Blog: My ICL Experience

It has been just over two weeks since my surgery - and just over a week since my post-op 1 week follow-up - which means I am officially done my crazy antibiotic eye drop regiment and all restrictions are off! Vision is good/great. Right eye is very clear (though probably still 20/25 I'm guessing). Left eye is still a little less clear than my right (guessing I'm still stuck at 20/30). Together, the doctor said they work at 20/25, so I'm happy with them. I still get phantom glasses syndrome - randomly grabbing at my face for my glasses to take them off, or push them up, when they're non-existent. I feel like I always have to excitedly tell someone when that happens! I threw out my contacts, donated my leftover Optifree solution & stored my old glasses. Felt amazing and cathartic. My vision gets a little blurry only when I have dry eyes. New side-effect revelation: I do feel like I see a bit of streaky/haloey aberrations around light sources in low-light situation...

I had my 1 week follow-up appointment yesterday. Super fast. Kind of rushed actually. The surgeon is too busy with... well, surgeries to pretty much ever see you again, so all the follow-ups so far have been with clinic/institute staff optometrists/ophthalmologists. Going into the appointment, my eyes were super irritated from a long and stressful day. So "bad" news first: my left eye did not improve over the course of the week: it is still stuck at 20/30 (which is honestly fine). Good news is that my right eye improved to 20/25! (even though I personally felt like I couldn't read some of the smaller lines on the eye chart as well as I could last time) Pressure was 14 (normal - bit higher than last week, but apparently it fluctuates even by the hour). I'm afraid 20/30 is what I'll be stuck with given the other blogs I have read (e.g. that what you see in your first week is pretty much what you'll be stuck with). I still have another week to go with the antibio...

RIGHT EYE (Surgery Day 1): Woke up freaking out at 6am. Ate a protein bar - didn't want to be hungry, but also not too full. Arrived at 7am and signed away my life (i.e. consent form). Found out that "Lifetime Commitment" to your eyes as advertised has caveats: touch-up correction is only free within the first year - it's $500 if you want or need it after that. After a short while, I was called into a back room with two other patients. I was happy to learn that they were both undergoing ICL as well. It sounded like they had higher prescriptions than me (in terms of diopters: one had hyperopia the other was only getting Toric in one eye - I was getting Torics in both), but it was a nice heading in to the operating table to have a team of people who were going through the same thing as me in succession. We were all fed a steady stream of 8-15 drops in the eye being operated on by a very nice nurse. We also got a pill to help us "relax" (it did not work on me ...

Needless to say, I am completely freaking out now. Surgery is at 7AM tomorrow. I started Vigamox drops in my right eye on yesterday and left eye this morning (they are doing my right eye first tomorrow, followed by my left eye the next day). Since my last post, I have stopped doing research, watching ICL procedures on YouTube, etc. Since I had my iridotomy done, which is permanent, and made the decision to go forward, I figure reading more won't change my mind or the outcome at this point. I'm really excited to finally be able to see without glasses, but to be honest, it hasn't fully hit me yet. Today is my last day wearing glasses (!!!), which I've worn for 23 years! I keep thinking about how I take for granted and accept that I just cannot see in many situations (shower, while falling asleep, etc.) and now, how distracted  I might be by actually being able to see after this procedure! Iridotomy update: Now that I've had some time to deal with my iridotomy side ...