Day 6 - Double vision

Tuesday, 21 July 2009
There was some happy progress today. Instead of my right eye seeing four images, it had reduced to double-vision. One image about 45-degrees from the other. An improvement, to be sure, but enough of a problem to cause significant eye strain and headaches.

Today also brought another post-op visit. The bandage lens in my right eye was removed, and I immediately noticed a difference in visual clarity. Evidently, the lens was acting as a nice polished surface that helped my still regenerating epithelium to focus the light into a sharper image. My left eye felt ok without the lens, but visual acuity dropped to 20/25. My world was still pretty blurry past anything near-sighted. As the day progressed, my left eye would feel irritated, like there was a foreign object in it. I would find out the reason for this later in the week, but for now it was a minor nuisance that I was willing to live with. One of the biggest problems that I have been having at night is waking up after sleeping for 8+ hours with those soft bandage contact lenses dried out and gummed to my eyelids. Very unpleasant, very uncomfortable. So one less lens to gum to my eyelid was a welcome change.

After looking at my right eye in the microscope, the doctor decided to leave the bandage lens on for another day. He drew me a picture of what was happening. As the corneal epithelium was regrowing, it was doing so in two major pieces--left and right--converging in the middle. There was a heavy healing line where the cells came together. That line cut perpendicular right down the center of my right pupil. That explained my double vision. The doctor assured me that this line would diffuse and eventually disappear. It would just take some time.