Day 3

Today was slightly better, still slightly light sensitive and wearing my sunglass, but no pain. Thank goodness I'm one of those that had no pain.  Lots of refresh drops with scheduled ones.  Able to start read off my laptop with larger font.  On my Mac, it's about 2 swipes to enlarge the font. But not able to stare at the screen too long.  Overall, it feels like it's getting better, vision is clear but definitely ghosting and blurry.

Day 2

Today I woke up with the worst feeling for light sensitivity, but no pain.  I could barely keep my eyes open with my blinds closed and curtains drawn.  I even ended up wearing sunglasses indoor and minimal lights on at night.  Even the TV glare was too much for my eyes.  So I pretty much just keep my close as long as I could, nap if I could.  But every time I wake up from nap, my eyes were super dry and ended up using 1/2 vial of refresh plus.  Continued the scheduled eye drops with refresh plus.  Since I napped too much during the day, I just didn't feel sleepy at night, so I thought percocet would help. Bad idea, it actually kept me up. I did end up start using refresh PM for night time, so I had to keep my eyes closed and just listened to my ipod.  Thank god for ipod. :)

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.

PRK Experience

I finally got my butt in gear and not be freaked out by the process (especially after scouring the internet for personal accounts) to have PRK done and get rid of my glasses.  I have decided to blog about my experience which I'm sure that it would be different from others as well.  So please take the post/ experience with a grain of salt.  No 2 people have the same experience.

A little background, I have been wearing glasses since I was 5yrs old and contact lens since 12yrs old.  I have worn RGP and then switched to soft, but I never liked the idea of wearing contacts overnight.  So by the time I was in college, my prescriptions were -7.5 right eye and -6.5 left with about +1 -1.5 astigmatism.  My prescriptions would vary about 0.25-0.5 every year but really about the same for good 10 yrs.  I have always said that I will have my eyes corrected after all my schooling were done; therefore not while in college or in med school.  Now I'm in my second year of residency and my hospital give a decent discount for it and the only issue is just making sure that the service I'm scheduled for won't be something that strain my eyes for the first month out. I've scheduled the surgery for 3/6 which is the last week of my general anesthesia service and then I'll start back up on PACU (recovery room) service, which uses less eye strain.

Pre-surgery consult
Surgery
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5/6
Week 1 (Day 7)
Month 1
Month 3
Month 6

Hospitalist ... Again

This month totally reminds me why I chose anesthesia again.  It was definitely a torture for me with chronic patients with never ending problems that don't get better.  Also non compliant patients and patients that couldn't find answers to their problems and expected Cleveland Clinic to wave its magic wand.  Patient load ranges from 12-14 daily with multiple discharges on most days.  It's never ending busy work and totally an intern rotation.  Literally for me I was counting down the days from the first day I started, with working 6 days a week.  So not like the first time around.  Oh, well.

Fun Weekend

This was a great weekend, the last one right before my hospitalist month torture to start.  It's going to be my last month of floor medicine and it's not the same as last year in terms that I'm the only resident with 10-15 patients and working 6 days/week.

Kirstin came for the weekend and it was great to see her, it's been 3 months since our Caribbean trip.  It's going to be a low key weekend, just relaxing and hanging out.

Went to Westside Market on Saturday. It was fun, having our lunch there, wandering around looking at the stalls.  Found the homemade pierogies, we each bought 3 kinds, can't wait to eat them.  They've got interesting flavors and sound very good.  For dinner, it's Indian, originally planned for Saffron Patch but they've got a wedding party going, so we went to Indian Flame, so yummy.  Of course, it's a snowy evening, but we went to Velvet Tango Room anyways to have our after dinner drinks.  They specialize in handcrafted cocktails, everything is freshly made, not instant stuff.  I've got the apricot sour and boy was it yummy.  The ambience is fun too, Jazz group playing and we just catched up and had a good night.

For Sunday, we went to Velocity Church.  It's a young church but somewhat charismatic as well but not as much as what Kirstin is used to.  People are nice but I just don't feel like it's somewhere I could grow.  It just doesn't feel as Bible based as I'm used to. After church, I introduced Kirstin to Vietnamnese food. We went to Superior Pho, I had the vermicelli and had her ordered the sweet and sour fish (also one of my favorite).  It wasn't the best I had but I still like the places in Cali.  Can't wait to go home to have good Vietnamnese food.

For the rest of the day, we just chill, caught up on our gossip and tried to hang out as much cuz who knew when's the next time.  My plan to is to got to NYC in April and June.  We shall see.

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!!