Update on the Eye Issue

This morning I was to have the YAG procedure performed on my right eye. It was an inconvenient date and time as our daughter was visiting us from Los Angeles for a long weekend, and I was looking forward to spending her last day here doing fun things. Thinking the right eye was going to be taken care of on September 12th, I was not anticipating this conflict. See my previous post for more on that.

When I got to the office today for my 10:00 appointment, I explained that my left eye just is not right. So again they sent me upstairs to have an eye exam done, fitting me in around patients who were already scheduled for such activities. Obviously I was screwing up the schedule of not only the surgi-center but the regular office as well. Dr. Pepose said this time there is not any filament or stray cells on my lens. Instead it is my astigmatism in the left eye that is causing the problems.

My vision with both eyes together is 20/20, and I have tried to explain that I am happy with the outcome in terms of what I can read. However, it is the quality of what my left eye sees that is the problem. Everything is slightly blurry. My frustration comes from the fact that I paid (a lot!) for the enhanced intraoccqular lenses to be implanted during the cataract surgery, and also for my astigmatism to be corrected in the left eye. The lenses and correction were not covered by my insurance, so that was all out of pocket. So to be told now that the astigmatism still exists came as a shock to me.

Apparently my astigmatism was corrected to a certain point, which is obvious as I was reading 20/50 with that eye before surgery and it is now 20/30. However it was still not as good as my right eye, which is why I am seeing the difference between the two eyes. My choices are 1) live with it, or 2) have an additional procedure know as Limbal Relaxing Incisions (LRI) done to further correct the astigmatism. The downside is that I may lose a little near vision, but what I do see will be clear. What a choice!

While I have tentatively scheduled the procedure just to secure a spot on the calendar, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do at this point. One decision became clear to me, however. I am definitely not going to have the YAG done on the right eye at this point. I'll be leaving well enough alone on that one for the time being.