Table of contents for SXSW Themes

1. Interconnectedness and Cooperation Overlaid Onto Real Life – SXSW Themes
2. Do you make happiness, dreams, or just kick ass? – SXSW Themes
3. There is more to gain by giving it all away – SXSW Themes
4. Embrace randomness – SXSW Themes

THEME 4: Embrace randomness
‘Go with the flow’ was definitely the best piece of advice I got for sxsw. It’s good to plan, but feel free to break that plan for a chance to go somewhere random with a random group of people. I’ve been very interested in the balance of structured efficiency versus embracing randomness and the effect that has on both creativity and your ability to be effective.

I was moving towards structured efficiency until I read an amazing book on creativity in the workplace called “Orbiting The Giant Hairball” which takes a very opposite approach. Like many things, I think the answer is in the middle, and I think Tim Ferriss nails it on his head in 4 Hour Workweek by showing how carefully placed structure can free you up so that you have much more time to live more randomly (if that’s what you want). Structure if used right can be complementary to randomness

Table of contents for SXSW Themes

1. Interconnectedness and Cooperation Overlaid Onto Real Life – SXSW Themes
2. Do you make happiness, dreams, or just kick ass? – SXSW Themes
3. There is more to gain by giving it all away – SXSW Themes
4. Embrace randomness – SXSW Themes

THEME 3: There is more to gain by giving it all away

Not exactly a theme of this year’s sxsw in particular, but of the whole blogger rooted culture that has grown sxsw to where it is now. The whole experience was almost like living inside Web 2.0. It’s a weird analogy, but the best way I can think to explain it. The culture of the people there is one where everyone has adopted the idea of broadcasting thoughts to the world. It’s a glimpse of where the internet is moving our whole society towards, where information is no longer locked up and protected, but rather everyone comes to the realization that there’s actually more to gain by giving it all away.

That realization has provided motivation for me to get back into blogging and feeling free to broadcast my thoughts to anyone who wants to listen. What good is an idea in a walled garden if no one ever sees the garden? And for me, it’s more than spreading ideas. Honestly, not that many people will be reading my ideas here on randomdestiny.com. But I gain more by the act of fully developing an idea and communicating it to the world. There’s more to gain in that act than having the biggest lockbox of ideas in the world.

Table of contents for SXSW Themes

1. Interconnectedness and Cooperation Overlaid Onto Real Life – SXSW Themes
2. Do you make happiness, dreams, or just kick ass? – SXSW Themes
3. There is more to gain by giving it all away – SXSW Themes
4. Embrace randomness – SXSW Themes

THEME 2: Help people kick ass so they can reach their dreams. That’s how you create happiness. Make that your business and your life.

Happiness
The products and services we build have a wide array of goals. We think of our business as being the category that our product falls into. My company, Revolution Health, is obviously in the business of health content, tools, and community, right? Well, most businesses are reducible to the business of happiness. Jane McGonigal predicted that quality of life will become the ultimate measure of a product. “Happiness is the new capital.”

Kicking Ass
Similarly, Kathy Sierra asked “How do you help your users kick ass?” I found that to be a really powerful question. How much time do we spend at work on work that does not help an end user kick ass? If that’s the majority of the time, either the product is on the wrong track or you’re doing the wrong work.

New Measurements
We need to reframe and re-evaluate what we and our products actually accomplish in our end users. Metrics should not be around page views and sales but around how effective we’ve allowed someone to be or how many interruptions we’ve eliminated from someone’s life.
Jane provided four common elements that provide true happiness across the board. Take these as starting points for your new ‘happiness startup’.

1) Satisfying work to do
2) The experience of being good at something
3) Spending time with people you like
4) Chance to be part of something bigger

Dreams
I want to leave you with Randy Pauch’s life changing talk on making people’s dreams come true. Creating happiness is something bigger than the products and services we work on. It’s how we should live our lives.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Update: Looks like Randy Pauch has written a book based on his amazing lecture.

A lot of the hosting sites were relatively close in stats like storage, bandwidth.  All of them were way over what I’d ever imagining ever using (though if my blog got that much traffic it’d be nice).  In the end, the ability to jump into a chat at any time to fix problems really trumped the little differences in hosting statistics.  I ended up firing up 3 chats to solve some minor issues I had while setting up my site.  Had this been with a hosting company that only had phone or e-mail I would’ve gone nuts, but instantly solving problems with really helpful reps was a pleasure.  Blue Host wins with the great user experience.

Also nice is the automatic WordPress install and easy to use panel that they let you sample before the site.  Pricing is reasonable.  They do make you sign up for at least 3 months, and at least 12 months to avoid the $30 setup fee.  However, they have a 30 day cancellation guarantee so to me it’s fine to have the longer contracts.  I went for the 12 month.

One piece of UI I really liked was their Recently Viewed / Comparison box. On many sites I’ve seen the Comparison feature placed in the search results and Recently Viewed as a separate piece of functionality (like on the bottom of Amazon pages). This is a really smart combination of showing your last 4 viewed products, linking to those products (clicking on the picture), ability to compare a subset (checkmarks and compare button). The final touch that really make this UI superb is the ability to remove items from the widget. Often the usefulness of modules like this are diluted because they get filled up with items that you aren’t interested in at all. The list gets so full and loses relevance and it’s almost as easy to go back to the search results to move back and forth between products.

So what did I end up buying? I went with the Canon Powershot S870. Canon still seems to be the leader in this class of cameras (ultracompact and compact). High ratings, fast load up time, image stabilization, and small size were the main reasons. I also ordered the new wireless SD card called Eye-Fi. This card transfers your photos directly to your computer and/or online photo sharing site wirelessly. I’ll write about how it works after trying it out.

If you’re looking for a camera for your mom or anyone a little older, I recommend the Panasonic Lumix TZ3. The camera’s exterior has a bit more of a big and chunky feel. The controls are more tangible feeling than many of the ultracompacts. I think my mom was really drawn to it because it reminisced of her analogue film camera. The screen is pretty big and Panasonic used nice big clear fonts and my mom immediately made positive comments on as soon as they came up. The 10x zoom lens is pretty beautiful for a consumer grade camera, probably at the upper end of its class. Definitely a great choice for anyone who doesn’t need one of the ultra small cameras that are becoming the norm for consumer models.

I’m back from SXSW Interactive today and am feeling quite delusional from the lack of sleep and 5 days of hearing great ideas and meeting amazing people. I think the best part of the conference was just being around such interesting and passionate people in similar fields. As a fairly new user experience designer, it was great to finally meet other similar people around the country and hear their stories.

I’ve got tons of notes to sift through this week but will get to that tomorrow, as well as get started on making arrangements for next year. =) For now, here’s a few of my favorite quotes from this week:

“Ebola style virality” (from battledecks)
“Fuck yea, it scales!” (also from battledecks, probably the best slide I’ve ever seen, see below)
“Steve Jobs is like the pope of design”
and
“The liver is evil, it must be punished” (indeed)

Schedule your panels AND parties
Sched.org is probably the most helpful resource you’ll find for planning your SXSW. It comes set up with every panel and party for the whole week. You mouse over to read the description and select the checkmark if you want to put it on your calendar. At the end you can access your list at a custom URL or download it all to an ical folder. This is a really awesome site.

Where to eat
A great thread listing places to eat over at Chowhound. One place that keeps popping up is Casino El Camino. I’ll definitely have to stop by for a burger.

Get a map
A great easy to read map of downtown Austin can be found at downtownaustin.org (pdf download). Great for locating things, though I hear 6th street is kind of the epicenter of everything, so you might not really need a map as long as you can get there.

Listen to music
Get into the frenzy by listening to free SXSW music through the SXSW Player. The bands you hear on there will probably be walking around while you’re there.

Other Austin stuff
Time to explore the city will probably be a little scarce with all the stuff going on downtown, but a here’s a pretty good travel guide for Austin.

And of course, don’t forget to set up a Twitter account and hook it up to your phone.

When you’re dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part
You roll outta bed and down on your knees
And for the moment you can hardly breathe
Wondering was she really here?
Is she standing in my room?
No she’s not, ’cause she’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone….

When you’re dreaming with a broken heart
The giving up is the hardest part
She takes you in with her crying eyes
Then all at once you have to say goodbye
Wondering could you stay my love?
Will you wake up by my side?
No she can’t, ’cause she’s gone, gone, gone, gone, gone….

Oooooooooohhhhhhhhh

Now do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand
Do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand?
Do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand?
Do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand?
Would you get them if i did?
No you won’t, ’cause you’re gone, gone, gone, gone, gone….

When you’re dreaming with a broken heart
The waking up is the hardest part

-John Meyer

Well, I had no good answer so I thought a good thought experiment would be to imagine yourself physically staying on your bed for weeks, not touching the phone, any of your books, talking to roommates, looking out the window, or anything. You’re just completely cut off from the world around you and you don’t get a chance to tell anyone in advance. What strikes you the most? Who gets the most worried about your well being? Who is let down? What things you are involved with crumble down? And for all the things for which you identify someone or something, which things Really make you long to be back?

Well, a number of things came to mind, but here are my first few immediate, most visceral thoughts. The first thing that came to mind was how worried my parents would be. I know I would be getting a long string of concerned calls and e-mails from them. The feeling of abandonment they’d feel if they knew I was ignoring them really struck me hard because I know how much it means for them just to receive a simple phone call or card from any of their kids. Not being able to hear or see my girlfriend would also be one of the worst things. I’ve really cherished every bit of our three years together even through the long distance which has been tough. I think I’d also spend a lot of time on that bed thinking about where I hadn’t done the best job as a boyfriend and wished I had opened up more.

The first two things that hit me so far had been relationships. The other two were about missed opportunities. One is the missed opportunities to change the world. Now, I don’t mean to be so pretentious as to say I’m sparking global movements. I mean it as making some kind of positive impact on the world around me, through the designs I do at work, helping friends one-to-one, writing a blog post that changes the way someone thinks, or simply figuring out how I will make that positive impact sometime in the future. Finally, I’d miss the opportunities to learn. One of my biggest joys is simply learning new things about this world and processing what I learn into new ideas.

So that’s what came to mind for me. On a lighter note, if you’re Really having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, try this alarm clock (revealed by a I’m Feeling Lucky Google search for “what wakes you up in the morning”):

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/004283.php

I’d like to thank the professors at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Dental Informatics, Titus Schleyer and Thankam Thyvalikakath, and the head of the Carnegie Mellon HCI undergraduate project course, Jason Hong, for making this all possible.

See the research write-ups and video demo for the paper.

So in a way Microsoft has offloaded much of the user experience of storing health information to third parties. While this probably helped them get a jump on Google and other players in getting the product out, I think it leads to a very disjointed experience. I need to go to the AHA to enter my blood pressure and to another program with another set of visualization tools to look at another type of health measurement. A good move would be to create a Facebook style hosting platform where these third parties could host the front ends of their applications within a section of the HealthVault, or at least have a place where viewing and data entry are accessible.

The thing that I like most is the downloadable Connection Center application. It syncs the data from a variety of hardware monitors and uploads them to your Health Vault account. In the end, it’s this kind of usefulness and ease of use that is needed for people to make the leap to use a system like this. Privacy is always a concern, but time and time again we see the initial privacy scare fade away with every new technology. Remember when online banking seemed like a gamble? There’s a threshold at which the usefulness of the new paradigm mitigated our privacy fears.

But here’s where Microsoft’s partner strategy takes a twist. By having you give access to a third party to enter data, your information is always going through another party besides Microsoft. This seems a bit strange, akin to Citibank making me funnel all my transactions through Paypal. Because of that Health Vault really should have at least some basic information entry and editing so that it can work in a complete silo.

Recently, it’s really come to my attention in multiple ways that I shield my emotional side, quite obviously, from others. For whatever reason in my life I’ve managed to try to tuck this area away and always resort to completely thinking through everything. But I’m realizing the negative impacts this has been having on myself and others. First of all, trying to hide emotions is always a pure path to disaster. I know everyone can see right through me, or at least tell I’m hiding something. I also just waste away overthinking and overanalyzing everything. Instead of just having a conversation, I actively think about what everything I say will make people think, and then wonder how they’ll respond, etc. I’ll get completely hung up on the smallest things.

I do feel like the things in the book and these thoughts on my own emotions are related. I need to stop getting hung up on perfectly crafting everything I throw out into the public space. I’ve been under the false impression that coming across as who I want to be is a matter of just thinking through everything I say with enough thoughtfulness and forethought. But that just leads me down the path of over-analysis, insincerity, and getting stressed the hell out about everything. The insight I got from Blink was that maybe the answer lies in the most natural, unconcious part of me. Simply letting snap emotional judgments be satisfactory and trusting their instincts.

I started to do that a bit today, just opening up and being Transparent. I haven’t felt that free in a while.

1) Tech Cocktail

Tech Cocktail is a meet up for tech folk to hang out and make connections in a fun venue. It was started by Eric Olson and Frank Gruber. I had the pleasure of meeting Eric. He told me the event was started in Chicago mainly because there was no event like it to have an excuse for the tech community gather. They also made the decision to let the event promote itself through blogs and word of mouth. That decision paid off well because the crowd there turned out to be a wonderful mix of designers, developers, strategists, and startup owners. Most I talked to were really on the cutting edge of new media. It was cool to see such a strong tech community turnout in DC.

2) Fogo De Chao

We had a birthday celebration for my friend, Eugene, at the infamous Fogo De Chao. This restaurant is a Brazilian style meat house. They give you a disc with a green and red side. When green us up you better make sure you are ready. A barrage of waiters carrying large swords with hunks of meat come at you ready to cut fresh pieces right onto your plate. I think I’m still digesting that dinner.

3) Artomatic

Artomatic is yearly event where hundreds of artists install their work in an old DC building. There are performances, too. The art was great. The few music acts I went to weren’t my cup of tea, but there was a great drama group.

4) Dupont Circle Farmers Market

I’m on a farmers market kick. I think buying locally is the way to go. Fortunately, the Dupont Circle Farmers Market has meats, cheeses, and produce galore. And, I ran into Giada De Laurentiis! You know how cooking shows always have the chef walk around checking out outdoor markets? Well I was walking behind Giada from Everyday Italian on the Food Network as she filmed her segment. I followed her around and tried to get some pictures, she probably thought I was pretty sketchy. Oh yea, I also bought at quart of lard from the pig guy! I’m gonna have some tasty veggies!

Oh yea, if you are freaked out by the lard, give this article a read first.

5) Taste of Arlington

Finally, Arlington has its annual Taste of Arlington celebration where all the local restaurants put up a stand and let you sample food. They have a great system where you buy a ticket book that lets you get 6 things at the food fair. I almost couldn’t finish all 6 because of how much food that was. It’s a great way to sample a lot of really different foods. The musical acts there were great, too. Bobby T and the Magic Voyagers, a great Jimi Hendrixish jam band and The Taylor Carson Band, a super fun acoustic rock group, were my favorites.

There’s been quite a design overhaul from our preview site that launched in January. Most of the effort went into cleaning up the navigation and visual design. Check it out and let me know what you think!

CHI was held in San Jose, CA, the heart of Silicon Valley. Yes, I got to visit the Googleplex (got a 1-on-1 tour from the best tour guide ever), got to eat lunch there, and sit on their heated toilets (I didn’t have the nerve to turn on the auto wash/dry feature). Their party was off the hook! I also got to visit Yahoo, Nokia, IBM, and Stanford through complimentary tours the day after the trip.

I went about this conference much differently from last year’s CHI. Last year I pretty much stayed with a few people I knew well and quietly went from session to session. I got a decent amount of value, but somewhere in the year between I realized the really important learning and value from a conference goes on in the hallways and lunch tables that fill the gaps between talks. I had the honor of meeting some really great people and forging new relationships.

I discovered SIG’s at this conference, Special Interest Groups. These are sessions where you sit in smaller circles and discuss a topic with people really passionate on the subject. There’s no better place to meet people with similar interests and get fully engaged in a topic rather than passively watching a speaker.

CHI2008 is taking place in Florence next year. That should be really exciting. However, I’m also considering trying a new conference that has more of a design and industry focus since that is more applicable to what I do. CHI is very heavy on methods and research. I’ve heard good things about SXSW. I’m also interested in checking out BJ Fogg’s Persuasive Technology conference as well as Usability Week. So many choices…

NBC news in New York, I believe, was talking about online health sites they like. The two sites reviewed were the Toolkit landing page and the calculators. The medical guy actually ran through the Lose One Pound calculator. They talk start talking about Revolution Health about 2 minutes in. I’m quite flattered. Thanks Sree at NBC!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Link to video

Keep an eye on RevolutionHealth.com this week as we’re going into our version 1.0 launch!

The big hit was Latino Dim Sum Brunch at Cafe Atlantico.  Oh my goodness!  One of the most ridiculously amazing meals I’ve had in a while.  The chef, Jose Andres, makes these crazy ‘molecular gastronomy’ dishes which combines chemistry and art with regular old cooking creating unbelievable flavor experiences for the mouth and eyes.  We got the tasting menu for around $35 and you get around 20 small dishes and is quite filling.  Even plain old guacamole is served with style being made from scratch by the waiter right beside your table.

Jose also does an even crazier 6 person dinner twice a night called Minibar.   This decadent meal will set you back $95.  I’ll have to save that one for a special occasion.

Later that night, Jose battled on Iron Chef (perfect timing).  The best part was he and his assistant Chef Katsuya (who cooked for use earlier that day) absolutely DEMOLISHED iron chef Flay.  It was quite possibly the best beat down I’ve ever seen on the show.  He showed some of his unique molecular gastronomy techniques with flavored foams, flavor syringes, and trapping smoke in large glass domes over the final dishes.  The man is a true flavor and food technician and I’m honored to have eaten his food.

Vanilla potato foam with American caviar

PS. Talking about music, here’s a link to my college a cappella group, Joyful Noise.  Recordings from when I was in there aren’t up yet, but they have some older albums on the site.

Oh yea, it also is great for pushups and situps when you put it on the floor.

This solves the three problems above very well. 1) You can download any of those “keeper messages” to your hard drive 2) If you have an organized e-mail system, you can simply treat your voice messages as part of your inbox and track them like you do your e-mails 3) If you have multiple phones, you no longer need to keep checking multiple phones.

The service is ad supported. They do ask for some marketing info and they include an ad in the e-mail (pretty smart) they send as well as put ads on the site. They also have premium service levels if you want them to check your messages more times per day and get some other cool features.

I’m excited. One of the most useful sites I’ve found in a while.

GotVoice

This is a case that I think it is good to have the government intervention. Free market competition is forcing restauranteurs to use the cheapest health harming substances to compete.
The consumer side of the market is unable to demand transfat free food through their eating choices and purchasing decisions because they are unable to discern who is using transfat substitutes. The government’s action here is good to provide protection of consumer health where the consumer market is not able to do so effectively.

It’s really sad what we mean by ‘safety’ in this context for those of us on American soil. ‘Safety’ is really just knowing that others (not you) will die to reduce the already very remote chance that you’ll ever get hit by an attack. And even that reduction in risk is questionable. By sending troops there, we’ve basically just relocated the target of attacks off our own soil.

How staunch supporters of the war can call the thousands of 9/11 deaths a tragedy and the thousands of troop deaths (plus tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths) a victory is beyond me. It’s amazing what we’ll convince ourselves of so that we can feel ‘safe’.

I’ve only noticed one issue with running wordpress on GoDaddy which is I can’t seem to be able to use pretty urls for my post addresses.  The other thing is support for Ruby isn’t included until the next higher purchase level (I got the economy hosting), which I was looking at learning eventually.  Besides that I’m quite pleased with the hosting so far and from past experience, their service has been quite good.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Edward Tufte is a data visualizations god. He takes real solid human factors and psychological research and turns data visualization into a hard science. His books are exceptional in content as well as actual print and materials quality. The images he packs in his books are nothing but aggregations of data and concepts, but the result is beautiful works of art. This is his first legendary book attacking the raw mechanics of graphing. I have his next two books, Envisioing Information and Visual Explanations, as well.

On a related note, check out Junk Charts, an information visualizations blog. They take dava visualizations and redo them much nicer and is a great way to see some data visualization transformations in action.

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

I watched this video before my Epi-LASIK procedure. It’s a closeup view of the actual procedure in all it’s glory. You can now see Exactly what I went through. I can’t speak for how you will respond to it, but I think watching it helped me get a little more comfortable with the procedure. Believe me, I was squirming massively while watching this video (don’t say I didn’t warn you). But by the second viewing I was a bit more comfortable (just a bit). But my philosophy is the more information you have the better. Hard to beat an actual video of the operation. Good luck getting through the video if you decide to hit play…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Note: In this Epi-LASIK video, you’ll see that the surgeon cuts an epithelial flap and then replaces it afterwards. According to my surgeon, this is being phased out in the Epi-LASIK procedure. The consensus among leading surgeons is that recovery is actually better if the flap is not put back. So the surgery is actually completed significantly faster than seen in this video. That’s good news for you!

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

Been a while since my last eye update. My vision has stabilized since my last post, and my bandage contacts were taken out a few days after my last post. This time, I made sure to keep them really moist the first few days after taking them off to avoid any more bits of epithelium from detaching. There was probably little chance of it happening again after giving my eyes a few more days under the bandages, but I just wanted to be sure.So the big question you probably have is, how is my vision? Well, at my last visit, my eyes measured 20/20, so by most accounts, that’s “perfect” vision! However, in my opinion, I think my vision is a little less than perfect still. While I could see the 20/20 line, the letters were kind of blurry, so I’m probably more around 20/25 or 20/30 (I have no idea what those actually look like, just guessing here). I feel like I was able to read those last lines just through extra focusing power, but unless I look hard, things aren’t completely sharp without me having to try to focus on something. My vision still varies a bit, though, sometimes when I get some tears going everything gets a bit sharper, and other times I don’t focus quite as well. I think this is what they mean by “quantity comes first, then quality”. For the most part, my prescription is right now, but it takes a bit longer for everything to “smooth out”.

So how about those stars and halos in the night you always hear about? Not to bad at all. Not really much worse than before. I’m thankful they turned off the light and flashed a light at my eyes to show me how much I had before, because comparing it now, I see that the level of starring and haloing is about the same, just a slight bit more now. But again, this varies, too. However, I was able to drive home just fine from Pittsburgh with the last few hours of the trip at night.

The freedom is amazing. For a non contact wearer, it doesn’t seem like a few seconds putting contacts in and out matter much, but it does. It adds up every time you do it, having to clean your hands, put them in, experience that constant feeling of something in your eye, the end of the day gunkiness, carrying around gear when you travel. Contacts are just an overall hindrance. The best thing is the “get-up-and-go” ability I have. I can just sit up in the morning and do stuff, and I can jump into bed when I want to pass out late at night after writing a long blog post. Plus, with pretty severe myopia like I had, there’s a nice psychological component of not being totally reliant on contacts and glasses. When I went to Pittsburgh, I felt “lighter” as I packed and lived out of the bag. Just one less thing to worry about in a busy life.

I doubt I will go for a correction if it does turn out I’m not quite at 20/20. I’m pretty much fully functional now (except I can’t cut onions without crying profusely, still a little sensitive I guess) with the level of sharpness I have, though it’s a little less than what I had with my contacts (which apparently got me to 20/15, so I was a bit spoiled). Maybe I’ll try some of those natural vision improvement exercises. I have a book on them and I do believe they work for small corrections. They were out of the question for me when I was -7.0 diopters, but I hear they work wonders for people with a less than a couple diopters off.

All in all, the freedom is worth it. That’s all there is to it. The cost is totally worth it as it comes out to about the same over the long run. The safety is great these days with a good surgeon. It’s arguably better for your eyes than wearing contacts on top of your eyes for years. The pain of Epi-LASIK is a bit tough for the first few days, but is nothing really unbearable, and if you are not into contact sports, you can go for the more common, less painful, LASIK operation. So what it boils down to for me is the lifetime of freedom and “lightness” you get for those few days of discomfort. I feel it’s a good choice, and I am pleased with the results.

Kudos to Dr. Rubinfeld (surgeon) and Dr. Davis (post op care) at Washington Eye Physicians & Surgeons. They have my full recommendation. I will probably post some more intermittent updates from here on my vision, but I just wanted to leave you with a quote from Dr. Rubinfeld at my last visit regarding my new vision: “Now make sure you use your new powers for good, not evil!”

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

So the last few days haven’t been too hot for my eyes. It seems my epithelial layers weren’t quite ready for prime time. After removing the bandage contact lenses, my eyes were scratchy. This was expected as the surface of your eyes are sensitive. However, they got more and more scratchy and irritated as the day went on.

The next morning, I woke up and this same spot on my eye was still hurting. It felt like one single grain of sand stuck under my eyelid. When I looked into the mirror, there was a red spot with blood vessels kind of swollen around it. I got pretty scared as I thought I had some kind of ulcer in my cornea or something. I called the eye center and they told me I could come in right away. I got there and Dr. Davis looked at my eye and told me a little patch of epithelium had been lifted off. He said it was no big deal as some people’s epithelium are still loose for a while and come off if your eye gets too dry. He put a contact lens back in and said to stay on the drops and come in two days later.

Fast forward to that night, and my other eye started to have the same scratchy feeling in the same spot. I went to sleep early so it wouldn’t get any worse, but the next morning it was still hurting. It wasn’t as bad but I couldn’t really work well, so I went in again. He was a bit surprised to see me back again, and even more surprised to see the same exact thing had happened on the same spot in the other eye. He put another contact lens in and sent me home.

So apparently these little incidents won’t really have any effect on my vision or healing. I just need to use my antibiotics and wear the contacts a bit longer and I may get some more viscous drops next time around.

On a better note, my vision has really gotten a whole lot sharper in the last couple days. My right eye is probably about 20/20 at this point. However, my left eye seems to be lagging and is blurrier. It’s kind of annoying having an imbalance and I really hope they even out.

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

So I went into work today and got asked plenty of questions about my Epi-LASIK procedure. It definitely takes some extra explaining when you have Epi-LASIK because most people expect you to have perfect vision already and they aren’t as familiar with the Epi-LASIK procedure. It’s definitely fun when you can gross someone out with all the gruesome details of the operation.

Today is the Tuesday after my surgery, 5 days after the operation. I was able to read fairly comfortably at work and could do some work, but probably not super detailed work (not that comfortably at least) quite yet. However, I had to go in to the eye doctor for another checkup at noon. There, he checked out my eye again for any infection and tested my vision. I’m apparently 20/25 now, though I was straining to see the last line of text. I think I’m still worse than that. Apparently my vision is great forthe 5 th day. I’m not really sure if they say that to everyone, as it really is quite comforting to hear.

At this checkup, they finally removed my bandage contact lenses. Dr. Davis put some anesthesia in before doing so. After taking them out, I was expecting things to get clearer, this haze I felt like I was looking through to disappear. That didn’t really happen, if anything, things got slightly blurrier. I guess that’s just how my eyes are for now and only time will get rid of the blurriness.

However, after leaving the office, and the drops started wearing off, my new epithelial cells and their brand new nerves were exposed to the elements. The surface of my eyes were definitely really sensitive and scratchy. The rest of the day wasn’t much fun. It wasn’t the same burning and tearing as before, but more like a dry annoying set of contacts that are ready to be taken out all day. I hadn’t had any dry eye, but now I was yawning to get my tears going all day and putting in drops. I guess this new layer of cells needs to come in and toughen up.

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

So in my last post I mentioned that my left eye was really blurry and I was getting quite worried. Well, I took a nice long nap and when I got up, I realized that my left eye was as sharp if not sharper than my right. I guess there’s just a lot of variability in your vision quality as you heal from Epi-LASIK. My vision has really improved a good bit today.

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

It’s now Sunday, the 3rd day after the operation. I woke up with a little burning this morning, but after a couple hours, the pain has completely subsided! I can now comfortably keep my eyes open like normal with no problem. Everything is still blurry, but I’m able to sit close to my computer and read whole e-mails comfortably. Before I could real a few lines and had to stop.

There is one thing that is starting to worry me, though. It seems that my left eye is much more blurry than my right. Now, I read that usually one eye gets sharper faster than the other during recovery. However, I’m still worried, because the difference is quite noticeable. I really hope this left eye doesn’t need to be redone. It probably won’t be as bad since it’ll only be one eye, but I’d rather not have to go through everything I went through this weekend again for an enhancement procedure. At least Washington Eye does enhancements for free until you are happy with the results. I’m hoping everything will be clear when they take out the contacts. That’s supposed to be done on Tuesday but I want to see if I can move it up to tomorrow so I can get it done with and see how clear my vision really is now.

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

So it’s two days after the operation. My eyes are still scratchy, which is to be expected. Last night and Today are supposed to be the worst. Last night was pretty bad. For a little while it felt like I had a couple grains of sand under my eyelid and it killed whenever I moved my eyes. The drugs helped with the overall burning, but these specific spots in my eye still really hurt. I slept for a good portion of the day as a result. My roommate and I ordered from some new Chinese take out place and it was pretty terrible. That evening I hooked my iPod into our big speaker system and I turned down the lights and just listened to great music.

I realized how I don’t really do that much. Just really sit there and do nothing but listen to music. I always listen to it while doing something else for background. But it’s really different when you are sitting there with your eyes closed with all your attention on the music. You hear things you never heard before and get into it much more. I highly recommend it to anyone as a good way to escape. I think you really enjoy food a lot better when your eyes are closed like this. You just start to notice a lot more with your other senses when you’re not looking around as much.

Now don’t get the impression that I’m blinded or anything. It’s just it’s more comfortable to have my eyes closed whenever I can while my eyes recover from Epi-LASIK. I’m able to get around and go outside whenever I need to. Today those really annoying spots of pain have gone away and there’s just the overall scratchiness today. Nothing too bad. We’ll see if it gets worse tonight, but I think the worst may be over. I can’t wait to get the bandage contacts out on Tuesday. I hope my vision is good enough to get back to work then so I don’t miss too much. At my current condition, I could probably do meetings and draw stuff, but not detailed computer work. Things are supposed to clear up a lot over the first few days of the week. I can’t wait. But for now, I’ll try to enjoy using my other senses as much as possible.

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

Man, I’ve gotten soo much sleep the the last day, it’s amazing. I took two long naps yesterday and slept peacefully through the night. I could definitely get used to this.

However, my attempt to hold out on the prescription painkiller came to a swift end this morning. A little after waking up, my eyes were really burning and tearing up bad. It took a while before I could pry my eyes open to put my morning drops in. I took a bunch of Ibuprofin and then some Tylenol (is that bad to take those two together?) cause I couldn’t wait for the pins and needles to stop. Well if subsided a bit, and I managed to get my sunglasses on and head out to the eye doctor’s office for my post op checkup. I metro’d it myself. It was tough walking, trying to not move or open my eyes whenever possible. It got better as the painkillers kicked in. At the office my post op doctor, Dr. Davis, said I’m doing really well for the first day. The blurriness is normal and due in part to the bandage contact that I have on. The pain will get a bit worse tonight and tomorrow, apparently, and he said to make sure I get the prescription. I could potentially get the bandage lens out Monday or Tuesday.

After getting back, I got the prescription for Lyrica filled. After reading up on it last night, I found that it’s designed for pain relief when nerve endings are damaged, specifically for diabetes patients as I guess it happens a lot to them. Makes sense that this was given to me because in Epi-LASIK, they basically lop off all those epithelial nerve endings on your eye.

I must say, the Lyrica has been working pretty well. Still some scratchiness, but it’s under control unlike this morning. I went out to this all you can eat Kabob restaurant and it was amazing. I had some bouts of scratchiness and I probably could’ve made an exceptional Crying While Eating video if someone was there to film me. In reality, I probably looked like a wuss that couldn’t handle the mild spiciness of the food as I teared up while eating that tender grilled lamb. Apparently, you can get a lamb brain platter at this place. I’ll have to round up a few people and take that one on sometime. Ah, the joys of being stuck at home all day. I’m finding all the great lunch specials around where I live.

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

It is with great effort I bring you this installment. My eyes areclosed mostly while I type so bear with any typos and stuff.

So, the surgery was a success! I’m still seeing out of my eyeballs, I’m able to log on and typethis, walk around outside and interact with people, all with out glasses. Amazing. However, the road isn’t quite over yet as this is Epi-LASIK we’re talking about here, not regular LASIK. My operation was around11AM, and it is now nine PM. For a typical LASIK patient, they’d be seeing perfect and in very little pain by now. Epi-LASIK, however, means I’m seeing blurry still, and my eyes basically need to recover from a large surface abrasion.

My wonderful roommate Meghan drove me home afterwards and I could definitely feel the anaesthesia wear off and the bruning ensue. It felt like the scrathy, there’s something in your eye, feeling I read about. However, once I got home, everything was dandy, except for this one eye drop med I wasn’t able to find at a pharmacy, but it’s ok because I get can that tomorrow at the office. The pain was really minimal, so much so that I didn’t even get the pain relief med that they prescribed me. I’ve taken two naps and went out to some carry out kabob place nearby. I can make out larger text across the room, a feat that would’ve had me up against the poster to read before. I could probably drive on local roads now, but I’m still not at 20/20 yet. The blurriness should go away over the next few days or weeks. However, after the second nap, my eyes are burning a lot more. My doctor called this afternoon and told me I’ll probably start to feel the worst tomorrow afternoon and Saturday, then the pain will subside on Sunday. If it gets worse than this, I think I’m gonna get those pain meds they prescribed. Thought I just took a Tylenol and the burning is going down as I write this. Looking at computer screens is a bit tough as you gotta move your eyes around a lot which irritates them and I need to blow up the text real big. I feel like I’m on the other side of web design now. I’m the guy web designers have to make their sites look nice for when the text gets all blown up.

So I bet your darn curious about the actual procedure so I’ll go over that now. After reading about the lasik procedure I had a good idea of what to expect, but some things weren’t quite how I envisioned them. First I went in and an assistant set me up with all the forms and payment and was very nice and gave lots of reassurances. After that, a doctor came in, not Rubinfeld, but the doctor that was in charge of my post-operation care and checkups. I guess Rubinfeld just does the screenings and the surgery. I think it works out to have this other doctor do the post op because Rubinfeld is just so busy with the surgeries and everything else. At this point, that cold that I was starting to feel last night came back a little bit and I was having trouble focusing. But he went through all the eye drops and eye shields that I’d be using. He put it all in apouch with directions becuase most people forget what the heck to do by the time they get home. He kindly answered any questions I had which weren’t many since I had asked Rubinfeld most of them by now. This doctor also did a thorough check of my eye prescription again. Finally, Dr Rubinfeld came in , wrote some stuff, asked me for last minute questions and then gave me a pill to take. Now this was thep art I was excited about, the powerful mood altering drug. “Now let’s get you stoned” was how Dr. Rubinfeld jokingly put it as he gave me the pill. However, I was pretty disappointed by the results. For some reason, this drug didn’t seem to have any noticable effects. I felt the slight remnants I had of a cold did more to knock me out than this drug. They took me down to this dark waiting room with really nice comforting music and little waterfalls to help you relax. The staff people there were super nice offering snnacks and chatting with you the whole time. They really do everything they can to make you comfortable.

After I sat down, I saw the first patient emerge from the operating room. That was probably the most comforting thing of the whole morning. Seeing someone walking right out, happily chatting (and a little loopy) really made me think, this ain’t gonna be bad at all. However, it seemed like everyone else in the room was loopy except for me. I mentioned the lack of loopiness to the person down there and apparently, I had only gotten one pill of a different drug because I was doing Epi-LASIK. My heart was beating kind of fast when they called me in, but not really too bad.

However, what did work very well (thank goodness) were the numbing drops they put in my eyes after laying down. They had an ipod system in the room to play music. I was hoping for some Yanni as you can’t beat that for relaxing background music, but we settled for some Coldplay because they didn’t have Yanni. Rubinfeld ran a fast efficient operation. I guess that was to be expected from a guy whose done this like twenty thousand times. Pretty amazing when you think about it. This life changing operation of yours is just another blip on his record. That’s a good thing, though. You don’t want your LASIK to be a memorable one for him, since that probably means something’s not gone right.

So there I was, my head was slid under this machine with all kinds of lights and stuff. I could see his figure above me. The first thing was to get the metal clamp to hold your eye open. You can feel that part since your eyelids aren’t numb, but it feels like what you’d expect, a metal thing holding your eye open. Didn’t hurt at all, it’s hard to describe, it was more ‘tiring’ feeling than anything. It’s like when you’re stretching, after holding the stretch you aren’t hurting or anything, but you just want to release and go back to normal.

Blinking… I know for me that was the biggest nightmare. What if I blink and mess up the operation. Well, the metal thing does a good job of holding you open and the numbing drops make you not really need to blink. However, if you’re like me, just thinking about blinking makes you want to blink and you get this urge to. I did have that urge slightly, and if you do try to blink the clamp holds you open, but it gets rid of the urge. It’s hard to explain, but even for a compulsive blinker like me, it wasn’t too bad.

The worse part was holding still. For a fidgety person like me, lying still made me want to scream. However, they were prepared for that and gave me two stress balls as I lied down and I took out all my fidgetyness on them.

So the first big thing is the suction cup thing grabs on to your eyeball so they can cut your epithelium off (or cut a flap for you regular LASIK folk). That was the biggest sensation of the operation. Even though you’re numb, you can definitely feel them push that thing down on your eye. It really did feel like they pushed down really hard, so be prepared for that. Then, it stays there while the blade goes across and cuts. I rmeember some kind of vibrating thing and I don’t know if I was imagining it, but I felt like I could feel something going across my eye. Now, in the first eye they did, I think there was one active nerve or something. I felt an instant of pain, like a pin had touched my eyeball for a split second. I guess one nerve ending didn’t saok up any anaesthesia. It made me jump and not look forward to the other eye, but that’s about it. It didn’t happen again on the second eye. Everything goes dark when this cup is on your eye. It’s kind of like fainting. Everything fades out to black and fades back in when they take it off. Not sure why, maybe it cuts off the circulation or something.

After it comes off, he reminds you to keep looking at this little green light. Dr. Rubinfeld kept talking the entire time telling me how good everything was going. In one respect, everything seemed hectic and rushed with how fast they were going and talking, but on the other hand, I wanted that operation to be over as fast as possible, so I was glad for the fast pace. They did a good job with letting you know the status, some parts of the operation they could countdown, which really helped a lot because I knew how much longer I needed to hold still for. He had some little tools he would rub over my eyes with, some kind of squeegee or something to clear everything away. Then the laser started.

It looked wierd, you could hear sound, and see lights on the surface of your eyeball, those were probably the scanning/targeting lights, not the actual laser light. It looked like something out of the terminator where there’s stuff overlayed on your cornea. You could smell some slight odor which I had read about. Immediately after the laser he warns you he’s about to put some cold thing on your eye and he does the squeegee thing and counts down and does this cold spray all over your eye. That part actually feels kind of good and you know it’s almost over.

Finally, he lays a contact lens on your eye as a bandage (an Epi-LASIK thing, since you have no epithelium cells for a few days) and takes out the clamp. It feels so darn good to close your eyese. It’s like holding a stretch for a few minutes and finally releasing . Your eyelids feel really tired, but other than that, I felt pretty good. I got up, said thank you to everyone, and was walked over to this dark room with really nice recliners with heat and massage. I could already see better and no longer needed my glasses. The loopy people in the waiting room all waved to me as I walked past which made me smile. I still wasn’t loopy at all, though. I still want some of what they had.

After a few minutes they did a little final check before I headed out with Meghan to go home. The weather decided to get all sunny by the time I got out which was sucky because you are really light sensitive. Fortunately they gave me sunglasses, but it was still really freakin bright.

So that’s the story of my Epi-LASIK procedure. Now the saga continues as my eyes recover and the blurriness goes away. I’ll definitely keep postong on that. I hope this post will help those of you who are thinking about LASIK or Epi-LASIK or already have the operation scheduled and are trying to learn more about what it’s like. Overall, the operation was not bad at all. The worst part was seriously holding still. But I’m known for being a very fidgety guy, always moving and shaking, and I’ve had some nervous ticks in the past where I blink a lot when I’m nervous, so if I was able to sit still through it, I think it should be a lot easier for most of you.

My vision is still blurry, and my eyes will be burning and scratchy for a couple days (though that Tylenol I took when I started typing has kicked in and I’ve been typing with my eyes open for a lot of this post now). I chose Epi-LASIK knowing this, and the payoff is I had a less invasive procedure and won’t need to worry about a dislodged flap. I think even if my vision stays right where it is now, the operation was worth it. Before, I was absolutely helpless without glasses. Now, I can do most daily things without them.

Table of contents for My Epi-Lasik Journal

1. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt1
2. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt2: Getting ready
3. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt3: Why I chose Epi-LASIK over regular LASIK
4. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt4: The night before
5. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt5: The morning of
6. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt6: The Operation
7. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt7: The Aftermath
8. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt8: Two days after
9. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt9: Three days after, some unevenness
10. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt10: Not so uneven
11. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt11: No more bandages
12. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt12: More bandages
13. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt13: A couple weeks later, no onions
14. My Epi-LASIK Journal pt 14: Epi-LASIK Video

I’m up and ready to head out to the surgery. Fortunately, I’ve woken up and my feelings of having a cold are gone! That’s definitely one big worry out of the way. Unfortunately I got a morning slot so I’m kind of sleepy, but that will probably go away once I get there. Plus, I’ll be able to sleep well after getting back. My roommate Meghan was nice enough to pick me up afterwards. You’re supposed to come home and sleep for a while to get over the worst of the recovery. Alright, here goes.