Day 10 - So close...

Saturday, 25 July 2009
Last night was the best so far. I still woke up 2 or 3 times throughout the night, and had to apply the Blink eye-drops, but no discomfort, no burning, and the irritation in my right eye was largely gone by morning. I also woke up to improved--but not yet clear--vision in my right eye. The double vision is all but gone now. The right hand side of my world is still blurry, though. There is ghosting that is most likely caused by the healing line (lines?) that have not yet completely diffused from the center of my right pupil. But, it's now to the point where I can see clearly for the few seconds after I put Blink eye-drops in my eye. This is rather encouraging, because it's where my left eye was on Wednesday. It means that my epithelium is still healing, and that the eye-drops are filling in the corneal irregularities, sharpening up the image. This is a good thing, because it means that my vision will continue to sharpen up today and tomorrow.

I wrote the first half of this in the morning... evening now, a full day has gone by.

My eyes definitely heal faster and more completely while I sleep. I see greater visual gains after sleeping for 8-10 hours than when I'm awake and using my eyes for 14 hours during the day. Since waking up this morning, my right eye vision has marginally improved. This is par for the course during daytime hours. I have several visual "benchmarks" throughout the house that I use to gauge my progress. In the family room (upstairs, where the TV is), if I sit on the couch under the big window, two of my benchmarks are the logo on the surround sound speaker and one of the figures in a painting on the wall. Yesterday, both the logo and the figure in the painting were still visibly split in two--almost an even side-by-side split. Today, that split is gone. The images are no longer doubled, just blurred. Another benchmark is the "SONY" written on the TV. Again, today was the first day that my right eye didn't see overlapping letters. And today was the first day that the various pictures and paintings downstairs looked merely blurry, and not really out of whack. So, I know that progress is still being made.

I can read my digital clock in the bedroom from across the room now. I drove to CVS and the Neighborhood Walmart today to pick up more Blink eye-drops, and noticed a huge difference in visual acuity just from driving to the doctor's yesterday.

Medication-wise, I'm now off of the Zymar, Vitamin C (I was taking a whopping 1,000 mg/day), and Alleve. I still take Tylenol at night because by the end of the day I still get headaches. Today was better than yesterday because my left eye isn't fighting as hard to compenstate for my healing right. I'm not nearly as energy drained as I was earlier in the week, but I still nodded off for an hour after lunch and then for another hour before dinner.

It's so close now. I'm really, really hoping that tomorrow is the day that the right eye sharpens into focus vision.