LASIK/PRK, part 2. (procedure)
OK. Now for the details of the actual LASIK/PRK procedure itself. I’m still recovering, so more details may follow later.
First - the procedure itself. I showed up at 9:15 with an expectation of being around for about 2 hours of prep/surgery/paperwork. At 10:40, I was done. The actual time spent in the chair was probably 5 minutes of active work. (And 5 minutes of the poor doctor and assistants trying to get me to suppress my blink reflex.)
When I got in, I first went through the same barrage of tests as the first day, to make sure the maps are up to date, that my prescription was correct, etc. I spent a lot of time staring at the corneal topographer - I’m sure it was to make sure the map is correct, but the number of trials made me wonder if I was doing it wrong.
A mild anesthetic was used on my eyes, and was told to wait for a bit with my eyes closed. I suspect this is to make sure the last measurements were correct (Regarding the area lased - as I understand it, halos are more common when the area operated on is smaller than the area covered by a fully dilated pupil. This is a bit of a guess, but it makes sense.)
Once I went into the operating room, a couple more minor checks were done (sorry, I don’t know the names of all the machines). Then there were the drops. Lots of them, pouring over the sides of my eyes. Pads were fit into my head covering to soak them up as they ran down the side of my face.
I think there were multiple types of drops, but I’m not sure.
Then I got laid back on the table. This is the surprising part - I was expecting that at some point I’d get a mild sedative like Vicodin. Nothing strong, but something that would allow me to respond to commands while not caring that my eye was being scraped. Nothing of the sort was given to me, and I started to realize that I wasn’t getting it. Oh well.
Once Dr. Hyver came in, the restraints were put in to hold my eye open. This sounds bad, but it really wasn’t - it was hard to suppress my blinking, but eventually, they were able to hook the restraint below both eyelids, and crank it open. (There was some crank mechanism on the side, I didn’t get to see. One eye was done at a time.
Then the chair rotated under the laser, and I could see the red blinking light I was going to have to focus on. Around it was a thin white ring of light. The laser was mounted off to the right. More drops were used.
Here’s the creepy part. First the epithelium has to be removed, so Dr. Hyver said he’d be ‘blocking the light for a few seconds’. Granted, I don’t have good vision (or didn’t) but I swear I saw what looked like a rotating dentist brush come in. Similar, but not the same.
The rotating brush comes down, and fills the field of vision for about 10 seconds or so. This happened a couple times, I suppose while the proper region was covered. Once it’s done, everything’s really blurry.
Now I was warned that the light would get distorted. There was a tool that came across the eye, I suppose to remove the epithelium mess. My vision cleared a bit, but it really did distort in the process. Almost like controlled waves of light, as the tool wiped the mess away. This was kind of neat, actually. I don’t know if I really liked the effect or just knew that the weirdest bit was over.
The laser is the next step. It’d been programmed with my map, and was ready to fire away. I was told to watch the blinking light as well as I could. Once it started, it just pulsed away (at about 2 or 3Hz) as it ablated the cornea surface. The actual time with the laser was about 30 seconds per eye.
During this process, the light seemed to move around, and I was supposed to track it. At the same time, everything was becoming progressively brighter and blurrier. I didn’t know how bad this would get, and it got a bit uncomfortable, but it eventually stopped, at about the point where I could mainly just see a white blur through most of my vision with a little bit of red.
I don’t know if the light was really moving around or if that was a trick of the eye, but it did jump a bit. Following it was a decent task, but the machine is sampling input at 4kHz, so really, if you aren’t keeping up or move to the wrong location, it’s going to know long before you can intentionally go out of tolerance. (Really, how far can you move your eye and/or head in 250 microseconds?)
Once this was done, I had to open the other eye and look at a Q-tip held about 3 inches up, while the final procedures were done. I don’t know what these were, because something blocked my vision in the other eye. I would have asked, but the other eye still had to be done, and I didn’t want to know quite yet.
After whatever that procedure was completed, a contact lens was dropped in, since i really had an open wound on my eye, and the ocular restraint was removed so I could blink.
Those poor people then had to try to get the restraint in my eye, and repeat the procedure. It was largely identical to the first run.
Once both contacts were in and I was out from under the machine, I sat up and was led to an adjoining room, to sit in a chair with my eyes closed for a bit while some last minute items were done. (Paperwork, maybe? I don’t know.) A quick inspection was done, and I passed.
I received some sunglasses, and was all ready to go. At this point, my vision was fuzzy, but better than it would have been without glasses before. I was light sensitive, but not that much. Since I was going to take the BART home, I was advised to take a Percocet pill now, so it would take effect by the time I got there.
This may or may not have been the best idea, but I made it home. I’ll cover the drugs in the next installment. I took a taxi to the BART station (it would have been a 10 minute walk), because I was supposed to keep my eyes closed for 4-6 hours.
Once at the BART, I just took a train to SF, and rode it to the Embarcadero, where I picked up the right east bay train. It was a bit hard to read the station stops and I can never hear the announcer, but it was doable. Once off BART in Oakland, I picked up the 51 bus to Alameda. It was a bit hard to read the signs, but the 51 signs are in blue, and that was easy to trigger on. I did stand there like I was drunk, and could barely open my eyes enough to watch for the bus. This was more Percocet than surgery, I think.
The 51 dropped me off close to home, and after walking a couple blocks, I got in, laid down, and passed out. More later on the recovery - drugs, sleep, and so on.