My PRK Experience: One Week Post-op Recovery

Its been a week and a few days since my PRK surgery, and my eye is healing quickly. I don’t have any near vision blurriness anymore and I’m guessing my distance vision is at least 20/20 since my left eye’s visual acuity is equal to my right eye with the corrective lens. In just 48-hours the initial post-operative farsightedness has resolved itself. In fact, because the vision in my left eye is so superior to my right, I recently became left-eye dominant at all distances. In the past few days, when I was experiencing post-op hyperopia, I had difficulty reading a computer screen with my left eye. Even at that near distance, the text on the screen was almost unreadable, so I resorted to covering my left eye in order to work without a headache. Now that I’m left-eye dominant, my right eye is seeing blurry text, while my left eye is sharp. In order to focus with my right eye, I have to cover my left and then concentrate on focusing with my right. Just crazy. My solution is simply to wear my old glasses with the left lens removed. This way, both eyes have the same prescription.

The optical aberrations seem to have abated as well. I don’t have ghosting issues anymore, in any lighting condition. I still see very faint halos and starbursts in my left eye, but they are significantly less intense than my right eye with corrected vision. My glasses, for some reason, create very large starbursts from bright light sources (e.g. headlights of oncoming traffic). Even without correction, my untreated right eye still produces more visible optical distortions than my left. Perhaps this is due to the wavefront technology of the Visx laser.

I’ll learn my exact visual acuity on Monday. Fortunately, my vision is fluctuating much much less throughout the day. I find that my left eye is at its worst in the evening. This may be due to the steroid drops, as I’ve read that eyesight tends to stabilize once the drops are discontinued. For now, I can’t wait until next Thursday when I have the right eye done. I don’t know how much longer I can stand such lopsided vision!