Day 1

No pain, but feels a little like something is under the contacts, especially the right eye.  The drops helped with the sensation.  Wow, I can see, don't have to squint like crazy to just see something right in front of me.  It's great that I can see across the room. 

First follow up appointment today.  Vision check was 20/70 right eye, 20/60 left eye but with pin holes 20/40 right eye and 20/30 left eye. So all in all, not bad.  Doc approved, no problem.

After, had lunch and ice cream with a friend and wandered around for a bit in the mall.  Feel a little light sensitive, otherwise no problem.  Had to keep reminding myself to put refresh eye drops in my eyes hourly so not to dry up. I wasn't sleepy at bedtime but could sleep, probably not deeply so I ended up taking tylenol pm to get me to sleep and not wake up in the middle of the night.

PRK Surgery

Today is the surgery.  And I'm post call, thankfully I was able to get some sleep throughout the night at the hospital so I was not completely exhausted, bleary eyed.

I took 1 valium as I arrived to the office then checked in and paid.  Then I was taken into their suite and was given a baggie of eye drops, lovely plastic sunglasses and sleep goggles and instructions. Lovely hairnet like cap placed and laid down on the surgical chair.  Numbing eye drops to each eye.  Right eye first, so a soft patch to left eye, then tape to protect the eyelashes and the eye lid spread to keep eye open to right.  The first I noticed was light sensitivity with the bright lights around the red/green laser area. Unfortunately, those bright lights are needed for the beginning during the cornea epithelium scraping. More drops are placed, some sharp looking thing picking and scarping, water to wash off, more scraping with a magnified glass and more water to wash off.  This part took at least 5 min and the laser itself was about a min. Then more water wash off, cleaning and finally the last set of eye drops and the contact bandage before patch goes on.  Then it's a repeat process for the left eye.  The whole process took about 30 min. After all was done, I could see but hazy/cloudy.  Sunglasses on once I left the suite.

For the rest of the day, pretty much slept on and off and continuous use of the eyedrops.  I didn't feel the pain that others have described. Everything is hazy and blurry and I had all my blinds pulled and kept my apartment fairly dark.  I put my audiobooks on my ipod to good use for the day.

The drops given:
Pink top: Prednisolone 1% - every hour for the first day, then 4x/day for 1 week, 3x/day for 2nd week, 2x/day for 3rd week, 1x/day for 4th week then stop
Beig top: Ciprofloxacin - 4x/day for 7days and done
Grey top: Diclofenac - 4 more times then stop
Refresh Plus: use as needed

Personal stock up and research additions:
Refresh Plus - stocked up from Costco, $19 for 100 vials, cheaper than Walgreen/CVS
Refresh PM - for night time to prevent dry eyes or stuck eyelids in the AM.
Humidifier - don't have one, so large bowl of water to allow for evaporation
Vit C/ Omega 3 - started about 2 weeks prior

Pre-Surgery Visit

I actually had the free consult at Cleveland Clinic about a year ago, April 2011, when I thought I should at least find out whether I'm a candidate for Lasik.  In my mind, I was only thinking about Lasik and didn't really think about other options.  The visit and exam were pretty thorough, took about 2 hours.  They checked my prescriptions and checked my cornea thickness with some form of mapping.  The results were that my left cornea was just under the limit for lasik and was about 10 microns too thin for it. My right cornea was ok.  Dr Kruger, my ophthalmologist, recommended PRK especially with my prescriptions and that in the long run, it might even be better.  I don't know much about PRK but understood from the appointment that it's longer process (takes at least 3 months to heal completely and up to 1 yr), may be more painful, scraping of cornea epithlieum instead of flap, but still done with customized wavefront laser and still will have dry eyes.  The total cost would be $3200 with the employee discount and I could use flex spending for it.

I did my own research on and off since.  In the beginning, I was kind of freaked out by other people's personal accounts on the internet.  There were lots of bad experiences especially people who had theirs done early 2000s.  They really put me off for for couple of months then researched again and found that it was not as scary.  So I finally decided that I'm going to do it and the question becomes when would be a good time with my residency rotation. I found a couple more recent personal accounts that were more helpful, in particular post op care. Through all the readings, I understand that my vision will not be absolutely perfect but I know that I can't wear glasses because it gives me headache from my nose up.  Contact lens were fine and I see starburst at night with them anyway since I don't have the astigmatism in them, so I'm used to the starburst look.  The only thing about contacts were that when I'm on call, I can't wear them and I have to look all over the place for my glasses if I get called when I'm napping.  I really just want to not wear glasses anymore.

Blog #1

Blog #2

I asked around as well, a couple people in my program has gotten PRK and their experiences were pretty similar to what I've read, a little painful, long time to clear vision and took up to a week off for recovery.  So I took 3 weekdays + weekend off before going back to work and just pray for the best that I will be able to function normal by day 6.

Surgery set for 3/6 and today was my official pre-op visit to finalize my cornea mapping and prescriptions.   It was more the similar exam as last year my prescriptions did not changed and had my eyes dilated for the laser wavefront mapping.  Got the scripts for valium and percocet and instructions.  I'm all set for surgery.

ENT Rotation

Today is the last day of ENT rotation, one of the intern rotation.  The rotation is not bad, it's split with airway clinic and inpatient consults.

The 2 weeks in clinic is busy in the sense that it's a long day.  Starts around 6:15a for morning rounds then clinic usually from 8a-4p then evening rounds after the ENT residents are done with their ORs. Days end sometime between 6-7p.  We don't do anything for rounds, just stand there and sometimes help with sutures removal or copy previous notes.  As for clinic, we do nasal fiberoptic scope for the larynx, so very similar to our fiberoptic intubation.  It was a good practice for our nasal fiberoptic intubation.

Then the next 2 weeks were on consult which we would just hang around from 7a-5p to help out with consults.  Most days we would get abou 2-3 consults and someday we were ignored cuz the resident in charge did want to give us any.  It was good time to get reading done.  I think I've gotten about 2/3 of Morgan & Mikhail done, but the question is more of how much will I retain for the ITE coming up.

New Year 2012

This year I decided to do something different.  I'm setting goals this year as a trial to see if it really help me to organize my life.  This is not to say that my life is a mess but I'm just trying to see if setting goals can become part of my life.

Goals:
1. spend some quiet time daily with the Lord
2. pick a church and go on average twice a month
3. lose 30lbs by end of year
4. spend more reading time for residency
5. call home more often

Let the New Year of 2012 begin!!

Christmas 2011

I got a suprising long weekend for the holiday than originally planned, but didn't find out early enough so that I could've bought tix to go home. Oh well.  So I ended up having Fri to Tuesday off.  I spent Friday grocery shopping for the Christmas dinner and boy were the lines there long and slow.  It seemed like everyone was there with a big basket full of food.  I didn't have that much so I stood in self check out line but the ladies checking out were really slow, it's almost like they didn't know how to use the machine. They kept having the help sign flashing and I think it took them 20min to finish from what I saw but they've  already finished 3/4 then.  Ridiculous.

On Saturday, Christmas Eve, I made the dinner. Menu was Slow cooker turkey, Mexican corn, green bean casserole and mashed potatoes.  Other people brought drinks and desserts.  It was good.  I would have to tweaked the green bean casserole for the next time and make less of mashed potatoes.  The Mexican corn was a keeper and that's the only new recipe for my experiment.  Nonetheless, my first Christmas dinner!


Spent the rest of Saturday chatting and watching TV with the girlfriend that stayed over.  All good times.

Sunday was Christmas and we had breakfast, eggnog waffle, then went to Parkside's service.  Made me realized how much I actually missed going to church.  It felt soothing to be there. There came home and had left over for lunch.

We did make plans to go to Crocker Park on Monday for lunch and shopping but come Monday, just didn't feel like it. I just felt like vegging out so I did for Monday and Tuesday.  It was a lot of time spent on my couch just chilling out and watching TV, saw a few Christmas movies.

Christmas Movies List:
Polar Express
Miracle of 34th Street
Home Alone series

Ca 1 year update

This is just a quick update of life in residency since July, starting my Ca 1 year.  This is the year where I'll start spending my time in the ORs.  It's been good so far, some routine cases and some crazier ones.  Calls have been good, busy during daytimes but question whether surgical teams really know the definition of emergency.  I've had a couple true emergency but most of the cases during weekend calls were not really emergency.  Definitely learned a little about other subspecialty areas that will get more in depth next year.

No complaints overall, enjoying my time being busy at times.  Only wish I could figure out reading daily after being exhausted from work and also squeezing time for exercising and doctors' appts.

Thanksgiving 2011

This year was very low-key. I spent it with a family that I met not too long ago and the wife, Melissa, is also my endocrinologist.  I didn't have to work the day of and had very light day before and after. We just had dinner and just chatted about random things.   Also got to play with their 2 little girls, absolutely adorable. They are definitely a family that I don't mind hanging out with again.  Dinner was actually yummy. They had their food delivered from a grocery store and all they did was heated up.  The cranberry sauce, mashed potato, turkey and stuffing were good.  Corn souffle was a maybe but the green bean was a no.  But it was still enjoyable cuz of the company.

The one thing I was happy was that I finally get to make another apple pie, except this time, I changed it to crumbled and used a combination of granny smith and fuji apples. It was yummy. Friends at dinner enjoyed it too. It wasn't too sweet but it definitely needed another apple in the mix.

Grand Cayman

Spent a week on the island.  It was my vacay before the dreary winter starts.  This was the end of the rainy season but before the tourist season.  It was as wonderful as I expected.  There were good and bad days.  The week started off rainy but we got good walks on the beach in, good time just reading and doing nothing but relaxing and getting re-acquainted with each other again.  The sunny days were spent on the beach, island tour and also sting ray city/sandbar with snorkeling.  The nights were spent having yummy food (totaly sabotaged my diet, oh well) and alcholic beverages and hanging out at the beach bar next door.  Mudslides became the drink of choice most of the time and definitely learn that me and Irish Bailey's and whiskey really don't agree, found a Ben Stiller look alike as bartender, getting some creative free drinks. Also participated in a hypnosis show one night, one of those things that I'm not sure I'll do again.  Of course, we went to Hell.  :)

The girls were great, caught up with Kirstin and Krista and got to know Gretchen (Kirstin's childhood friend).  I think by the end of the trip, we agreed that we should totally do something like this again.  I think the talk is somewhere close for next year and possibly Cuba the year after.  So far just talks, we'll see how much of it will come true.

Here's some pics

Beloved Grandmother

I feel like I should feel more about my grandmother's passing but I don't.  Then I started thinking about the reason behind it. I realized that I was never particularly close to her, unlike the way I was with my mom's mom.  I think by the time that I had any consistent relationship with her I was already in high school and that was the time when we had more problems with my dad's side.  I'm sure she was proud of all her grandkids but I could who she favors more and that she wants to know more about their lives.  Part of it was also my fault in that I just didn't open up to her.  I understand it's a quirky trait of mine that it's hard for me to open up to people.  She lived a long life where she did a lot of amazing things, opened up herself to enjoy life.  That's the one thing I'll always remember her for.

Rest in peace, ma-ma.

passed Oct 13, 2011
wake Oct 21, 2011
funeral Oct 22, 2011

English Obituary

Chinese Obituary