Pioneer on the Internet – Sean Gursky

This is my third installment about my recovery from PRK surgery on June 3rd, which was two weeks ago today.

A common question I get when I tell people my vision is still blurred is “How long is it supposed to take until it gets better?”. They ask exactly the same question I ask myself several times a day. I have seen recovery times of one to three weeks, or even as long as several months but the common theme is: have patience, it gets better.

I am currently in a stage referred to as ‘functional fuzzy’, where I can see objects, distinguish what they are but not see them in any detail. Some days the objects are clearer than others, and other times they have squiggles for text.

I am taking Flarex drops four times daily and Systane Ultra drops about six times a day. I do not find that my eyes get dry but I do not want to take any chances. In fact I notice the more time that passes after I blink the more clearly I can see. I blink and things go fuzzy before slowly sharpening up.

In addition to the drops I have started taking Vitaminc C supplements (500mg twice a day) as a forum I visited on recovery times suggested that it would help the recovery process. At the very least I have a little more Vitaminc C in my diet.

Still, two weeks after the surgery and things have been fairly consistent with their blurriness for the last nine days. My eye sight could be getting better, but it would be so subtle of a change day to day that I may not notice until it is all done. I find I am sitting further away from the computer than I was a week ago, but I am still on a larger 1024×768 resolution so it is no cause for celebration yet.

I am driving a vehicle and playing hockey with no problems. Night driving is a little more tricky since I am unable to read street signs if it is not a well lit area but I get by fine in daylight. This is a slow process, a little tedious at times, but I have to remind myself that I am two weeks into something that may take several months.

The days following my PRK eye surgery have been very frustrating. I knew that after the surgery my eye sight would come and go, there would be waves of pain and discomfort but I never imagined I would be without clear vision for several days in a row.

Even though you know that this is ‘how it is supposed to be’ there is still something aggravating about not having any vision improvements. I have started writing this four days after the surgery and even though the resolution on the laptop has been set to “Grandparent” I can see what I am typing, which is a big improvement and the first time I could accomplish this since the surgery.

Now that I have a chance to share my word, where do I begin? The surgery part was over in a matter of minutes. Every person had talked about how fast it would be, but I had no idea it would be that fast. I will back it up a step however.

Surgery Day
With the PRK procedure the cornea is removed prior to the laser and during this I could see the doctor scrape and brush my cornea away. It was like looking through saran wrap with someone using a paint brush with milky paint to obstruct your vision. It was a good thing I was sedated with Ativan, Tylenol 3 and several rounds of numbing eye drops because that would have been very uncomfortable to sit through otherwise.

The laser part of the surgery was not as strange but still intense. For something so advanced and high tech I expected it to last longer or require a little more effort but I guess that would defeat the purpose of it being advanced.

It took me longer to read my post op sheet given to be me before the procedure than my time in the reclining chair under the laser. The next few days were a blur, both literal and figurative. I slept a lot. It was not uncommon for me to have a several hour nap during the day and then sleep for nine or ten hours at night. I could not watch TV so I would listen to music in a dark room or progress through my Harry Potter audio book.

Recovery Process
The pain was never outrageous, but a Tylenol 3 and a cold pack of peas were always able to sort things out. Friday (two days after the surgery) was supposed to be the most painful day but I found that I was most blind on this day. Things held inches away from my face were still blurry and I had to squint, tilt my head or obstruct my vision with fingers to make letters out.

I would wake up most mornings able to see a photo on the dresser across the room clearly and think that everything was back to normal. Then as I went into a well lit room I was brought down to reality with a world of haze and blur.

Protective Lenses
The day I was to have my protective lenses removed I woke with a sharp and fierce pain in my left eye. No amount of blinking could make it stop. I did my regime of eye drops and the pain eventually subsided. I imagine the contact lens was out of place or sticking to something it shouldn’t.

In any case my appointment to remove the protective lenses later that day showed my cornea was healed fine and the lenses were no longer needed. The bliss I had on Sunday with good vision was brought down a notch as my world was blurry and fuzzy.

One Week Later
It has now been one week since the surgery and there have been mild improvements but they feel few and far between. I have been going through a fuzzy and out of focus world for four days since the protective lenses were removed and any time I think my vision is improving something else is out of focus.

I was cleared to drive a vehicle, but street signs from a distance would not be distinguishable. Until I feel a little more comfortable behind the wheel I will bike to work and get some exercise while I am at it.

As the recovery process goes on I shall post updates and hopefully be able to confidently stand by my decision for eye surgery.

Other posts about my PRK surgery and recovery can be found under the ‘eye surgery’ post tag here.

I remember the night well. It was a warm evening in Millet and I went for a walk with some friends to honor the final day before I was equipped with glasses. As a Junior High student in a small school I thought I was doomed by wearing glasses. They took a long time to become comfortable with them but after a while they were natural and felt they were always there.

I bent my first set of frames more than I can remember. It seemed that glasses had the magical presence to attract a soccer ball, volleyball or basketball to the face. This would usually lead to a bend in the bridge, warping the nose piece or damaging the arm. I became quite adept at fixing glasses on the go, and to my surprise they never broke.

Contacts came in High School and it was an experience to be liberated from the glasses but they did not come without consequence. My eyes were dry, a little red, and never completely comfortable with them in. I used them gladly over glasses when it came to playing a sport that involved a helmet.

Years passed and glasses became a way of life, just something I had to take care of every day. The dry weather of Alberta forced me to rely on glasses more than contacts. When it came time to buy new frames I discovered the goldmine of buying frames/lenses from online stores. I enjoyed fashion and diversity at a cost of $10 to $30 for new frames compared to insanely priced $200+ ones at Lenscrafters or other locations.

All of this will be a distant memory after today as I have laser corrective surgery done on my eyes. I have thought about laser eye surgery for years. It was always some notion in the back of my head and in May I decided it was time to investigate for myself and see what my options were. Things moved at a faster rate than I expected and the week following my initial consultation with the doctor I selected I was booked for the surgery.

I opted for Photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) and my healing process will put me out of commission for a few days. I will try and document the next few days as best I can but I am not expecting much computer use in that time so we will see what happens.

Always one for tradition, I made sure that the final night, and morning, before my surgery was memorable. I played hockey with the Ice Dragons netting a goal and an assist (sadly in a loss). Then in the morning I awoke before the sun in the morning and watched its rise on the deck with a cup of coffee, my thoughts, birds chirping and the sound of commuters going to work early.

I guess I will see you around Internet, stay classy.

Bauer became an adult yesterday. His birth certificate from the Humane Society said he was born on May 21, 2008 but that is not why he left his kitten ways behind. Yesterday Bauer was able to use his feline mind trick powers to coax a bird into our laundry vent.

He did not realize he was successful in his mission until Jenna turned the drier on to clean some clothes and heard some rustling and a faint chirp. For the next few hours Bauer awaited his prey by the drier, staring at the metallic tubing for hours, waiting for his chance to attack.

When I returned from work I cleared out the laundry room to make room to move the drier and began my extraction of whatever was in the tubing. I had no idea how big, or how small, the bird was in the tubing when I was shaking it out so I expected the worst.

Even though I knew a bird was in the tubing I was still surprised to see a dust covered bird plop into the box. I carried the box to the balcony and took the cover off expecting the bird to immediately fly away. It stayed in the box for a minute or so, examining its surroundings and then flew away seeking salvation in a nearby tree.

How the bird got into the drier’s exhaust is a mystery, but I am sure Bauer is already planning his next mind trick on a much larger target for his second birthday.

May Long weekend is the reason you eat hot dogs. Come rain or shine, and in the instance of this weekend, snow, hot dogs are consumed. Jenna and I were only camping for a single day, and had we stayed longer I may have completed my tube steak challenge. Instead I hit a very important milestone by reaching fifty.

At the end of last month I encountered some very unpleasant hot dogs with dried buns and burnt wieners.

I will have to do right by them and make sure the next hot dogs have fresh buns from the bakery and complete with all of the fixings.

The five on Saturday may not have had bakery fresh buns, fried onions or gourmet relish but there was a simple condiment arsenal of ketchup, mustard and relish and best of all, an open fire. I may save the bakery fresh buns for when I complete my challenge.

I had a dream.

A dream that would have taken the Canucks all the way to the Stanley Cup finals. This year felt different, it felt like we had a chance. We came off an amazing second half and went into the first round of the playoffs with a full roster.

To celebrate the occasion I decided to grow a playoff beard. No razor would touch my face as long as the Canucks were still in the post season. I have neglected to shave before, usually over a weekend, but the only area that would see growth was a perfectly formed goatee. I felt that this challenge would be a good way to find out what can grow where, and how much.

I was one day shy of going four full weeks without shaving, almost went the duration of Survivor, and then the Chicago Blackhawks came along and outgunned my team in a thrilling sixth, and deciding, game. I held a moment of silence for my team and my recently crushed hopes and shaved off the beard.

The aftermath wasn’t pretty but the end result was a smooth face I had not felt in a long time. When I was all done I realized how much I licked my upper lip because I never quite got used to the feeling of the bristly mustache. Most people said I looked very French, not sure if that was a compliment or an insult. Either way, it was a sight to behold as it grew in a very sleazy way.

Forty-nine photos were used in the animated image of the playoff beard, but if you want to see it a little better you can see it in 334×338 (2.8MB) or the larger version of 556×553 (7.2MB).

Thanks for the season Canucks, one day we will reach our dream together.

Now for an edition of my Saturday weekend report, weighing the good and bad of another ordinary day in the life of me.

Pros:

• Statusfirm won a Rosie at the AMPIA annual awards for best digital media project

Cons:

• Canucks lost badly against Chicago
• Car was broken into later that night and my camera and lenses were among the items stolen

Balls!

If the aporkalypse is going to strike me down I want to document my naivety here for prosperity sake. Right now I am not worried about H1N1/Swine Flu because in my lifetime I have laughed in the face of Small Pox, Avian Flu, West Nile, SARS and Ebola.

I have licked batteries, crossed a street without authorization from the little walking man, enjoyed the mystery meat within the McRib, routinely consume expired yogurt and eggnog, ate Listeria contaminated meat, stood in front of the microwave all the while I am warming something up still inside its plastic container. I have been to the edge, looked over and turned around. After all of that I am still around to tell my tale.

But, if in a one year from now this pandemic has devastated the population then let it be known that I was really, really wrong. Sorry about that.

I am now one step closer to having seagurs.com back in my possession.

I have debated a lot about what I would do to regain seagurs.com. I contemplated spending the $50USD to 1and1 to retrieve the domain out of the Redemption Period, or just forgetting about it completely. Ultimately I decided to ‘back ordered’ the domain through GoDaddy and see what would happen.

However, when I suspected that GoDaddy wasn’t going to successful secure my domain I found a domain auction and entered a bid into that. I felt kind of odd bidding on a domain I had owned for years, but seeing the advertisement parking on the site made me realize how much I would hate it if someone else had control of my former identity and the least I could do was try to secure it through another method.

I won the domain auction without hassle, and to my surprise ‘back order’ from GoDaddy did not help in the process. I paid my $9.00 for the domain bid and now with the WhoIs updated to show that I control seagurs.com I can rest a little easier. Unfortunately I am still not out of the woods yet.

Now I began the steps of transferring the domain over to GoDaddy and then maintaining it from there. Until I can complete the domain transfer, which may require me to wait 60 days because I just bought the domain, the advertisements on the site will stay. Even doing a domain redirect with my temporary registrar would set me back $25USD which is too much for that 60 day period.

It has been a long road back to recovery but I can see that the end is in sight.

The Vancouver Canucks live to see another round. It may have been over in four games but it was anything but a lopsided series. St. Louis fought extremely hard and played an aggressive series. Had it not been for Luongo’s goal tending performance and the lackluster Power Play from the Blues this could have easily been a seven games series.

Which leads me to an interesting fact about the Canucks series victory. In addition to being their first series sweep in franchise history, it is also the first time the Canucks have won a series in under seven games since 1994. And the memories of 1994 are still very real to me. I am not one to get wrapped up in stats or history, but if this playoff run is going to be different from ones before it then it certainly is off to a good start.

The advancement to the second round also means by playoff beard will be around for another week or two. However the results have been less than impressive but it amuses everyone who sees it. I can only hope that if Vancouver goes deep into the playoffs that my beard doesn’t become the source of great shame while I support my team.

Tube Steak Challenge

When does a hot dog cease to become a hot dog? What constitutes a hot dog for this Tube Steak Challenge? Last night there were four buns and four hot dogs but they were the least enjoyable hot dogs I have consumed since I started keeping track. The buns were freezer burnt and the top half was too hard while the bottoms were thin and unable to maintain the buns integrity.
 
The hot dogs were well enough, except one side was burnt more than I would have liked. I feel like I am dishonoring the other 41 hot dogs before them by adding these four to this batch but there are expected highs and lows in any challenge and this was a definite low point. I will have to do right by them and make sure the next hot dogs have fresh buns from the bakery and complete with all of the fixings.