Bohrer Family Online

A few weeks ago I went on a ski-camping trip with a couple friends.  Here’s the article from the Post Register:  Teton ski trip

So Jason mentioned I’d had PRK surgery.  While researching laser surgery I came across several blogs of people’s experiences with their surgeries which I found helpful.  So here’s my addition to the experience base out there.  Maybe someone else will find it helpful. 

Why did I choose PRK over LASIK?  The main reason was that my second corneal scan showed some “irregularity” that the doctor told me was a possible risk factor for ectasia, or corneal weakening.  My next scan the morning of the surgery showed no irregularities, and the doctor told me that LASIK would be fine.  Now what?  I’d done a lot of reading, and it seemed that PRK was actually better than LASIK for a lot of reasons, but with the significant downside of more pain and longer recovery.  I figured I’d rather deal with that for a few weeks than worry about losing my cornea for the rest of my life.  Here’s my experience so far.

Day 1:  The surgery went well, thank goodness for Valium.  I took a nap when I got home and just sat around the rest of the day.  

Day 2:  Took it easy again.  At my checkup in the morning the doc said my right eye looked really great, left was coming along.  My left eye started to get a bit sore that evening.

Day 3:  I went out for a run in the morning, but cut it short with a pretty painful contact feeling in the left eye.  I called the doc who said, basically, it will be painful for the next couple days.  Take your pain meds and tough it out.  So that’s what I did, and it seemed better later in the day, thanks to the Lortabs.

Day 4:  I made it through the day by anticipating getting that evil contact out of my left eye at 3:30.  Sure enough, when the doc took the contact out it felt 10 times better.  He said the epithelium in my right eye was 100% healed over, the left only 30%.  I firmly believe the contact caused that discrepancy, but who knows.  Wearing a contact for 3 days and nights would have been extremely uncomfortable before.  

Day 5:  I went back for another checkup.  The left eye was now 100% healed over.  I was seeing 20/20 in my right eye, big E in the left.  

Day 12:  This is now.  Yesterday would have been depressing if I hadn’t done my research.  The left eye is still healing slowly, but the right eye seemed to get worse.  I had my checkup and the doc did set my mind at ease by telling me not to worry, I was right on track.  He had me stop taking the Zymar antibiotic drops, keep the pred forte in the left eye, and he dropped me down to FML steroid drops in my right eye.  This morning the left eye seemed to have noticeably improved.  Then I went out to run at lunchtime and with the cold, my eyes teared up.  With fresh tears, my left eye became tack-sharp 20/20, while my right eye was just a bit fuzzy.  It was awesome to see almost perfectly and get (hopefully) a glimpse of things to come.  Of course once I got back into the dry, high-airflow environment of the lab things are fuzzy again, but definitely better than yesterday.  

As far as advice, my main advice would be to not underestimate the time it will take to recover.  I wasn’t real comfortable driving for a week, and possibly should have been less comfortable even then.  Reading is just getting bearable, and computer screens are still the worst.  If you’re not a patient or laid back person, this will be a pretty tough couple of weeks. 

It was a beautiful afternoon (finally) and Hannah dragged me outside to play with her.  On a whim I set up my slackline and the boys took advantage of my vulnerability to pepper me with snowballs.  Abby caught some great shots of the action.  Notice even Hannah threw one at me before she fell over.

The local paper held an essay contest to win tickets to the local showing of the Banff Mountain Film Festival show.  I think I’ve only bought tickets to half of these shows I’ve attended since I’ve won tickets several times.  So I sent in my outdoor adventure essay.  It was tough to keep it under 200 words, so it doesn’t flow really well.  But I was one of 5 winners, so I don’t care.  Here’s a shot from the paper.

We’ve had some great snowstorms in the last week or so.  Here’s the link to our Youtube video collection, including the latest one of the kids skiing down the snow pile.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SBandJB

Jennie and I hiked with our neighbors, Nate and Audra Hunsaker, Mark and Tina Taylor, and Ryan and Kari Reilly, up Table Mountain on the west side of the Tetons.  Lots of fun and we all survived.  Here’s a link to the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qB1_TLx_IE