Eye surgery followup

I had my follow-up one week after surgery on my second eye today.  I could read the 20-20 line of the eye chart with difficulty and a few errors with my right eye, easily with my left eye.  I could read the 20-15 line with difficulty using both eyes.  So an excellent result! My experience matches the test--my distance vision is better than it was with glasses.  The doctor actually said "don't tell everyone that"--the point being they don't want people to be disappointed if they don't get quite as good a result.

They dilated my eyes to check the alignment of my lenses, which matters very much with the lenses that correct astigmatism.  As you would guess from the 20-20 vision, they said it was good.  Today is a very sunny day and my appointment was late morning, so there goes most of the afternoon

We discussed reading glasses and I learned a lot.  The ophthalmologist said my moderately near vision may continue to improve (actually my brain adapting) for six months.  But at my age (56), my eyes will now stay the same--I won't keep needing stronger and stronger reading glasses.  Apparently my starting with stronger reading glasses after surgery and then switching to weaker ones is common.  Part of it is the brain adapting, but part of it is settling on a reading distance.  When I held a book at the distance I was used to, I needed stronger reading glasses.  And the book also looked bigger--so much so that I wondered whether Newsweek had put out a special year end issue in tabloid size. That is because my glasses to correct for nearsightedness made everything smaller.  So I'm trying weaker reading glasses and holding my book further away--if nothing else it will be good for my posture.  The doctor said that another advantage to that approach is hopefully not needing separate computer glasses.  He wrote me a prescription if I want to get custom reading glasses: pl pl (plain glass) and then progressive to +225 for reading.

I asked about the instructions they gave me to continue the Bromday eye drops once a day for five weeks.  When I looked them up online, the FDA information said there were greater risks if continued longer than two weeks.  The doctor said that was because of a problem years ago with one generic for a different but closely-related medication.  He said using them for 5 weeks reduces the risk of retinal inflamation.  Since retinal detachment is the key (though very unlikely) risk of this surgery for me, I was convinced.

Posts in this series (reverse chronological order):
Eye Surgery Follow-up
Brain Adjustment
Second Vision Correction Surgery
The Week Between Surgeries
Day after Surgery
First Surgery
Refractive Lens Exchange