| ... three months later...
Sorry for the umm.. small lapse in posts.
The reason for my brief return to the xanga world is this: I'm bored out of my freaking mind.
I had LASEK eye surgery a week ago. LASEK is similar to the LASIK surgery that you are probably more familiar with. However, LASEK (pronounced "lay-seek") is a blade-less procedure which is necessary for people with incredibly crappy vision (like myself).
Blade-less sounds better, right? Unfortunately, the nice folks at the Carter Eye Center made me very aware of the fact that it takes much longer to heal and is much more painful. They did, however, equip me with a delightful pain killer for the first few days. For that, I was grateful.
I think it's funny that every time I mention how horrible my vision is, people say, "yeah, mine's terrible too," or even "I bet mine's worse!" Now, my friends, I have proof that my vision is (was) worse than yours. Dr. Carter, my surgeon, informed me moments before my operation, that my vision was in the worst 1% of all prescriptions. To further his point, he stated, "so in other words, if I looked at one hundred prescriptions, yours would be the worst." Thanks, Dr. Carter. That is a comforting thought to have spinning though my mind as I make my way to the "valium room" and attempt to relax. (The valium room was pretty sweet. I could use one of those rooms in my home.) Anyway, I'm getting off track...
LASEK uses some sort of chemical abrasion (as I understand it) to remove the top layer of corneal tissue rather than using a blade to create a "corneal flap." Apparently, when your vision is as crappy as mine, your cornea is too thin to risk using a blade. After removing the top layer of tissue, Dr. Carter then uses the excimer laser to reshape the cornea and correct your "refractive error." After all of the reshaping is done, he places a bandage contact lens (affectionately called a "BCL") on each of your eyes.
Ultimately, these piece-of-crap BCL's are the reason for my immense boredom. They must stay on my eyes for a period of 7-10 days, or until my eyes completely heal. I'm required to use a series of eye drops as well, and the BCL's act like a sponge, soaking up all of the eye drops (including my favorite drop, a milky white nasty one, which I am convinced drains down through my eyes into my nasal cavity and throat and tastes revolting). Anyway, the BCL's are so darn foggy from all of the eye drops, that it feels like I'm looking through a piece of wax paper.
As you can imagine, the wax paper effect has prevented me from several of my normal activities... like WORK and DRIVING. I've had to take 6 days off of work so far. (I was not expecting this AT ALL.) Time off work sounds kinda cool, except that it's very difficult to enjoy time off at home when you can't even read, watch tv, or play on the computer. (Right now, my face is approximately six inches from the computer screen, and I'm straining my eyes rather intensely...) My saving grace has been books on tape (cd). My favorite one so far has been a Sandra Brown romance novel called "Envy." There are a couple of steamy scenes, but it loses a little of it's effect when the guy reading the book is a total dork and does the voices completely wrong. Sigh...
To make a long story even longer, I go back to the Carter Eye Center tomorrow, and I'm incredibly hopeful that they will finally remove those craptacular contacts from my eyes. (I went in for an appointment yesterday, and was informed that my eyes were 70% healed, and that I would have to wait a few more days.)
Ok, I think I'm getting a headache from all of this eye strain, and I wouldn't want to impede the healing process.
I have a sneaking suspicion that very few of you will read this post, seeing as how I haven't made one in months, and most of you have probably given up on me. If you do read it, however, please take pity on me and leave me some e-loving. |
