My vision has fluctuated quite a bit today from blurry in the morning to less blurry in the afternoon. Now its back to “more” blurry but roughly equal to my uncorrected, un-lasered right eye. This greatly reduces the feeling of dizziness from the past few days. I didn’t experience any pain today either, so I’m definitely on the mend. I have noticed that my eye tends to worsen after an application of steroid eye-drops, but I can’t discontinue these drops since they slow the healing process and prevent scar tissue from forming.

Earlier today, at my post-op checkup, my surgeon removed the bandage contact lens after convincing himself that I had healed enough. He explained the epithelium had mostly regrown except for a small spot of opaque cells in the center. I should expect the healing trend to continue and these cells to smooth out and become more transparent in the next few weeks. At the appointment, my vision tested to 20/60, a definite improvement from the day before.

As for the optical aberrations, I don’t notice the star bursts or ghost-images anymore, although the halos persist. Rather than a solid ring of light, they appear as a soft, warm glow around light sources. I also notice that my distance vision is much crisper than my near vision, though both are blurry. This may be a sign that I had some mild presbyopia that was hidden by my nearsightedness, or it could mean that I was slightly over corrected by the laser. Hopefully this will also resolve during the healing process.

My surgeon suggested that the worst day would be yesterday (day three) and he was right. I had very little pain today. In the morning I had some dryness that was quickly alleviated with some drops. I don’t feel the sand-in-eye pain at all now, its quite comfortable. Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the clinic again to have the bandage contact lens removed. Its possible that I’ll feel the scratchy pain again since the lens is providing protection for my eye as it heals.

While that was the good news, the bad news is my vision hasn’t improved at all. Its still incredibly blurry with a 9 o’clock ghost image and large halos around all lights (even during the day). I definitely cannot drive like this and I find it difficult to walk without feeling dizzy. I almost want to wear an eye patch and do the pirate thing for a few days since this just isn’t working. I’ve been told this is normal and I should expect blurry vision for another few weeks. Again, I’m glad I did one eye at a time!

Not that I can see the screen or anything, but I’m now the proud owner of a new 3gs. I was having coffee with my wife at Starbucks this morning when we decided to go next door to the AT&T store and see about fixing her dying cell phone. She had been wanting an iPhone to blog and tweet on the go and we both were aware AT&T had a current  $50 iPhone 3GS promo. We walked in thinking we’d fix her phone and walked out with a pair of new 3GSs. I was teased by my friends in the past for still clinging to my first gen iPhone and I now understand why. Now if I can get figure out how to get my apps transferred…

This is what my vision looks like 3-days post PRK. Yesterday it was 20/30 and sharp!

I had a custom (wavefront) photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) performed on my left eye three days ago. Prior to the surgery, my vision was 20/100 (sph -1.25 diopters, cyl 0.5 diopters) for both eyes and I required corrective lenses to drive a car or pilot an airplane. I hadn’t considered laser surgery until I spent $300 on a pair of glasses last year only to have them craze from heat after being left on the dash of my car. Three weeks later the warranty-replaced lenses crazed even with a protective case and I’ve been stuck with blurry glasses since then. At that point, I realized the overall cost of laser surgery would be less than buying multiple pairs of glasses. In fact, I only wear glasses when driving or flying, so most people who know me are probably surprised to learn my prescription is so poor.

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I’ve spent the past few weekends mentoring a FIRST team at our local high school. FIRST is an international competition aimed at inspiring high school students to consider a career in science or engineering by exposing them to the engineering process from design to functional prototype. Every year the rules of the competition change with the common element being the use of an autonomous/teleoperated robot working cooperatively with other robots to achieve a goal. All FIRST teams are given the rules of the game in early January and are given only six weeks to design, build, program and ship their robot. This year the game is Logo Motion.

For a rookie team, I think we are well on our way to fielding a compeitive robot. We set a goal to have our robot dunk a basket at the final game of the season in order to demonstrate the arm and claw mechanism we designed. During the actual competition our robot’s arm will be used to manipulate and place the inner tubes to score points in the game. As you can see from the video we set and met our goal – Team 3711 for the win!

This is an example of a logomotion game piece with Siena showing the scale:

Siena holding a logomotion inner tube - she would not let this thing go

My wife snapped this photo with her cell phone. She was amazed that she had actually found dry fallen leaves in Oregon. Siena had a blast.

Today I heard from my cousin that he is back in the States after serving a tour in Afghanistan. This is great news – and coincidentally, its Veterans Day!

My parents have been visiting for the past week from California, planning to head home in a few days. After our flight to Madras and other plans were derailed by weather, we tried to make the most of this sunny Sunday. We began by taking Siena to a local lake and letting her feed ducks and play in the fallen leaves. She had so much fun here that when it was time to leave she tried every stalling tactic in her book.

It was here that I realized that I could still take my parents flying, so we headed to the airport and spent the next hour viewing the valley from the air. The fall colors were incredibly vibrant and the angled sunlight made them pop like a perfectly exposed postcard. I took my Dad up over Lost Lake at the base of Mt. Hood and later took my Mom around the valley for a quick 20-minute loop. They both had a great time while Siena was safe on the ground walking the flight line and pointing out air traffic. After I landed the second time, I stepped down out of the airplane and Siena came running toward me shouting “Daddy flies airplanes!”.

After dropping my parents off at a local restaurant and bar (so they could watch the World Series), LRH and I took Siena trick-or-treating. She was dressed up as a little dragon this year and she spent the 15-minute entrance wait perfecting her roar. Our little nugget made off with plenty of candy for her second run! Later, we returned to the restaurant and joined my parents just in time to watch the SF Giants completely dismantle the Rangers… again. My Dad is (and always was) a die hard Giants fan and that rubbed off on me. I still cheer for them, which brings to light an interesting contradiction. This is the only time I will cheer for San Francisco against George Bush and Texas! LOL.

So, I was adventurous and tried a new dish at our local Mexican restaurant. It was called a Mojarra Frita and was described as a fish recipe garnished with lettuce, tomato and pico de gallo. Sounds delicious, right? Well, maybe not…

Before the waitress could put the dish down on the table, Siena start exclaiming “fish, fish, fish!”. Yep, she recognized that her Daddy had, in fact, ordered a fish (quite literally). At least it wasn’t a total loss: the rice and beans were good.

It’s official, I’m a private pilot. Exactly one year from the day of my first flight, I took and passed my checkride. I arrived at the airfield at 8AM and proceeded to endure a seven hour test that I can only describe as brutal. The checkride consisted of an oral exam on the ground covering all areas of aviation knowledge and concluded with a few hours in the air including navigation and demonstrating maneuvers. After the ordeal I was exhausted, but pleased that I completed my goal.

My first passenger was my beautiful wife. For her birthday, we took a scenic flight around the local valleys and she captured some of it on her cell phone camera:

Here are some shots from my solo cross country flight to Madras, one of the requirements I had to complete to earn my private pilot certificate:

Flying is always exciting, especially when a huge forest fire has the next valley over ablaze and a TFR (temporary flight restriction) is placed directly above your home airport.