I also can’t believe how habituated I have become to the comfort, convenience and sheer wonder of having great eyesight without the need for glasses or lenses. I went for a run in the park on a wonderful bright sunny winters morning a couple of weeks ago and caught myself looking at things with the same awe of the clarity and detail I could see as I had immediately post surgery – it was great to remember that feeling and a timely reminder of the ongoing appreciation I need to feel for the outcome of my procedure.

I am delighted to report that the blended vision has completely settled down and that for the vast majority of the time I am not even conscious of the difference between my eyes. When I’m tired and in low light conditions I am aware of the myopia in my right eye, but otherwise barely notice it. I also think that I am still getting more and more used to it and that there will continue to be slower and smaller improvements over time.

So there you have it. A great success all round and I remain delighted with my decision to have my procedure at the London Vision Clinic. I still can’t fly a fighter jet and my golf has got worse but that’s nothing to do with my eyesight and I can read the directions on medicine bottles, swim with no goggles and no fear of losing lenses, get tired without getting that sticky lens feel and see better than I’ve ever been able to at long range.

In short, je ne regret rien!

The second issue is that this week I’ve had bloke flu – full on cold, sneezes, coughs, watery eyes etc and it’s been a real treat again not to have to put in the old lenses at any time and not have to trudge around in glasses all the time.

As the days turn into weeks and months, I am still getting more and more used to the blended vision and have even had whole days where I just don’t notice it.   And my experience isn’t at all unique.  Amazingly, I had a client lunch a couple of weeks ago and all four of the people around the table had had lasik.  One had straight 20/20 fix on both eyes, one monivision and one had blended vision.  All of us who hadn’t had the straight surgery took longer than the suggested time to get used to the changed vision.

So there it is, lasik corrected eyes are great for managing babies, being ill and an interesting lunch topic.  What’s not to go for?

Things continue to improve with my poor brain slowly, slowly getting better and better at managing all the different situations from close up to distance work.  I reckon in another 6 months or so, I might reach that happy state where I have a day where I just don’t notice the blended vision at all one day.  Right now, I go for quite long periods of time without noticing it then do something where my reading eye just doesn’t quite get filtered out as much as it should and I remember what I’ve had done.

I guess for anyone reading this, the acid question is “do I think it’s worth it” given what I’ve gone through.  I’ve re-read all my entries and remembered all the emotions and feelings I had during the recovery process.   For me, the answer is that it is definitely worth it.  The changes to my life: never having to think about packing lenses, spare glasses, etc when I go away for the weekend; being able to swim without worrying about a lens washing out; never having to put my lenses in with a hangover; now being able to read small print and have sniper vision at distance and not having to think about seeing when the kids wake up in the middle of the night.  Is it worth it?  Oh yes.  I’d do it all again.  If it had any pain attached, I’d probably have a different answer but there has been no discomfort at all after the night of the surgery – amazing.

Baby number 2 is due in 3 weeks now so the eyes will get a full tired state workout.  I’ll probably be too busy with the kids or sleeping to blog for the next few months but I’ll report on the impact of sleep deprivation on Lasik eyes in due course.

My prescription has stayed very stable and I can happily flick from close up work on the laptop to the TV with preception of close to perfect vision, so for all practical purposes, the surgery remains a complete success.  I hoped to round off my blog at the end of a year with a report that I was completely adjusted to the blended vision and could deliver a ringing endorsement that it wasn’t straightforward but it was worth it in the end.  I’m now not so sure that I will be able to report complete success, but even where I am now I can say that for me the whole process has been worthwhile and I now don’t have a moment when I regret having it done.

When my daughter was born, I know that I used to dread waking up in the night, finding my glasses and going in to see her, then the feeling of gritty eyes as I put my lenses in after a difficult night.  I’m delighted to report that we’re about to go through all that again in July and I’m hoping the whole sleep deprived first few months will be that little bit easier and more comfortable this time.

I’ve just finished work and will be between jobs for a while, so I’m trying to sort out another first and get some blended vision skiing in!

I’ll do the last post in this series after I have my 12 months check up which is in early June.  Until then, any questions, just post a comment and I’ll reply or e-mail you.

A key milestone was my four month check up where I had a full battery of checks and am delighted to report that everything is perfect in terms of the target prescription, healing of the flap, no dry eye and so on so that’s all great.  But, you’ll know from the flavour of this blog so far that the overall treatment isn’t my issue – the London Vision Clinic has been superb throughout and delivered (or probably exceeded) the desired outcomes in terms of my prescription.

No folks, my problem has been how my brain adapts to the blended vision.  So a few weeks further on, and is there any change?  Well the good news is that I think there is – I am becoming less aware of the different prescriptions in each eye and am generally becoming more tolerant of the difference that is there.  I have the odd bad day where it gets back to a high degree of frustration with the difference in prescription but it is improving slowly. 

Another milestone for me was going swimming on our recen family holiday at Center Parcs – I was able to swim underwater with my eyes open, go down the water slides without worrying about losing goggles and then lenses and so on.  All in all, it was a treat and I have to remember these upsides and that blended vision is a compromise when I think about the downsides.   Another real bonus is that my dry eyes are completely gone now and I don’t need to use the artifical tear drops any more – even after swimming in chlorinated water.

I have to go back for a further follow up in 2 months by which time the conventional thinking is that it’s about as good as it’s going to get.  I guess my summary is that the benefits are really there – I don’t have to wear lenses or glasses, I can go swimming, I can see up close and distance really well – but that there is still this drawback of not being used to the blended vision yet, but if it gets a little bit better, I think it will be really tolerable and have been well worth it.

I’ll post again after my next follow up which is at the end of October.

I’ve been back for a further post-surgery follow up and the good news is that both eyes are better than average – the near sight eye is sub -1.0 but still reading the smallest print up close and the long eye has 20-12 vision so the surgery technically continues to be a huge success.

In terms of the blended vision acclimatisation, things are getting slowly better.  I spoke to the people at the London Vision Clinic during my latest follow up and their advice is it really does take 3 months for the brain to properly sort out the images for most people and even then there is further improvement over time.  So, there’s about 3 more weeks for me to go.   It turns out that every silver lining has a cloud, in that because my reading eye is coping so well with fine print at not too much of a set myopia, it might be making it harder for my poor old brain to filter the images and get used to the vision as the images are quite similar.  Ah well!  If I’m honest, I’d prefer to have my eyes as they are now rather than have the reading eye even more myopic. 

I can genuinely say that things have got a lot better, but the middle distance stuff is still taking some adjusting to despite an improvement.  I no longer find it distracting in the same way I did at first but I do still notice it.

The dryness I was getting on waking up is getting better and better too, but I’m persevering with the drops in the morning and at bedtime and sometimes at lunch if I’m doing a lot of computer work.  Mid range vision is still the biggest problem, although it is improving too.

In terms of fun things, I went to see U2 in Dublin this weekend and that was a good workout for the new vision, especially the light show after dark.  I have no problems at all now with starring or night vision, but the blended vision is much more noticeable  in low light.

I am much more hopeful now that I will get to a point where I virtually don’t notice the blended vision, but I suspect it will be more like 6 months than 3 months for me.   I’ll try to do further monthly updates as things progress given the reason I did this in the first place was because I couldn’t find another account of getting used to monovision / getting used to blended vision.

By the way, I should explain the difference between blended vision (the London Vision Clinic way) and monovision.  Monovision is simply where the eyes are focused differently to enable distance sight in the (usually) dominant eye to be as good as it can be and reading sight in the other eye to be good enough to overcome the effects of presbyopia.  Blended vision (as done by the LVC) is similar but the laser treatment or ablation of the eyes is designed to shape the cornea to improve the depth of field of both eyes so the blended vision zone is as large as it can be.  This means blended vision at LVC is tolerated by many more people and is supposed to be easier to get used to.

Tune in this time next month for the latest thrilling installment….

The near vision and mid range vision are pretty much as reported before and there seems to be no real change for the better yet.

My eyes are really only dry now in the mornings when I wake up and the rest of the day seem fine, but I’m carrying on with drops every couple of hours until I have my next follow up appointment.  I had more than I’ve had to drink so far post surgery on my birthday and woke up with very dry eyes the next day but a few drops in the first hour awake soon sorted that out.

In terms of coping with blended vision, I think there’s been virtually no progress this week.  I still find that anything mid or close range is blurred in one eye to the point of an annoyance and haven’t noticed any real improvement in that over the last week.

I’m not sure yet whether, if this is as good as it gets, I can tolerate the very noticeable blurred vision in one eye at close to mid range.  I’m happy with it for driving and distance, but need more time to sort out what I want to do longer term.

It’s not so irritating that I can’t concentrate on other things, but neither have I reached a position where I feel that I don’t really notice it at all yet.  It is still early days though and it’s at a level now where it is definitely better than the first couple of days post surgery and I can put up with it for a while longer knowing that in 3 months time I can have a correction done if I want it.

Last night was the first time I had any alcohol at all since the surgery.  My brother in law reported real problems with his blended vision when he had his first drink, but as far as I’m concerned there was no noticeable effect on my vision.  I only had a couple of pints so not enough to experience any dehydration of the eyes.

Overall, I really haven’t had the severe dry eye problems reported by some.   The only time I notice it is first thing in the morning.  I put in drops about 4 times a day but mainly because I was told to rather than feeling I need to.

I still have a weird feeling of wanting to take out my lenses at night before going to bed.  Also, my wife tells me my eyes look whiter now probably because they get no irritation at all even the really really minor problems I ever got with my lenses.

For me then, it really took fully 10 days for me to start noticing that I was getting used to the blended vision.  Looking back, I had my moments where I thought that the result was intolerable and would have to have both eyes set for distance.  Now, I still notice the blurriness but the improvement in the last day or so has given me encouragement that I will adapt further and maybe I have done the right thing after all.

I am on my guard however, as most people I’ve spoken to that have had this done report that progress is 2 steps forward, one step back, so this might only be a temporary improvement with a backwards step to come.  Only time will tell.

Off to work again and the same issues with pc work.  Do I think there’s an improvement – probably there is but it’s slight but enough that I’ve no signs of eye strain today and my eye’s aren’t so dry.  I’m still concerned that my left eye seems to be doing so much of the work as my right eye seems to be doing very little.  Perhaps this is fate’s way of telling me to read more!  Another possibility that crosses my mind is that my near vision has been adjusted beyond my level of presbyopia, and that over the next couple of years things will all start to balance out as my near vision moves out in my left eye and my right eye is still able to focus.

Overall, I think I have got a bit more used to it, but I’m not one of those instant adapters and I certainly feel there’s a bit of a way to go before I can say I’m happy with the result.  I think that if things don’t improve, I would question whether this has been the right thing to do – the blended vision rather than the Lasik which I was very happy with as a procedure and experience to recover.