NOW we're getting somewhere

I woke up this morning and my eyeballs were MUCH clearer. I could actually see the clock from across the room.

I don't know why that's important, but I'm sure it will come in handy someday.

I am noticing that as my eyes get tired (which is pretty quick right now), they get blurrier. But I feel encouraged today that this whole LASIK thing was actually a good idea.

I'm not gonna lie. Yesterday I was pretty apprehensive that I would be mediocrely blind for the rest of my entire life. Especially after this woman came out of her follow-up appointment telling everyone in the room that she could read all of the eye charts with no problem and that everything was awesome.

My immediate thought was, "What is wrong with my eyeballs??? This whole thing is a failure!!! I just want to LIVE!"

Sometimes I leap to the dramatic. But usually just in my head.

And I'm not going to lie, I wanted my eyeballs to win. But that lady totally won in being able to see better than me, faster than me.

I hate her.

Here are some of the highs and lows so far, as of Day Two after my surgery:

• It really doesn't hurt. Seriously. No lie. The part where they put this suction thing on your eye and everything goes black, then they cut the flap - that part is a little uncomfortable. And weird, since, well, everything goes BLACK for about 15 seconds. But honestly, nothing about this has hurt.
  
• That's not to say it isn't a bit uncomfortable at times. My eyes are a little scratchy and dry, but really no more so than on an average day of working 11 hours and staring at my computer screen for 10.5 of those 11 hours. Considering I had laser beams shot at my eyeballs, they don't feel too bad.
  
• Drops. I'm not gonna lie, this whole thing involves a LOT of drops. Prior to this whole surgery thing, I was anti-drops. However, now that I understand how dry the eyeballs can get after the LASIK, I might be a bit of a drops junkie. The artificial tears are genius. And I just kind of pour then all over my face, and eventually some of them get in my eyeballs. It's my own special technique.
• Eye Boogers and/or Goop. I'm not gonna lie, there is a lot of eye goop involved here. What with the antibiotic drops and the nighttime eye gel, it all adds up in your eyeball. And they don't let you clean it out for the first seven days. It's pretty grody. Until further notice, everyone has intructions not to look at my eyes.
  
• My skin looks fantastic. The antibiotic drops (that sometimes tend to run down my face when I miss my eyeballs) are doing wonders for my skin. It is so clear. Which is nice, since my eyeballs are full of goop. Hopefully the clear glow of my skin will distract everyone from the layers of goop coating my eyeballs.
  
• But, I have to wear these awesome goggles. Every time I step outside, I'm supposed to wear my awesome goggles. Every time I bathe, I have to wear the awesome goggles. Get the mail? Wear the goggles. Go to Target? Wear the goggles. Take a shower? Wear the goggles. The good thing about the goggles is that they cover up the eye goop. The bad thing is that they make me look like an aged reject from the swim team. Or a superhero. I'll go with superhero. Unless I decide to go everywhere in my swimsuit. Or maybe that should be my superhero outfit . . .
• The tape, Dear God, the tape! At night, for sleeping, I have to tape these fantastic shields to my face to cover my eyeballs. This is to keep me (or the monsters in my room at night) from poking my eyeballs during the night. The tape that keeps these wonderful things on my face is probably the stickiest thing I have ever experienced in my life. I've got two nights of tape residue build-up on my face. It just doesn't come off. Which means other fun things (like lint and hair) now stick to my face.
  

I'm not going to lie. I am so sexy right now, you would not even believe it.

It is a bit frustrating that the clarity is a progressive feature. It's not immediate. You don't leave the surgery able to see 20/20. After a week of already seeing blurry because of having to wear my glasses, at this point you just want to be able to see perfectly.

But, it is encouraging that I can tell that I'm gradually seeing clearer. It fluctuates, clearer sometimes, then blurry as my eyes get tired. But when I woke up this morning and had about an hour of seeing at least as well as I was ever able to see with my contacts, I realized that this is a really amazing thing going on with my eyeballs.

The moments when I am frustrated, I just say to myself, "Tyrant, you did not have to put contacts in this morning, and your glasses are sitting on the coffee table. You may not be able to see the subtitles on your TV, but you aren't running into walls and furniture, either. Suck it up."

It's tough love.

C.T.