I’ll keep it brief and summarize my experience over the past 3 weeks. If you read my initial post you know that I had moderate Hyperopia (farsightedness) plus astigmatism that I wanted to get corrected.

First week post-op (Day 1-7)

The first week was sorta of an interesting roller-coaster ride. The first day post-op I woke up and I could see very clearly on my right eye but my left was still hazy. At the doctor’s office my vision was 20/20 on my right but 20/40 on my left. The doctor said I had inflammation and to come back a week later to make sure it comes down.

During days 2-4 my left eye did not really improve and I was starting to get worried my left eye would be screwed for life. I was using all the drops prescribed by the doctor (steroid drops, plus lubricating drops) on both my eyes and while my right eye was perfect the quality of vision on my left eye during this period was far worse than before the procedure.

Day 5 was an interesting day, each day after the surgery so far my eyes would be extremely dry in the morning and vision on my right eye would not clear up until later in the day. However, the fifth day was different for my left eye although in the morning the quality of vision sucked somehow around 3PM both my eyes seemed to have found “zen” if you will – never seen clearer on both my eyes. While covering my right (20/20 eye) I noticed that words were not as blurry as before and I could actually read better than before… so this made be take a breather, maybe the doctor was right, patience and the vision will stabilize overtime.

For days 6-7, vision fluctuated during the day for both eyes but it wasn’t as clear as day 5th above for some reason.

Second and third week post-op (Day 8-21)

At my one-week appointment (Day 8), the doctor said my left eye inflammation was coming down to just keep applying lubricating drops but stop using steroid drops. That expect my vision to continue to fluctuate and that final results are coming soon, he wants to see me again around week 6 post-op.

My vision has definitely gotten better the more time goes by, the random period of times during the day where I feel like my vision is extremely clear are happening more often. It is true that every morning I have woken up my eyes are extremely dry and that my vision in the morning is not the best, if I have one of those extremely shitty days where morning vision totally sucks and can barely look at the computer screen I try to stay away for an hour or two until it stabilizes which it usually does…. I can still read emails if I really want to.

Night vision is fine if you don’t mind glare from the cars, this is an expected thing with LASIK and most report the glare going away around month 3 to 6, so time will tell. I really don’t have halos but that may be thanks to the Excimer laser I decided to use (AMARIS 1050RS).

I’ll provide another update when I get some time or if something shocking happens. Really don’t miss my glasses when working and those moments in the day where my vision in both my eyes feel extremely sharp is encouraging.

Why Mexico?

Based on the technology advantages of the AMARIS 1050RS laser system that is widely available in Europe, Latin America, Canada but not in the United States I ended up deciding to get my vision corrected using the latest technology.

The Doctor & Clinic

After some research I found a clinic in Tijuana (Clinica de Ojos de Tijuana) which is about 3 hour drive from Los Angeles, the clinic’s history spans almost 30 years and it is a family business started by Enrique Rodriguez who still works there as a director and doctor.

His son Juan Pablo Rodriguez is my doctor who performed my surgery this past Friday, May 5th on both my eyes.

The day of the surgery

As I showed up for my appointment and went into the prep room, the doctor was already on the surgery room and got started with a few other patients. I was joining about 8 more people that were waiting to get LASIK done that same day. Overall each of us took about 5-10 minutes for both eyes each, you were given a pill to calm your nerves and the nurses cleaned your eyes and face with alcohol before you sat on the laser machine.

The procedure & my experience under the laser

Once it was my turn I was escorted into the surgery room, lay myself on the table with the laser on top of my face. The doctor covers one of your eyes while preparing the second eye for surgery, he places some eye drops and uses a tool to keep your eye from blinking. Once you are prepped, he cuts open the flap in your eye which causes a few seconds of total darkness (kinda scary) once you regain your vision he asks you to look at the blinking green light and try to focus on it until the laser finishes the correction.

My first eye (right) was not a problem and the procedure seems to have gone smoothly, on my second eye (left) I had the most astigmatism and correction but when he cut the flap open and I faced total darkness it took longer than my other eye for me to be able to see again so I kinda freaked out that I could not see where the green blinking light was at to focus. I was only able to focus on the green light for 4 seconds or so… technically the AMARIS 1050RS has 7 dimensional eye tracking technology and should have continued to correct my eye even if I wasn’t focusing steadily on the green light.

Once the procedure was completed on both my eyes (about 5-10 minutes), the doctor said it was over. You can barely see once you walk up from the machine, everything is blurry as if you were in a room full of fog, this is because the eye inflammation due to laser and flap. I was told that tomorrow when I came for my 24 hour post-op check up my vision should be mostly normal. To go home and rest in a dark room with my eyes shut as much as possible, avoid using electronics before the doctor said it was okay to do so. Read more on the next page.

Why are you writing this? You are not a doctor

I am strong believer in doing your own research before making any important decision and trust me LASIK (laser in situ keratomileusis) surgery can either change your life in the best case scenario or worst case you could end up blind. I am not a doctor but soon discovered that Hyperopia (farsightedness) combined with astigmatism is a complicated surgery that has a documented high number of regressions and actually worse outcomes than surgery for myopia (nearsightedness). So I have decided to put this together to share my findings and help you make an educated decision, you should do your own research and not take my word or anything I wrote here as medical advise.

Let’s review the core concepts

What is Hyperopia/Hypermetropia: It is a common type of eye refractive error (aka farsightedness) where distant objects may be seen more clearly than objects that are near. (read more facts about this from U.S. department of health)

What is Astigmatism: Astigmatism is a common type of refractive error. It is a condition in which the eye does not focus light evenly onto the retina, the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. (read more facts about this from U.S. department of health)

Reading your eye prescription you may have come across the following terms:

• OD = right eye (“oculus dexter” in latin)
• OS = left eye (“oculus sinister” in latin)
• SPHERE = This indicates the amount of lens power, measured in diopters (D), prescribed to correct nearsightedness or farsightedness. If the number appearing under this heading has a minus sign (–), you are nearsighted; if the number has a plus sign (+) or is not preceded by a plus sign or a minus sign, you are farsighted.
• CYL = This indicates the amount of lens power for astigmatism. If nothing appears in this column, either you have no astigmatism, or your astigmatism is so slight that it is not really necessary to correct it with your eyeglass lenses.
• AXIS = This describes the lens meridian that contains no cylinder power to correct astigmatism. Axis is a number between 1 to 180, 90 corresponds to the vertical meridian of the eye and 180 corresponds to the horizontal. If your prescription has CYL power it must also include an axis value.

A diopter (D) is a measure for the refractive (light-bending) power of a lens, Sphere and Cyl are measured in diopters for vision correction/prescription. To illustrate this better:
Some additional acronyms relevant to this topic and clinical trials of LASIK:

• UCVA = Uncorrected visual acuity (vision with no glasses or contacts)
• BSCVA = Best spectacle-corrected visual acuity (what’s the best results you can get when wearing eyeglasses or contacts)

Let’s talk about 20/20

You may have heard about having the perfect vision is to have 20/20, the fact is that there is actually better vision than 20/20. Some animals like eagle have five times better vision than humas, meaning they have 20/5 or 20/4 vision under ideal viewing conditions. But let’s not talk about eagles and talk about the numbers. Where the heck did 20/20 come from? The answer is the Snellen chart.

You may have seen this chart before at the DMV when you go get your drivers license. As long as you are able to read up until the line 8 on the chart above you would be considered to having 20/20 vision without need for glasses. If you can read the smaller lines at the bottom of that chart congratulations, you have better vision than most of us.

20/20 vision means that you are able to see the same line of letters at 20 feet that a person with normal vision sees at 20 feet (thus 20/20). Having 20/40 vision means you see at 20 feet what a person with normal vision sees at 40 feet.

Now that the core concepts are out the way, I will continue my LASIK discussion on the next page.