Kipp had to work late tonight. Victoria was spending the night, so I decided to take all three kids to McDonalds. This one has a very big playland, and a bathroom right in the play area. Kyler had been to the potty once. I was reading my book when Kyler came up to me and said, "I just did a big poop" ...my heart sank..."in the potty! Come See!" I was so excited and I looked down and Kyler was naked!! He had taken his pants and underwear off and left them on the not so clean floor of the bathroom! It was 6pm on a Fri night and the play area was packed! He trotted off back to the potty while everyone around us snickered. About an hour later it was less crowded and we were getting ready to go. All of a sudden Kyler pulls down his pants to his knees and announces to a couple at a table that he was wearing big boy pants! They were grandparent age, and seemed to take it pretty well!

It was 5:40 in the morning when I woke up and noticed that my ski mask had come off. I wasn't really worried at first until I looked at the clock with my left eye. The clock was VERY blurry and my eye felt a little annoyed, kind of like I had a contact in that was folded. I had heard many times at the Dr's office that they have never had a wrinkled flap after the 1st night so I was trying to figure out if that is what I had. It didn't take long for me to get up and try and go look at it in the mirror to see if I could tell what was wrong. I asked Jenny to come and look at it as well but I could barely keep my left eye open in the light so she didn't see anything. I decided to call the doctor to see what I should do. It was 5:55am at this time. There was an answering service so I told them what was wrong and they said they would call the doctor and he would call back within 30 minutes. So I sat there for 30 minutes thinking about all the problems that could be wrong (the flap became detached and it is floating in my eye, or lost). Just before I was going to call again, I got a call from Dr. Ghelt (where is Dr. Lomas). She asked a few questions and thought that it was just my vision fluctuating (I guess that happens) and that I should come in at 8:30 for them to look at my left eye. OK so now I had to wait another 2 hours, great!

We got up around 7:15 to get the kids up and have breakfast. I still could not open my left eye very much and I seemed to be very sensitive to light. I pretty much ate breakfast and rode with Jenny and the Kids to the doctor's office with my eyes closed. When I got there, Dr. Ghelt took a look at my eye and said that I had a wrinkled flap. She then told me that Dr. Lomas was on a fishing trip far enough away that he would have to take a plane back. (Great! This day was going perfect.) They were going to find another surgeon that was on-call that could fix this problem. I heard them making the calls to a number of different doctors. I heard them say that one refused and the others were not available. They called Dr. Lomas again and got another list of names to call. They finally got Dr. King from King and Mockovak to agree to fix the flap at 12:30.

While I sat in a dark examination room for about 2 hours while they were trying to find a Dr., Jenny sat in the waiting room with Kyler and Ilea. Ilea was fine because she just watched the TV. Kyler was a different matter. He was all over the place getting into everything he could. Jenny decided to go to Starbucks with the kids and have them call her cell phone when they heard from a doctor. It was about 15 minutes after they left that they reached Dr. King and when they tried to call Jenny, she didn't answer. I think it was about 10:30 at this time and now I had 2 hours to get to Dr. King's office and didn't know how we was going to get a hold of Jenny. I was thinking that Jenny's phone's volume had been turned down (which sometimes happens). I told the lady making the calls to try the Starbucks down the road. She called Jenny's cell phone again and, luckily, Jenny answered this time. She came and picked me up without problem. I'll bet Dr. Ghelt was glad to get me out of there.

We arrived at The King and Mockovak building around 10:50 (they didn't open until 11:00 of course) so we waited in the van. There were a bunch of other people there waiting for post-surgery checkups. At 11:00, we all went in. They had a little room with a big screen TV and a small play area. They had a Hercules DVD so we got that going and Ilea watched quietly. Kyler watched for a brief time and then proceeded to empty all of the toys on the floor and started playing with them. I needed to fill out a few forms, so Jenny helped fill those out. We waited around for a while. Everyone that had come to the office with us was finished and had left so we were the only ones there. At about 12:40 I finally got into see Dr. King. (It didn't seem like he was very excited to see me. I could understand because he is dealing with someone else's problem.) They evaluated my eyes and determined that my vision was 20/300 in my left and 20/40 in my right. (Later, when we got the doctor's notes to take back to Dr. Lomas, I found out that the wrinkle in my cap was the worst.) At this point I still wasn't very nervous because this is a very common problem with LASIK surgeries. After the evaluation, I had to sign some more disclaimers that all kinds of bad things could happened and that I might not regain the sight in my left eye. Dr. King also mentioned a few things in this area as well. So I was starting to get concerned about now.

They took me into another room and put the "attractive" hair cap and booties on. I sat there another 20-25 minutes getting more and more nervous. By the time they came and got me, I was almost shaking. They took me to the surgery room which was much bigger and well lit than Dr. Lomas' laser room. I would say it was about 5 times as large. The nurse laid me down and gave me some numbing drops in BOTH eyes. I asked her why drops in both eyes and she said that some people get nauseous if only one eye has the numbing drops. She gave me a stuffed iguana about 3 feet long. (I thought that was kind of strange but still held it.) When Dr. King came in I was slid under the laser device where the blinking red light was. They taped up my right eye and left eye lids and then applied the lid spreader to my left eye. He lifted the flap and applied some drops. Then he lowered the flap, more drops, and proceeded to squeegee my eye again. I believe he did this 4 times. My eye really didn't feel fully numb so by the 2nd squeegee, I was shaking and very uncomfortable. I was glad I had the iguana. Around the 3rd squeegee, I thought to myself that I can go through anything as long as my eye sight is returned to a reasonable state. At the 4th squeegee, I remember thinking "I hope this is the last time...". When it was finally over and I was fully untaped, Dr. King looked at my eye and sent us home.

My vision was much better but still not great. And I was much more sensitive to light. So we went home and did the sleep-all-day thing again.

I woke up in the morning and could see relatively well, although my vision was still a little blurry. I was still pretty impressed. I had a followup appointment with Dr. Lomas at 7:30 so I had to get ready. I was told that I could not take a shower for 24 hours after the surgery (I'm not 100% sure why) so I put some clothes on and went to have breakfast.

I drove myself to the appointment and didn't really have any problems. While I was driving there I noticed that I was seeing double by looking at the traffic lights. I originally thought it was due to both eyes but when I closed one eye, the double vision was still there (in both eyes). I made it to the Dr's office in pretty good time.

My exam was with Dr. Ghelt, a young lady. She did most of these follups and basically looked at my eyes (they were doing good) and evaluated my vision. My left eye was at 20/20 and my right was 20/40 (good enough to pass a driver's license test.) I was pretty happy going home.

After we got home, I got some calls from work and helped for about a half hour. I couldn't see the small fonts on the computer so when I was talking to people at work through Yahoo Instant Messanger (YIM), I asked them to increase their font sizes. It worked pretty well. I was able to keep up with what they were talking about and actually do some work without stressing my eyes too much.

We were going to go do a little letterboxing since I couldn't read, watch TV or do anything on the computer, but just before we left, Ilea threwup so we just did some short errands and came back home. It was a pretty boring day. We watched a little TV that night (I tried to blink frequently and used lots of eye drops.) When I went to bed, I put my ski mask on went to sleep thinking everything was going welll...

I'm post dating these blogs about my LASIK eye surgery so that they are a little easier to follow. It is really 1 week after the surgery.

I got to Dr. Lomas' office around 1:55 with Jenny. The kids stayed with some friends as the whole process (sign forms, prep, surgery, recovery) is suppose to take about an hour or so and Jenny didn't want to have to deal with the kids for that time. First I went in and talked to a lady and sign some forms saying that there could be all kinds of bad stuff that could happen. Pretty standard stuff. Then they gave me some valium to help ease the tension. They told me that I was put in front of some other guy because he was late or something.

Then they took me to a little alcove to wait my turn. It was here that they put on an attractive hair cap. It was kind of like a blue hair net or something. They also put little booties on my feet. Not sure why my feet were such a big deal, but they did. I sat in the alcove without my glasses on for about 10 minutes. I would see other people coming down the hall but couldn't see well enough to tell if they just had the surgery. (Those who had the surgery were wearing cheap looking ski goggles). I looked around at all of the plants and though about how I wouldn't see like this anymore. It was a neat feeling but I was still mildly worried about the surgery. I could hear them leading the guy in front of me out another door of the room that had the laser. Then they did some clean up.

The nurse came out the door near me a few minutes later and took me into this small, rectangular room with a gurney-like bed on rollers. The room was pretty dark and there were about 3-4 nurses in the room. They laid me down and strapped down my head with tape across my forehead. It was at this point where they put some numbing drops in my eye. Remember, I'm still pretty blind at this point (20/700) so I cannot see too much. Then they scoot me under an arm on the LASIK laser. I could see a green dot above me. Then the nurses tape my eye lashes down on my right eye and cover my left. Then they show me what the device that cuts the flap sounds like to help prepare me. Next, Dr. Lomas uses some device to spread open my eyelids. Things are happening pretty fast at this point. He turns on some red blinking light and tells me to keep my vision on that light (which was a fairly blurry ball to me). He brings the flap-cutter up to my eye and cuts the flap. I honestly don't remember the sound that it made but it was done pretty quickly. Then he lifted the flap. At this point the "fairly blurry ball" balloons into a pulsating, patterned globe about 4-5 times the size of the "blurry ball". It was very strange. Then it was time for the laser. I heard some clicking for about 10-20 seconds and then the laser was turned off and my flap was lowered back into place. I can remember seeing the red blinking light much clearer than the blurry ball but it was still pretty blurry, but better. Drops were applied to my eye and then a white flat thing, probably like a soft, small putty knife, was rubbed across my eye ball. That was probably the weirdest part of the experience. Seeing someone squeegee your eyeball in many different directions is very strange. I guess some more drops were placed in my eye, the eyelid spreader was removed and then that eye was covered by some tape or bandage (after I closed it of course). The left eye was much the same except that the flap cutter was very loud and it seems that I could feel it more. At this point I was glad that I had that vellum.

After the surgery, they unbandaged both eyes and told me to keep them closed as they led me into another dark room where I sat there for about 10 minutes. Jenny joined me after about 3-4 minutes. Dr. Lomas came in about 10 minutes later to check on my eyes (I guess he had just finished someone else's surgery). He told me to open my eyes. Wow! I could already see much better than before the surgery. I could read some of the signs on the walls but not the smaller words. He took a look at my eyes with one of their devices and pronounced them good and that I should go home, wearing my "cool" ski goggles and go to bed until the next morning (I could have dinner if I wanted). It was about 2:40 or so but that didn't matter, I wanted to keep my eyes closed and go to sleep. So we left the office.

Jenny drove me home while I kept my eyes closed most of the way. When I got home, I went immediately to bed. Around 6:00, I think, I had dinner with the family, a Tylenol PM, and went back to bed. I think I slept pretty soundly until morning.