So.. Dr. visit today, mostly uneventful except for the half hour I sat in chair waiting for him. Hmmm.. then again, waiting for the doctor for half an hour is uneventful.
A question I didn't ask. Why is my right eye not focusing at an intermediate distance when corrected for 20/20 distance, i.e., when I have the contact lens in? The whole point of the Cystalens is that it is an accommodating IOL. Why is it not accommodating?
Anyway.. Dr. Agnew gave me two more contact lenses for my right eye to try. The one I've been using, which corrects to ~20/20 distance vision, is a -2 lens. He gave me a -1.5 and -1 lens also. Each will have a bit worse distance vision, but better near vision. He says if I prefer one of the other corrections, they can do the LASIK to that prescription.
The key thing is that they can correct my vision for any distance with a lens, so if I have LASIK to set my vision to 20/20 at distance in my right eye, they can give me glasses or a contact that will make the focus point at my monitor as well as reading distance. If I do not have any surgery at all, they can give me lenses to correct my distance vision to 20/20.. so I would wear no lenses when in front of the monitor or reading, but if I watch tv or go out, I'd pop in a contact lens or put on glasses.
Either way it goes is not a huge deal. People of all ages deal with using glasses and contact lenses, so I'm not upset about having to use corrective lenses, but more still a bit perplexed.
Right this moment, I'm leaning towards leaving everything as is. If I have LASIK again, that's just another thing that could go wrong. Odds are it would be fine, but you know.. you just don't know. The upside if I did have LASIK is that they can correct the distance vision to a more precise degree than a contact lens can. With the contact lens in now, I am not unhappy at all with the visual acuity. In fact, I'm still amazed how awesome it is when viewing things at a distance. I'm still shocked how amazing things look.
What I could do is just go without the LASIK and leave the contact lens in my right eye, even when I'm using the computer. The vision will be degraded because my right eye is not focusing correctly to an arm's length distance, but I can try and train it to focus. In other words, I can try, over time, to get the Cystalens to do what it's supposed to do.. that is.. flex in my eye and change it's focal point. I still don't give a shit if it doesn't focus all the way in to reading distance, because I don't mind the rare times I need reading glasses, but if I can get it to focus at my monitor with the contact in, I'll know that I can have LASIK done and it'll still focus at monitor distance.
Make sense? I'll use the contact to try and continue the simulation of having had LASIK done, and train my right eye. If I end up not being able to train my eye, well, then it'll be a good thing not having had the LASIK done. I'll just take the contact out when I'm in front of the computer, and put it in when I watch tv or go outside.
My left eye is pretty decent at distance, and pretty decent at intermediate distance. It's not my dominant eye, so it doesn't interfere with vision and doesn't need to be messed with.
Those of you that know me personally.. it's probably not a shocker, but I spend more time looking at a computer monitor then I do looking at our tv or being outside where distance vision is important. I'll always have the opportunity to have LASIK done down the road if I want. Key-Whitman does the corrective procedures for free for up to a year after the original surgery, so I can have it done any time up until July 2011 for free. Of course, it's not like it's a big deal to me if I wait even longer and end up having to pay for it.
What will piss me off though.. is if somebody announces a new breakthrough in interocular lens technology, which guarantees 20/20 vision at all focal distances. You know.. like a Crystalens that actually focuses like a young man's eye. I'm not positive, but I think that after the procedures that I've had done, I'm going to my grave with these suckers in my eyes no matter how long I live. They just don't take them out once they're in.
I'm going to try the different contact lenses over the next 2 weeks before I go back to see Dr. Agnew, where I'll decide how we're proceeding.
Oh.. and I typed all this with the contact in my right eye. It's amazing how the brain works with your visual system. Somehow, the brain is such an awesome collection of cells that it can take input from each eye, compare the two to see which is the better image, and feed the better image to your consciousness. The eye that is considered "dominate" does that better than the other eye. My right eye is dominate, so it kind of gives me a headache when my left eye has the better clarity. My brain is using the left eye image right now, but it doesn't like doing it that way and it's letting me know by giving me a headache.
/update
Well.. jebus.. just googled PRK, which is a procedure similar to LASIK. Dr. Agnew says that because of my previous LASIK, if they do the procedure again, they'd need to be able to use the same corneal flap that was used when I had LASIK done some 10 years ago. Over time, the flap is harder and harder to find because the cells eventually make the distinction impossible to find, then they'll use PRK instead, which is done without creating a corneal flap.
Anyway.. the article had this bit in it. Presbyopia is the inability for your eye's lens to flex and focus at near distances.
Your distance vision probably will remain crisp, but seeing up close will be more difficult. However, researchers are studying different approaches to presbyopia surgery. So it's possible that you could have one of these new presbyopia-correcting procedures performed later to restore your near vision, once they are FDA-approved.
Well.. shit. If they can fix presbyopia, then you can get a standard IOL implant and have that done and get good vision at all distances. It would cost a whole lot less and there would be less visual aberrations then using Crystalens or a multi-focal IOL.
More likely though, the procedure would just fix a person's natural lens ability to flex after it has hardened due to aging. It probably doesn't fix near focus for an implanted lens. Thinking about it.. there would have to be something other than the lens doing the focusing and I don't see how that's possible. Oh well.
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