I only widely (okay, via social media) announced that I’d be undergoing LASIK the day it happened..

Since it’s been done, the most questions I’ve received from friends and family aren’t about the procedure itself, but the healing and how they are now.

Please remember that everyone will react differently, and this is solely MY experience. For instance, I met a colleague last week saying that he had no light halos, but wasn’t able to really see at all for nearly 10 hours post-surgery. Very different from my healing, but his vision came out just great!

There are a number of known side effects that can occur, and they’re perfectly normal to have, and will likely go away over time. This is a huge thing I’ve made sure to keep in mind. Things will NOT be perfect out the gate, or even for a little bit after. But it’s NORMAL! If I take care of them properly, I know I’ll be just fine 🙂

My post-surgery regimen consisted of the following:

• Wear sunglasses while outdoors for 3 months
• Wear the provided lightweight goggles for showering and sleeping for 3 days
• One set of drops 3x/day for 3 days
• Two other sets of drops 3x/day for 7 days
• Preservative-free artificial tears for dryness as needed
• No swimming or sports for 3 weeks; Use eye protection after the 3 weeks.
• No running/biking/strength training for 2 weeks (Wahhhhh)
• No rubbing eyes or squeezing them closed

Since I’m 2 weeks into healing, my drops regimen is complete and I just use the artificial tears as needed. I still have light halos and need to wear sunglasses. Other than being careful driving at night, being mindful in general and making sure I don’t forget my sunglasses, it’s pretty low maintenance!

Sunglasses

It was explained to me that protection from the sun’s UV rays is extremely important for healing! UV rays, as we know, are quite damaging. This is why we wear sunscreen.. To protect our skin cells from sunburn!

For the eyes, sunglasses do the trick. UV rays can harm your cells and increase the chance of scarring. I’m pretty sure that one DOES NOT WANT SCARRING ON THE EYEBALLS. So, I’m playing it super duper safe here and wearing them anytime the sun’s out and I’m out, even if it’s cloudy. Of course, not when it’s dangerously dark with em on.

I picked out a cute, cheap pair to start with, and Justin made sure they looked fine on me. They’re comfortable on me, have really good coverage, are polarized and offer 100% UV protection. Perhaps later, I’ll find a nice, quality pair instead of cute, cheap ones. Or not. Cuz these really do the job well, and I’m cheap frugal.

I’ve never needed sunglasses simply because I never been able to wear them with my regular glasses. Sunglasses are such a new concept to me! Regular glasses never left my face, so I’ve got a higher chance of losing these since I take them off.

To make sure I keep them with me at all times, I made a little sunglasses bag with some scrap fabric I had. I kept my drops (when I still needed them) and an extra tissue in the bottom, and I even put in a small pocket to store the artificial tears since they’re good to keep around.

Dryness

One of the first things I noticed was the increased dryness. I felt like I had to use the artificial tears multiple times per day to have them feel normal. The dryness decreased dramatically after the 4th day. I went from lots of times per day to just a few times per day. After about a week and a half, it was closer to once per day.

Yesterday and today, I haven’t needed them at all! I keep them with me in case I do need them. Plus, I have that little pocket in my sunglasses bag. It’s cute, okay?!

Light Halos and Light Sensitivity

I’ve read that light halos can last up to a few months, and I look forward to the night/morning that I look at my FitBit screen and DON’T see the cloudy halo. I can’t find a good photo on the internet of how it is for me, but I compare seeing light halos to seeing the moon on a slightly foggy night. You see the moon clearly, but it has a little cloud of light around it. I do not see a distinct circle at the outside of the cloud like some of the internet photos do. I can also pretty much see the shape of the light itself.

They can be kind of annoying and interfere with more than I realized.

The halos are more prevalent when it’s something light against something dark. It also happens, however, when you have something dark surrounded by something much lighter. Not necessarily brighter. This is the more annoying kind because the halo part kinda starts interfering with the dark stuff I’m trying to focus on.

For a while, I was thinking the vision clarity hadn’t settled in (which it probably hasn’t), but I realized that it’s the halos making darer things appear more blurry. The lighter things seem, the more halos there are.

It took me a while to realize that my eyes are more light sensitive now. I don’t know if this is is permanent or not, but it’s tolerable. Not at all like getting my pupils dilated that one time! Sometimes I have trouble transitioning from primarily light environments to darker ones. Like going from outside to inside. When I do this, the halos around the highlights seem bigger and my vision seems “worse” until I get used to it.

Again, I didn’t realize how much the halos were the culprit of the unclarity until I put my sunglasses on while in front of my computer at work. The dark text on the light screen was getting eaten by the cloudies! It really helped with the eye strain I was starting to feel. My coworkers know what’s going on, but I still felt the need to explain why I was wearing sunglasses at my desk. (Why am I so self-conscious??)

My first day back at work (4 days after surgery), my eyes felt so strained and it wasn’t terribly pleasant. I’ve had a couple days good and a couple days sub-par. But I realized that when I put my sunglasses on, everything turned much sharper, and I realized what was happening.

I now keep a pair of swag sunglasses, the kind that end up being given away for free as promo items, at my desk. They’re not polarized so they don’t mess with the LCD screens. I love rainbows and all, but not those ones! I still have a little bit of halo-ing, with sunglasses, but they’re drastically reduced.

Weird Effects I Wasn’t Expecting

These aren’t medically wrong things or anything. Just some life adjustments and differences I either didn’t expect or appreciate more than someone who might be used to having normal vision or contacts.

With all the drops I needed to use, plus not being allowed to rub my eyes, I found that I really annoyed that I couldn’t effectively clean my eyelashes! The drops would stick there and just dry because I didn’t want to risk rubbing or poking my eyes, even through my eyelid.

Things within up to about 3 ft of my face appear larger than they did when I wore glasses. Coins on the table look bigger. No, that’s a nickel, not a quarter (darn!). Food portions look huge!! I keep having to ask Justin if [this] is bigger than normal or if it’s just my vision. Insert kind of dirty joke here.

I wonder if people think it’s weird I’m wearing sunglasses when it’s cloudy and not particularly bright out. I don’t want to be judged as one of *those* people who can’t handle the day because they made less-than-good decisions the night before 😉

Seeing in the shower is AWESOME!! I can tell the shampoo bottle from the conditioner bottle without bringing them up to 4″ from my face. Objects in the shower have real SHAPES! The shower curtain, shower head, soap, bottles, drain, the tub faucet, etc.. They’re not just oddly shaped blobs!

I can read in bed, on my side, without threatening to smash my glasses and/or face into my glasses!

When things aren’t super clear, I’ll still try to move or adjust my now non-existent glasses.. And shamefully shake my head at myself for doing so. After reading in bed, sometimes I’ll even attempt to take them off. Only to find that they’re not there.

On particularly less good days (I don’t want to call them ‘bad’ because they’re not bad. They’re really just less good), my brain just feels like I can’t see because I’m not wearing glasses. Except I CAN see.. AND I’m not wearing glasses. This one is hard to explain. Maybe my brain is just tricked into not seeing well when I’m not wearing glasses? 23 years of association there, I suppose.

This probably goes with the objects by face are smaller than they appear thing, but I feel like things end up being a lot closer to my face than before. Especially during the first week, I developed a heightened fear or jabbing myself in the eye. I never came that close before with glasses, so it shouldn’t be different without. I think I’m just extra paranoid of ruining all the work I just had done.

Stuff I Look Forward to Doing Without Glasses

• Seeing in the shower
• Amusement park rides! I’ll be able to see where I’m going when rolling on a coaster around at 30-60mph!
• Seeing at water parks
• Use sunglasses
• Using my DSLR’s viewfinder
• Not stabbing people or my own eyes when hugging them
• Swimming and being able to see and/or not risk losing my glasses

Well, that’s all I can think of for now! I’m sure I’ll add more as I think of them 🙂