The Follow-Up to Surgery

January 12, 2010

Follow-up appointment with Dr. L early in the morning. Joy takes me in the morning and Toni comes to get me after I am done.

Tech assistant at Dr. L's office removes eye patch and some of the gunk. She has me read eye chart and I don't think vision in that eye is very good. I turns out to be 20/70. Dr. L and his optometrist examine my eye, and placement of lens is good, but my cornea is swollen and there's some other edema in another spot. My left pupil will have to stay dilated for all the two weeks so that lens can settle in. This will mean lots of light coming in, and I have to wear sunglasses outside.

Dr. L says my uncorrected vision in the left eye should improve when the swelling abates and it can take several days for this to happen. Full healing take 2 weeks. OK, so I go home.

I think I can better evaluate my vision in familiar surroundings and it's true. When I get home to my kitchen there is a lot of light flooding in. When I cover the right eye, everything looks cleaner and brighter. When I cover the left eye and only look out of the right eye, the kitchen walls and colors definitely have a dingy, yellowish cast to them.

Cataract surgery is like washing the eye with Oxydol or Tide -- all my whites look brighter now! And pinks and blues definitely look better.

In fact, the light early in the morning does have a blue cast. It makes sense, if the world is being subdued by an amber cast, that it has been blocking the blue spectrum of light. How cool! Literally, how cool!