Once again, tons of details, mostly for my real-life friends.

Probably the worst thing about these eye surgeries so far was these four days before the second surgery when I had to take my right contact lense out. I asked my doctor whether it will make any sense to take out one of my -14 lenses and put my -2.75 in the left eye, and she shook her head and said I wouldn’t be able to see anything. So I had to survive with one eye.

For some reason, when I was talking to the clinic staff in the fall, I believed them when they told me that I would be fine with one eye for two weeks “because people use one eye most of the time anyway.” I should have been skeptical since by then, I already knew they do not understand the severity of my situation, but for some reason, I believed them.

On Tuesday, I had my second (right) eye operated. This time my surgery was very early in the day (we had to be there at 8-15 AM) and overall went much better than the first one. Since I mentioned to Vlad that I’d experienced some pain during the first surgery (and the only reason I’ve said it was because of my known high pain tolerance level), Vlad made sure everybody knew about that. He mentioned it to each of the nurses who appeared by me, and to the surgeon. They ave me more local anesthesia, and not only ai had virtually no pain at that time, but I also had fewer effects when it started to wear off in the afternoon.

The fog started to disappear earlier, and I had less “bloody spots” during the first two days.
I ended up being again about -3, which was expected, even with the different lens types.
That was after the surgery that we had ice-cream instead of lunch, and I got more treats from Vlad today.

This morning I realized that the surgeon’s mark was still on my forehead 🙂

On the topic of doctors’ orders for before/after surgery, I’ve realized that it is extremely difficult to follow the instructions when you have no idea what’s the underlying reason for these do’s and dont’s. I know that sometimes doctors are annoyed with all these questions, but not understanding the reasons produce even ore questions :).

For example, I was given the list of eye drops with a rather complex schedule of how many times a day they should be inserted, depending on what’s the week after surgery. Plus, there were instructions not to exceed the dose and what to do if you miss the dose.

Only when I got the second package from the pharmacy, each of them had a half-page of explanation in large print :), I knew which of them is antibiotic, with is anti-inflammatory, so you can at least get an idea of how important/not important is to keep the schedule. And it was only on Tuesday that my eye doctor explained to me why the anti-inflammation drops dosage has to be reduced gradually.

Or take this no-bend/no-lift over 10 pounds for a week. And what happens after one week? All of a sudden, you can lift as much as you want? What about the bodyweight exercises? How do they count? Or when I asked about yoga, they said – OK. But yoga poses may be so different! Some include mild bending, some – mode bending. What about a shoulder stand? Or a headstand? Also, you need to know what’s the average level of activity of this particular person, because each body would react differently to the same level of physical activity. You need to know what exactly is important for the operated eye to make a better judgment of what you can or can’t do. Otherwise, you would end up asking about each individual move. Or will do something crazy 🙂

So I like it when I can get explanations. My doctor explained to me that vision is changing after the surgery because the inflammation goes down. Which may be obvious, but I didn’t think about it!
Now I am more informed, but now, surgery number two is coming. And it will bring new challenges:)