 24 hours.

Really can't wait to take my glasses off but at the same time, I couldn' help not to worry about the postsurgery complications that might occur, and, whether I am going to have good vision after that. I do not expect perfect vision, as there is no guarantee on this, but I believe most people do Lasik for the same reason, which is, to take off the glasses.

Went for lunch at the famous Hakka Noodle at Tow Kee. Not really impressive. The taste is just soso, and RM3 for 1 small bowl, I consider it as expensive. Wanna go to Jit Seng to taste the famous crab cuisine one day, since I'll be going to Seremban quite often after this for post operative follow-ups.

Bought myself a pair of Lev1's Sunglasses at F0CUS P0INT the day after, cost around RM300. The Sunglasses is a must after the Lasik Surgery. Frankly, this is my second sunglasses which I have ever bought. The first one is bought at a Pasar Malam when I was 12, ha....