And now there's light

I made a huge decision and had my eyes Lasiked a week ago. Here's what happened so far.

2/16 The big day
All in all, it's a funny sensation. I was told to stare at this red dot which was actually orange, and I could feel the doctor cutting on the surface of my eyes and flipping open the flap he made with the cuts. The red dot became a big orange rim right after the flipping thing. When the laser started hitting, I could see light blue sparks surrounding the orange rim. The whole procedure probably lasted 30 minutes. When I walked out of the operation room, I could already see much farther, if only all blurry.
After getting home, all hell broke loose. I heard from a friend that she just went directly to bed and woke up to clear, sharp vision. Not such luck for me. The pain was so bad that couldn't fall asleep, even with the help of a painkiller. I was wondering to myself why the nurse told me it's normal to tear up but I didn't seem to be doing much of that. I sat up in the bed, and the tears came streaming down as if from a collapsing dam. So I lied back down. The really bad time lasted about 2 hours, and by 4 hours there were only mild irritations. Hail to the rapid healing powers of eyes.

Bloodshot eyes after the surgery. This is in fact caused by the cuts.



Silly-looking eye shield. Need to wear them during sleep so the fingers don't go to wrong places and do bad things. I feel like an NBA hotshot.

2/18 First post-surgery exam
Doing well. R: +1.2, L: +0.9. Slight inflammation. Couldn't see clearly with my left eye, but the doctor said it was natural since it was worse than -1.0. Would take longer.

2/23 Second post-surgery exam
Inflammation gone. R: +1.2, L: +1.0. Still had trouble seeing clearly with my left eye. Doc told me he overdid a bit on purpose because weak eyes like my left one almost always regress after the surgery. So for the time being I am far-sighted in that eye and that's why I can't seem to focus properly on anything. Sounds good to me.

A week from the surgery. The blood is going away a bit. It feels funny to go to bed seeing everything so clearly. I have to tell myself not to poke into my eyes to remove the nonexistent contacts.

這是鼠的年!! This is the year of the rat!!

It is amazing how machine translators are offering good jokes these days. That's why you get things like 這是鼠的年 when people try to say this year is the year of the rat. Such literal translations always seem right when you convert them back to the source language, which says "this is the year of the rat", but anyone who speaks the target language is always in for a laugh when they see the translation and also when they see how 新年快樂 (happy new year) can be translated to "new year is happy."

Hail to machine translators. That's why I still have a job.

A hell of a way to wake myself up

Had the most horrible dream ever while waking up this morning. It's a sure sign telling you it's time to wake up when you can experience such wrenching emotions in just one dream. So I did. If that's a punishment for sleeping in (and getting an email from your boss wanting to discuss your working hours online but she's already off), I'll try to wake up earlier next time...