It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly seven weeks since my eyes were zapped. Time has flown! 

Overall, my vision is pretty solid most of the time. Mornings are still a bit blurry—likely due to dryness—but things usually clear up as the day goes on. For example, it’s fuzzy when I hop on the bus, but by the time I get to work, I’m functioning just fine.The biggest surprise? My left eye is outperforming my right—which is wild because my right eye was doing great early on. In fact, it seems like my right eye has regressed a bit. How does that even happen?

 

On the morning of my 1-month post-op appointment (technically week 5), I noticed street signs looked blurry during my drive. I figured it was just a slow start to the day and loaded up on rewetting drops, hoping for improvement. Unfortunately, it didn’t help. At the appointment, they found significant ghosting/double vision in my right eye—something I hadn’t experienced since the first few days post-surgery. Meanwhile, my left eye was shining at 20/20. The doctor wasn’t sure what caused the sudden change but suspected it might be due to lack of sleep. I’d had bronchitis earlier that week and was on steroids, which definitely messed with my sleep. Thankfully, everything else looked good, and I got the green light to start weaning off the steroid drops. 🙌 Fingers crossed that helps my right eye bounce back.

 

On the bright side, I’ve been able to reduce the zoom on my computer back to 125%, and I’m working comfortably again. My phone is also back to normal—though I occasionally bump up the text size and bold it, I no longer need the absurdly large fonts.

 

A couple of weekends ago, we went on a trip, and it was amazing not having to pack glasses, backup contacts, or solution. Just grab the drops and go. So freeing!

 

I still catch myself thinking, “I need to take out my contacts,” every night. Old habits die hard. Eric’s had to remind me a few times—“You don’t wear contacts anymore!” 😂

 

Despite my complaints about the right eye, it’s actually better for close-up vision, so maybe that’s my trade-off now.

All in all, I’m really happy I had the surgery. It’s been a journey, but I’m grateful for the progress and excited for what’s ahead.

 

On September 19th, on our way to Wisconsin, a car ran a stop sign and T-boned us near Goodhue, MN. We were going 55 mph. Eric put the car in the ditch. We didn't flip, we didn't spin, we just stopped. All the air bags deployed and we ended up with just bruises, burns and lacerations. But we walked away...alive. The Murano is totaled. I'm so sad and mourning the loss of my most favorite car I ever owned. 

We are very grateful that Linda could come immediately to pick us up. We were half way between home and Mike and Linda's house so we told her to just take us to their house and continue our weekend that we had planned. 

After a week of being down a car, we bought a 2026 Nissan Rogue to replace the Murano. It is a very pretty blue. I told Eric I can't have another red car right now because of PTSD. The new Muranos are not as cool as my old red potato baby. 

Day 13 - First day back in the office. Thankfully I don't have light sensitivity as our office is very bright with lots of windows. However my vision is so blurry again. ARGH!  Trying to work in the office is very frustrating. My vision is crap. I bought a pair of +1.25 reading glasses so I can see my work emails. But I try not to use them because I'm not sure if that will screw up my recovery. I'm constantly using my drops. And for about 30 seconds after I put them in, I have amazing vision. If my vision ends up like that all the time, I will be happy. I'm just not there yet.

I went for my first walk/run since surgery and it went well. I have starburst/halos but that isn't anything new, I had them before surgery. The weird thing is they aren't rainbow anymore. I miss the rainbow halos. I'm still not technically cleared to run but I'm so slow...

Day 14 - I had perfect vision at 2:45 am. I was happy!  But I fell back to sleep and woke up in the same spot I was yesterday. WHY??   Don't get me wrong, my vision is WAY better than it was before surgery. I can see the TV very well and can function for the most part but looking at my work emails is such a struggle. I know this is a long recovery but... I'M IMPATIENT!

As of right now, my right eye is very good and my left eye is SO bad. I've been having many issues with my left eye so I'm not surprise. It is common for one eye to be lagging behind. But this is so far behind that I end up closing it a lot. 

Minnesota State Fair

Eric, DJ and I played hooky on Monday to attend the Minnesota State fair also known as the Great Minnesota get together. 

We started the day early by hopping on a standing-room only bus from the Shakopee transit station. Surprisingly it only took us about 35 minutes to get to the fairgrounds. We got to the fair just before 10am and it was already busy!

Our first stop was Sweet Martha’s cookies and we walked a couple blocks over to the all you can drink milk stand for a great breakfast to start our day.

We ventured across the street to the miracle of birth barn, where we saw baby calves and sheep, and chickens and piggies. They’re also so cute.

After that, we went into the arena where we saw dogs hurting sheep it was pretty cool to see.

We stopped at the pork chop stand so Eric could get his annual pork chop on a stick before we headed to see the 34th infantry Red Bull band playing at the bandshell formerly known as Leinie’s Lodge.

We wandered through the creative arts building to see amazing quilts in art crafts, and went into the education building where we spun the wheels a mini games to win fabulous “free” prizes. We also stopped at the Eco center where we learned about shingles that are now made out of solar panels as well as reuse renew, blah blah blah.

One of our annual stops is to the John Deere made ice cream because the blue ribbon book has a coupon for it this year we got strawberry and as usual, it’s delicious.

Next, it was a stop at the Hamline diner, which has been at the state fair since the 1890s Eric always gets the chicken dinner which was not as good as usual but still pretty good.

We stopped at the University of Minnesota building to see the ax that we won when we beat the badgers last year. Go gophers.

The main reason we went to the fair on Monday is so we can get signatures from some of our favorite Minnesota loon players. Today was Dayne  St Clair and Wil Trapp. Alec loves St Clair, our goalkeeper, so we bought a pair of goalie gloves the night before and had him sign them. He even personalized it with Alec’s name!

Next step was the Horticulture building where saw beautiful flower bouquets, Christmas tree trees and very large vegetables. This year‘s largest pumpkin weighed 1511 pounds!

DJ and Eric got ice cream at the Dairy booth and we saw the butter sculptures of the Princess K of the Milky Way princesses.

We looked at all the Minnesota fish at the DNR pond and I finally got my corn on the cob. 

The last stop of our day was over to Lulu‘s where I got deep fried ranch dressing. It wasn’t as good as last year’s. I don’t think I’ll get it again.

Overall, it was a great day at the fair. The weather was beautiful. It never really got above 72°. It was sunny and comfortable. Per usual, we were there on a record-breaking day. Over 145,000 people visited making it largest first Monday attendance. 

Day 11 - drove to my pedicure about 15 minutes away and I had the best vision but I had to concentrate so hard on all street signs. Later I rode in the car and the signs were blurry again.

Day 12 - all day walked around the MN State Fair in very sunny conditions. I wore my sunglasses and floppy hat. I do not have light sensitivity anymore. I had a great day. I still have a desire to remove my nonexistent contacts every evening.

Day 4 - my light sensitivity is gone! I even ventured out during the day to meet my newest great niece. I still can’t see very well.

Day 6 - contact taken out and vision got worse.

Day 7 - my vision is worse than it was yesterday. I am trying to work today with my computer screen at 150% and it’s so blurry. Close is blurry, far is blurry, everything is blurry and I’m very frustrated.

Day 8 - So I can’t see up close very well (so work is hard) and I can’t see distance very well (so not comfortable driving) but the TV is crystal clear…so I got that going for me.🤪😂

Day 9 - my vision is blurry in the morning and looking at my phone is hard. But eventually I can see my phone just fine. The hardest part for me is the desire to take out my contacts at night which aren’t there. I’m assuming that is my eyes being tired.

I woke up at 6 AM and cannot see. Talk about frustrating! I cannot see anything. It’s so blurry. I know this is the process, but I’m super frustrated. I made a mistake on day two of changing the text on my phone back to somewhat normal size because I could see it just fine. Well this morning I was struggling to figure out how to make the text large again silly me, thinking I was on my way to recovery.

My eyes don’t hurt too bad today just a little tender, but I can keep them open. The other annoying thing is my eyelashes keep sticking together so every time I wake up, I have to tug a little bit at my cheek to get my eyes to open. All these drops are wrecking my eyelashes.

Day 3.5 - eyesight is still blurry and my left eye still hurts. It feels like there’s something in there that’s scratching my eye, but I can’t get it out. I’ve been using a ton of drops and ice wrap to give me some soothing pain but only last for a few seconds.

My left eye is still really bugging me. It feels like a very dirty contact that I wish I could take out, but unfortunately, I can’t. The ghosting is so bad that I tried to watch a soccer game and ended up seeing two referees and 44 players. It was very frustrating, but at least our team won.

Hopefully I could see better soon.

I woke up at 5 am with stabbing and searing pain in my left eye. I started my drops at 4 AM and eventually I fell back to sleep for another three hours. I told the doctor about that and he’s not sure why because when he looked at my eyes at my post op appointment everything was looking great and he told me my vision was a blurry 20/20 in my right eye and 20/25 in my left eye. I could see really close print as well so that was good. The doctor told me that I was ahead of the curve and that my cornea layer had healed 50%. I went home and the rest of the day was agony. I was in so much pain. My eyes hurt so bad and my vision was getting worse and worse. I alternate between Tylenol and Advil, the rest of the day and took a ton of rewetting drops. I finally fell asleep but kept waking up every hour.

Pre-surgery contact prescription was:

OD (Right eye) -6.00, Cyl -1.25, Axis 20 OS (Left eye) -7.00, Cyl -1,75, Axis 160

The numbing drops didn’t seem to work. I seriously think I could feel the whole thing. They use a brush, almost like a toothbrush, to clean my cornea and then they took the top layer off. Next they did the laser. It wasn't painful but it smelled so bad! They washed my eyes with some drop solution, placed a non-scarring piece my eye for 30 seconds. My visions went white. They took that off and put on the bandage contact lens. When I sat up, I could see pretty good.

I went home and I was in excruciating pain even though they gave me more numbing drops. The Valium did not work at all. When I got home I took some NyQuil as the doctor recommended and tried to take a nap. I never could fall asleep. For the first four hours all I wanted to do was pull out my eyeballs.

Then Eric gave me a Mountain Dew and a Jimmy John’s sandwich and I tell you the truth when I say Mountain Dew is the elixir of life because all of a sudden my pain went away. I was amazed at how well I could see. Eric was watching TV and I occasionally opened my eyes and I could see fine print on the TV. I was really excited.

Reba and Finn are as cute as ever. They recently turned 5. Reba is super needy. Finn is becoming grumpy. They sleep together, clean each other all the time and eventually the cleaning become fight club. haha. 

Also I saw some pretty Tiger Lilies on our walk along the river. 

Storms came through this morning and our neighbor lost his tree. When we came home from work, the tree was cleaned up and he had the wood out on the curb for free. I snagged some firewood for our next fire.