Making Adjustments

I went to my one-day followup examination with Dr. Liu yesterday, and no problems were evident. I told him that my only complaint was about the protective eye goggles that I have to wear at night. He suggested cutting off the elastic and using surgical tape to position one goggle over my left eye. I tried it last night and got a much better night's sleep.

My other challenge has been working on the computer and reading at my desk. I tried popping out the left lens of my glasses, but the combination of ReZOOM in the left eye and glasses over the right eye was too distracting. The two eyes were sending different signals to my brain, because the images produced by glasses are smaller and somewhat distorted compared to images transmitted to the brain by an intraocular lens (IOL) like ReZOOM. It was like seeing double. I tried working without glasses, but the sharpness of my near vision was not good enough with one corrected eye and one uncorrected eye. Today I tried a new tactic: putting the left lens back in my glasses and covering it with a piece of cardboard cut to fit over the lens. I can wear the glasses to see with my right eye and give my left eye a rest. It works OK, but Tom keeps teasing me about looking like a pirate wearing an eye patch: "Ahoy, Matey! It's the one-eyed editor!"

At my followup appointment, Dr. Liu talked about the symptoms of retinal detachment: floaters, flashing lights, sudden changes in vision. I went home and Googled "detached retina." I learned that the risk of retinal detachment is much higher for very nearsighted people than for the general population: 1 in 20 lifetime risk versus 1 in 10,000. I'm focusing on the fact that 95% of highly nearsighted people DON'T experience retinal detachment, but if I do have symptoms I will seek treatment immediately.