Lasek 1 month on - Trouble Reading

FGR

Hi all. Hoping you can help.

Got a lasek re-treatment exactly four weeks ago to bring my left eye back on par with my right. I had the original treatment just over 11 years ago and although my right eye stablised at 20/15 my right eye degraded gradually until I decided to bite the bullet and get the above.

Question - my long sightedness is superb; even better than my left eye which is already pretty good. The problem is that one month on I'm struggling to read whether it is the speedo in my car or the computer screen. Thankfully my left eye has no problem with it but I'm becoming worried that this re-treatment has made me the other extreme.

Before the retreatment I could read a computer screen or a speedo without any difficulty. Is 4 weeks too early or should I be concerned?

Thanking you for your time to read this.

Mousewar

How old are you?

FGR

30. I never had a problem reading so I'm worried that I may have been over corrected. Am I in the age bracket for this side effect?

I've always had excellent near vision. Both before and after my first operation. It's just my retreated eye that can't seem to focus enough.

EDIT: Let me put it this way. If I hold something (extremely) close to my face I see it clearly. I also see things far away. Does that mean I still have healing to go through re: in between?

Mousewar

Ok, so you can rule out age-related presbyopia.
Sounds like your eye is still just adjusting. I wouldn't really be concerned about anything like this until at least 6 weeks, esp with LASEK. And usually they do overtreat as the eye's healing will kick in and that will reduce the effects of the surgery in the first month or so.
If you go two months and there's still a problem then that's when I'd be asking questions of my surgeon. But to be honest, after four weeks I'd actually be expecting the symptoms you're describing.

Magenta

I had Lasek about 4 weeks ago and my eyes still change a lot.
Some evenings I get home and am very longsighted to the point where I have to blow up the font on my laptop.
Some days I am very light sensitive.
Today I had amazing distance vision in a meeting- could read everything on the screen which I could not do last week.
I went back to my surgeon a week or so ago to ask and he said the eyes will continue to heal and change and that 3 weeks (which it was at the time) is very soon.

FGR

Thank you for the replies.

Hopefully the near vision will return in time - as I find it frustrating reading anything that isn't large font.

Magenta - do you have any crispness/clarity in your near vision or is it legible but blurry?

Magenta

FGR wrote: »

Thank you for the replies.

Hopefully the near vision will return in time - as I find it frustrating reading anything that isn't large font.

Magenta - do you have any crispness/clarity in your near vision or is it legible but blurry?

During the day I always have perfect near vision but when I get home in the evenings it literally can change for me day to day!

Daisies

Was your left eye short sighted before the retreatment?

FGR

I originally had lasek as both eyes were short sighted. My left eye then slowly regressed back into short sightedness and now trying to read can be a disaster if not for my other eye.

Magenta

Out of curiosity, where did you get it done?

FGR

In the interest of fairness I won't mention the clinic but they've been excellent as regards after support and questions I may have.

I've been told to give it until 8-12 weeks to get a better idea of my final vision. Naturally I'm worried as I'm at week 7 now and my reading vision is still pretty poor; my distance vision has also started regressing to the point that it's worse than my other eye - even though it was superb at week 4!

Do people have this up and down experience? I'm concerned that my retreated eye may end up worse than it was before in all respects.

m0nsterie

FGR wrote: »

Do people have this up and down experience? I'm concerned that my retreated eye may end up worse than it was before in all respects.

All of this up and down, improvement/disimprovement is normal for Lasek, even up to 6 months - everybody heals differently. Hopefully it is just that for you.

For personally checking my close vision I had a word document with sentences with different size fonts, and once a week I'd go into it and make a note of how crisp the letters were, for each eye separately and for both eyes. Looking back at it now I can definitely see a fair bit of fluctuation over the first 8 weeks. I did try to get away from the screen as much as possible too.

Of course the consultant does formal checks but my own tests did provide some comfort, especially now going back to them and everything is crisp. Of course I would have had multiple visits back to the clinic with reassurance from them.

Magenta

FGR wrote: »

In the interest of fairness I won't mention the clinic but they've been excellent as regards after support and questions I may have.

I've been told to give it until 8-12 weeks to get a better idea of my final vision. Naturally I'm worried as I'm at week 7 now and my reading vision is still pretty poor; my distance vision has also started regressing to the point that it's worse than my other eye - even though it was superb at week 4!

Do people have this up and down experience? I'm concerned that my retreated eye may end up worse than it was before in all respects.

I would recommend going back to the clinic and getting a checkup.

CrazyRabbit

Magenta wrote: »

I would recommend going back to the clinic and getting a checkup.

Agreed. I had some adjustment in vision, but not to these extremes.

FGR

Thank you all for your advice. It's very much appreciated.

I did what was said and had two follow up appointments. Basically my eye has fluctuated greatly but they noticed that, as of 11 weeks post op there's still a little scarring directly in front of my cornea which they believe is the primary cause for the lack of 'crispness' in my vision. So I've been put on preservative free drops (hylo care?) and been told to see them in four to five weeks.

Anyone any experience of this? Does it make sense? I put in the drops and sometimes, not always, I might get a short moment of crispness before blinking and it all goes back to blur.

lemmno

Hi FGR
Just wondering how you've got on since?