Missed It By That Much

Back from the eye doctor visit - they dilated me again and the pupil is so large that you can't hardly see the iris in my right eye.

The short of it is, I'm near sighted now. Remember the first doc I went to said he wasn't comfortable doing the implant because his machines were giving inconsistent readings on the power, and he'd just be guessing? This doctor (Jeff Whitman) doesn't use more than one machine, thus removing the pesky chance that there would be a discrepancy.

In any case, the plan is to do LASIK on my right eye to fix the near sightedness. This is not a big deal as I had LASIK about 10 years ago, so since I'm near sighted, they'll just have to burn off a bit more and it should focus the light correctly. It would probably have been a bigger problem if I had ended up far sighted.

The doctor that did the exam said the reason why I'm near sighted now is that the capsular bag has varying thickness from person to person, and mine are unusually thick resulting in the new lens sitting further back in my eye, thus leaving me near sighted. I'm not sure I buy that. I think they just got the power of the implant wrong, but as long as the LASIK dials it in, it's all good.

I also described to her the problems I'm having with halos, star bursts, and light smearing. She put that lens machine thing in front of my face with the prescription dialed in to fix the near sightedness and asked me if it fixed the aberrations. It did, a little, but there's still some thing not right. She continued to examine my eye after I was dilated and as an aside, the light they point right in your eye when you're dilated is so bright it hurts.

So.. the doc tells me that sometimes when a young person develops a cataract, the cells that cause the cloudiness can also attach to the capsular bag that the lens sits in. She says that I have posterior capsular cataract cells. The typical treatment for that is to burn them off with a yag laser. Usually they wait about 10 weeks after surgery to check to see if these cells develop, but they're going to speed the process up for me since they already know I'm going to need the yag laser.

She says she thinks this left over cataract material is what is causing the light smears and such. I'm not sure I buy that, but I'm going to follow their recommendations. She even called in the head guru, Whitman, to have a quick look at my eye. He's not a super communicative guy that sits down and chats with you. He seemed satisfied.. so.. I guess it's good.

So, the plan is for me to have my left eye done on Wednesday. I'll make a prediction that they put in a lens with the wrong power and I'm going to need LASIK on that eye as well.. and probably the yag to clean up the remaining cataract cells on the capsular bag.

Fortunately, all the extra tuning work is included in the fees I've paid - for up to a year they will continue to monitor and test my vision and do what they need to do to dial it in.. even if it means taking the lenses out and replacing them with something else. It's kind of drastic and obviously they don't want to throw away $6500 worth of implants, but they tell me they are committed to getting me high quality vision at all distances.

If I can get my distance vision aberration free and as clear as my near vision, I'll be super happy. I'm reading text at 20/20 with my right eye now. Using both eyes, my near vision should be super good, and intermediate is quite good also. The weakness of the Crystalens is supposed to be the near vision - and mine is about as good as a human can be. Duplicate that result for all visual ranges and I'll be ecstatic.