Last Thursday I had PRK surgery on both eyes. Things are still in the recovery stage so it’s too soon to tell if I’m going to be satisfied with the results. If things don’t improve from where they are today I won’t be that happy. I’m doing my best to stay positive and patient. The worst part so far is the uncertainty of how things will end up.

Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve been through over the past few days…

Day 1 – Surgery
The surgery itself took only about 5 minutes. Each eye was under the laser for about 1-2 minutes. They gave me a Valium to relax completely numbed my eyes before I went into surgery. The laser procedure was straightforward – they held open my eyelids and I had to look at a dot of light while the laser did its thing. Because I had PRK (different than LASIK because there is no flap) they put on a contact lens to act as a bandage. I went home and slept okay that day, but had to get up every hour for my drop regimen.

Thursday night thing didn’t go as well. My left contact lens dried out which they warned me might happen. From 2am until I could get to the doctor at 9am the discomfort and pain was quite bad. This was the peak of the pain and discomfort and after this things were fairly comfortable (considering my eyes were just reshaped).

Day 2 though 4 – Recovery
With a new contact lens in place, I spent the next 18 hours in bed. I hadn’t slept much on Thursday night and I think being on Percocet caught up with me. At times I could see decently. Showering Friday helped revitalize me and I even socialized at the cocktail party my roommates were having in our apartment. Taking Percocet is a good substitute for a few drinks. I was able to pass some time reading (slow going) and watching movies. I watched movies I had seen because I couldn’t see very well. Sunday, my vision seemed to regress a bit – things are hazier than they were the past few days. From what I’ve read this is not unexpected; it’s common that things get worse before they get better.

Day 5 – Checkup
Monday morning I was anticipating being able to drive to the doctor and possibly work a half-day. My great friend Sarah was nice enough to drive to because I still wasn’t able to see very well. At the doctor, we removed the contact lenses and tested my vision. It came in at 20/60 which isn’t very good and at this point I wasn’t feeling very enthusiastic about how my vision is progressing. My vision is generally blurry for things that are far away but I can now see a computer, albeit not very well. Since I didn’t have much to do, I spent a lot of time worrying about how bad my vision was at this point.

Day 6 – Still Unsure
No major vision improvements, but light halos and sensitivity are markedly better. Glare and halos are still present and significant, but they seemed to dominate my vision before. There is a general blurriness and loss of contrast. Black things look grey and everything seems to have a superfine screen over it, like a subtle white sparkle to it.

I drove to work today, although I wasn’t really cleared to do so. It’s a familiar route I didn’t have any trouble. Being at work was a nice change to get my mind off of things. I was going batty stuck in my apartment. Tonight I’m going to stay at my friend’s house and I can get rides to and from work.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that things improve more tomorrow.

I’ve made major progress on Knight Notes but still there is more I want to do. I setup a new site on my friend’s server so we are using NoIP to get a relatively decent domain name. The performance leaves a lot to be desired so I am considering an external host.

Content wise I’ve migrated all of my posts from Blogger to the new site which uses Wordpress. With some customizing, I hope to get a look I want and mix blog posts with static pages. These items are still on my list:

• More menu options
• Select a better font and size
• Customize look of static pages so they don’t look like blog posts
• Search box for entire site or just blog posts
• Page view counters
• Photo album using the Flickr API or a plugin

I’ve also done quite a bit of tweaking to the Wordpress theme for this blog. My plan is to have a blog-centric website with posts in different categories but also have static pages about me. So far, I think Wordpress is excellent blog software. It is very customizable, and best of all it’s free! I haven’t decided if I want to upgrade to 2.0 yet, it seems many people aren’t happy with the changes. There are also no problems with the version I am running, so until I fully understand the changes I will probably stick with what I have.

The next step is to decide on an external host and possibly buy a domain name. For the time being, I am calling my site Knight Notes, but I’m hoping I think of something better. If you love or hate this name I’d like to hear you opinion. Comments on my site usability are also welcome.