My healing wasn’t quite as fast as Temple. At the one month mark, my vision was still pretty bad 20/50 in both eyes. Lots of double vision. It wasn’t until week 8 that my eyes seamed to snap in position. They’ve been perfect ever since.

I had refractive eye surgery about 20 years ago. Lasik was still relatively new, and PRK was more common than it is today. The lasik risks were seen as much less common than they are today.

My doctor at the time was one of the top refractive surgeons in Southern California, and had participated in clinical trials for nearly every type of refractive surgery procedure and laser available at the time, and also did the most extensive corneal mapping available then. He was very conservative. The procedure back in 1997 was leaning towards bilateral lasik. Salk absolutely believed in one eye at a time, and still performed both surgeries extensively.

My extensive research led me to select PRK (thank GOD). The complications from the flap didn’t sound so great, and also I was an avid scuba diver. I didn’t want to risk an overly thin cornea given the pressure differences in diving, as well as a flap dislodgement at depth.

I selected monovision undercorrection in the nondominant eye, which we did first. The doctor believed in daily follow-ups for the first 5 days. As I developed a significant infection on Day 2 I’m very glad that he did. He treated it with aggressive antibiotic eye drops, which left me with slightly more artifacts in the left eye. After a longer wait than usual to be sure that my eye was going to heal and leave me with good vision, we did the second eye.

My recovery was horribly painful in BOTH eyes. It was described as a “discomfort” that would only require tylenol. In fact, it felt like a burning log had been inserted in my eye. The numbing drops gave me 15-20 minutes of total relief. By an hour later, I was in nearly excruciating pain, so of course I overused the drops, possibly affecting the outcome in that eye. My level of pain is unusual to rare, so I wouldn’t let it worry you too much, started to resolve by Day 3, and was pretty much gone by Day 5. For the second eye, I demanded heavy oral painkillers which made the recovery far more bearable.

Vision slowly improved over the next several weeks. Halos were worse in the infected eye, but both eyes gradually improved. The doctor said that I had fairly significant scarring, particularly in that eye, but “saw right through it,” and never found it bothersome. There was little to no myopic regression, and only a small amount of astigmatism in a different axis than I’d had untreated (I understand that this was more common 20 years ago).

Just shy of a year later I decided to lose the monovision and have a touch-up in the left eye, the one that had had the infection. It was a huge success, the touchup made the result much smoother and removed most of the scarring. I eventually needed reading glasses about a year before my 50th birthday, so I got about 15 years completely eyeglass-free>

Best thing I ever did for myself, despite two rare complications. The OP is correct…do NOT get lasik. Even back then, I was told that lasik allows faster healing, but the visual results were roughly the same with both procedures.

Of course, if your PRK is more severe than mine, or if your healing is slower, you’re going to be affected longer.

I’d suggest talking to somebody in the same area of nursing who’s had PRK and seeing what they think.

In July 2016, noticed that I couldn’t see the clock clearly while sitting at my desk any longer. My right eye seemed to be drifting off 20/20. Indeed, within another 6 months my right eye drifted to 20/100. Left eye is holding at 20/20. Was scheduled to have a “enhancement” surgery, but that was delayed due to ivf hormones in my system (these things are NOT compatible as these hormones can mess with your vision, apparently). Waited 2 months, then had the surgery. This time around, I need this bandage contact GONE. It’s like you described above. Eyelid is puffy, eye is tearing non stop and irritated. I know if I can power through this a few more days till this contact comes out, I will be fine within 3 months. Hopefully it sticks this time, as I have no more thickness left in my cornea to do another prk. If it flunks, it’s glasses and contacts again.

Just to note: PRK with awful prescriptions like mine has somewhere along a 6% rate of needing a revision. I was told 1-2% initially! Do your homework folks. Ask for numbers and rates specifically for your prescription, not the averages. I still would have gone for it, but mentally I would have been ready for this second round.