May 15th

My vision is still awful.  In dim lighting it's like having a fingerprint smudge on my glasses, except it's on my eye instead of something I can remove, and it's fucking awful and I am miserable.

Also miserable: the crushing finality of graduation.

April 23rd

I am having an incredibly difficult time coming to terms with the fact that I am leaving Madison and the people I've lived with for the past three years behind in less than a month.

April 3rd

"3rd" is a messed up word.  Whoever started that trend -- 1st, 2nd, 3rd -- that's the guy who have to thank for "c u l8r" today.

I feel like I live in a pool of water.  Or a dream.  Everything is so unreal.

Today, I saw someone offering a reward of "everything [they] have" for someone to help them find their father.  It made me sad.

April 2nd

Today was actually pretty good.  I felt like my vision was tighter, but I might be kidding myself.  There's still all kinds of glare etc, but it felt like it wasn't as bad for most of the day as it has been.  On the other hand, I felt that way last night, too, until I started doing things that weren't all bright white light.  I guess we'll see.  It might be for the best.  I might also be getting my hopes up for nothing.

I started posting on a forum thing related to this subject.  The people who have responded to me have been incredibly helpful -- more helpful, I think, than they probably realize.  Hearing from people who have gone through something similar and come out in one piece is just -- like -- I've talked to my family about things, but I don't think they appreciate just how frustrated I am.  People who know from experience offering reassurance is  very helpful.

April 1st

No, it's not an April Fool's joke day.  Misery means my sense of humor kind of sucks lately.

I am more and more frustrated the more time that passes.  I keep reminding myself that my doctor -- and everyone else -- says that reaching optimum vision clarity can take up to six months.  I cannot, however, find anyone who says that they needed six months to reach their best vision -- people either seem to be at their ideal state by 6 weeks, or they're still suffering after years.  I'm coming onto three months soon, and my vision hasn't changed meaningfully in weeks.  I'm very confident that the issue is related to the size of the treatment area; I can literally see the glare/ghosting/doublevision/whatever show up when I remove a light source from my field of view, and watch it diminish when I add one.  Unfortunately, I can't live my entire life with a pair of lights shining in my eyes.

Living is so much harder than it used to be.

Withdrawing from school isn't really an option.  If I were to do so, my student loans would begin coming due during next semester.  Student loans are incredibly terrifying to me now: finding a job is going to be even harder considering how debilitating these vision issues are.  I can't focus in normal indoor lighting situations, absolutely cannot focus in dim or dark situations, can't drive a vehicle at night, etc -- the job market is already terrible, and thanks to this surgery, I'm even less employable.

As an aside, every post that I've made in the early hours of the morning -- such as this one -- are written because I've been up all night desperately searching for someone in my situation with a success story.  I haven't had much luck.  Like tonight, I want to go to sleep, but I know that once I close my laptop and turn out the lights, I'll be up all morning anyway, lying in bed and trying to convince myself that life is still worth living.


Unrelated: If I had a million dollars, I would pay off all of my family's debt (which is a lot right now, but wouldn't be a lot if I had a million dollars,) and then I would find some way to invest the rest, and I could live comfortably off of the interest if I could get a 5-7% annual return on it.  I don't need lots of expensive things.  Why do I write about this?  Because why shouldn't I dream.  If I could, I would live in California maybe, or New York.

March 30th

I am at home with my parents for spring break.

I don't really know how I'm supposed to live with my vision like this for three more months.  I feel like getting through the night is a tremendous burden.  I don't know exactly how to communicate the degree of my frustration.  I feel like I cannot do anything at all except wait and hope.  It is my final semester in school and I am falling far, far behind because I am unable to function.  I am crippled by depression.  I don't feel like anything is worth doing in this state.

I am frustrated because when I try to find information about my vision, all I find is horror stories.  Because all I can find is horror stories, websites that seem to be focused on scaring people away from the surgery, I get a lot of information about people who had a similar issue and for whom the situation was unable to be corrected.

If this can't be corrected, why wasn't I informed in advance that my pupils would dilate beyond the range of the treated area and cause problems?  They did dilate my pupils ... why wouldn't they have checked their size then?  My pupils dilate pretty big, and I can't see why they wouldn't have expressed that this was a larger risk ... but instead they told me I was a perfect candidate.  What's more, it seems to be the case that in standard indoor conditions -- that is, the same conditions in their office, without any eye-dilating drops -- I still encounter this problem.  What the fuck.


I don't even know what to do.  If this can't be corrected, treated, I see no way for my life to become worthwhile.

I talked to my parents today about withdrawing from school for the semester on medical grounds.

March 29th

Sometimes I am surprised at my own capacity for anger.