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It's been one month since my LASIK surgery, and I went to the eye doctor today for my checkup. 

The conclusion is amazing to the point of disbelief, but we did the tests several times.  You may remember I was -9.25 diopters or roughly 20/1600. 

Tangent: What does 20/20 mean? (or 6/6 in metric)

If you have 20/20 vision, it means that when you stand 20 feet away from the chart you can see what the "normal" human being can see. (In metric, the standard is 6 meters and it's called 6/6 vision). In other words, if you have 20/20 vision your vision is "normal" -- a majority of people in the population can see what you see at 20 feet.

If you have 20/40 vision, it means that when you stand 20 feet away from the chart you can see what a normal human can see when standing 40 feet from the chart. That is, if there is a normal person standing 40 feet away from the chart and you are standing only 20 feet away from it, you and the normal person can see the same detail. 20/100 means that when you stand 20 feet from the chart you can see what a normal person standing 100 feet away can see. 20/200 is the cutoff for legal blindness in the United States.

So, my vision was fairly bad, but such is the life of the four-eyed geek right?  Everyone remembers not being able to see the blackboard and telling their parents.  Next thing you know you're 30, have worn glasses your whole life and didn't go to prom. Well, maybe not that last part, but you get the idea.

Anyway, went to the doctor today, and my vision is officially 20/10.  Yes, 10.  That means I see as clear from 20 feet as a person standing at 10 feet.  So, pretty amazing.  I still have some slight visual artifacts in the right eye in complete darkness, but that gets better every day.  All in all, a significantly better result than I could have expected, especially considering when I orignally decided to get this done 5 years ago, I was told "We don't recommend LASIK for folks more than -8."  Clearly that has changed, and the technology has improved.

Anyway, I won't sully this technology blog anymore with LASIK musings, except maybe for the six month and one year checkups.