Blog: My ICL Experience

So I can finally say I have a tattoo - even though I've never really wanted one. I fear the pain - so naturally, I got two! On my eyeballs! lol. Oh the irony that is life... Day 3 and my eyes are returning to normal. The dry, scratchy feeling after getting the tattoo is pretty much gone. Just back to my normal dry eyes. *grumbles* I have noticed a side-effect that I haven't talked about before. I did mention that I already had halos and streaks of light pre-ICL because of my crappy eyes, but I noticed it is much worse in only one specific instance. When I'm looking at a small, concentrated speck of light in the pitch black. Specifically, around alarm clocks, the light in your smoke detector... that's pretty much it. In the middle of the night, when everything else is pitch black, the halos around these objects are really bad! I can now understand why some people, who have it much worse, would be very disappointed in their ICLs. But since I can still see the time cle...

Had my corneal tattoo procedure performed today. After the Dr. checked my eyes, I lay down in what appeared to be a LASIK surgery room. They put a ton of numbing drops in my eyes, patched up one eye so they could work on the other. They taped my eyelashes down, inserted the specula (instrument that holds your eye open) and proceeded. Felt a bit of poking - didn't hurt, but was more uncomfortable than the iridotomy. Maybe even more pressure than the ICL itself. It took almost as long. I think the instrument (I swear it looked like a needle) is designed to remove or scratch the surface of your cornea so the ink will absorb into the layer just underneath. The Dr used the LASIK microscope to perform the procedure, but no lasers are involved. After performing the same procedure on both eyes, it was done and I was back in the room where he could observe the work. Apparently the iridotomy holes are completely covered - even he can't see through them anymore with the optical instrument...

Quick note to say all is well. I'm finally getting used to life without glasses - though I still sometimes reach for them on my face, when it's not there. Phantom Glasses. Makes me smirk with a bit of smugness haha. My corneal tattoo procedure got pushed back: though I should have it done within the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned and sorry for the delay, readers! There is no 2 month check-up, so I'll have more to report back at my "3 month" appointment in June (technically 4 months, but 3 from the last check up - yes, confusing, I know). I am going on my first vacation post-op before my 3 month appointment: very excited to experience travelling without my usual massive eye care contact kit + spare glasses, etc. One other fun thing I tried recently: you know when people with 20/20 vision ask to try your glasses? Your "crazy" prescription? And when they do, they're like, "Whoaaaaa... OMG you must be blind!" Yeah. That. Used to get ...

Good news and ok news. Unfortunately, I'm still 20/30 in my left eye, but my right eye is 20/20 now! And together the doctor said I'm seeing 20/20! Yay! He said I could get LASIK to correct the left eye to 20/20 or get a 0.75 prescription, but I declined. If I'm seeing 20/20, why would I go through that? Especially with the dry eye which I'm already dealing with... Cannot make it worse with LASIK (dry eye is a common side effect). So yes, I'm 20/20! (with the left eye slightly blurry when I look at text from a distance while covering my right eye). The only lingering issue is the white line glare I have from the iridotomy procedure in certain situations. They're going to do the corneal tattoo procedure to fix it on April 1. Quick procedure apparently.  Fingers crossed. Will update then! In other news, I went sunglasses shopping on the weekend... debating between the Ray Ban New Wayfarer's or a pair of Diors. Oh Visian ICLs... Thank you. *beams* :...

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 ...