Lasik

(Note: This is a post that I started in February, a few weeks after undergoing Lasik surgery. I finally finished it. Thank you for your patience)



I've looked into corrective eye surgery off and on for years now. The promise of not having to wear contacts or glasses has a certain appeal to it. Especially when my glasses have fogged up once again from the cold. Or when I'm at a pool or the beach and can't see because I've had to remove my glasses or contacts. Nothing like trying to ogle a hottie from afar only to find out that a) they aren't so hot or b) it's your brother!

I've known several people over the last ten to fifteen years that have had corrective surgery. They all have said the same thing "I wish I had done this years ago!" The kicker for me to finally look at it seriously was when I went to one of my doctors in December and noticed he wasn't wearing glasses any more. When I asked him, he said that he had Lasik surgery several weeks before and it was just amazing. He had the surgery on a Friday and was doing surgery himself on the following Tuesday.

Mid January I finally went in for a consultation. My concerns were: How much will it hurt? What happens if something goes wrong in surgery? Will having a problem with dry eyes be a hindrance? How well will I see after surgery? How much does it cost?

I seemed to be an excellent candidate. There is minor discomfort with the majority of it being within the first three hours after the surgery. You receive a generic Valium to take to help you sleep through that first part. Thank god! Turns out there's a bit more than minor discomfort right after and I didn't think I could get to sleep fast enough. It felt like I had sand in my eyes, which thankfully went away in my sleep. I couldn't touch my eyes or the area around them for the first week and I had to sleep on my back. With goggles on. I've always been a side sleeper, curled up in the fetal position. At this point I'm thinking that the only way I'll make it through the first week after surgery is to be strapped down to the bed at night. A dream come true for Robbie, I must say.

We scheduled the surgery for two weeks after the consultation. I also elected to get a procedure called Mono-vison so that I wouldn't need reading glasses. They figure out which eye is your dominate one and make that one focused for distance vision. My left eye was to be corrected so that I could read without glasses. Very important to me since I consider myself an avid reader. If it's in print, I read it. Books, magazines, newspapers, cereal boxes. It doesn't matter.

The morning of the surgery arrived and Robbie took me to my appointment since I wouldn't be able to drive home. Nobody knew just how freaked out I was until the doctor came in and told me it was pretty normal to get a little freaked. I said "No. You don't get it. I'm not a little freaked. I'm thinking you have got to be kidding me! I'm going to let a machine suction itself to my eye, laser a flap on my cornea, laser what's under it into a different shape, smooth the flap back down and be okay with it? And then do it again on the other eye?" No, sirree bob. I'm not letting you or that machine touch me until I know how many times out of the 10 thousand you've done that this hasn't worked.

Only a fraction of one percent of the surgeries the doctor has performed have not ended with the desired results. He's done thousands of them and only had bad results a few times. Once was when he was trying to correct what another doctor had botched. And the other time he could think of was an instance where they could correct the problem on a subsequent visit. Then I started breathing normally again.

They guarantee 20/20 vision or your money back. That's great, but what do you do then with the resulting bad vision? Back to wearing glasses and/or more surgeries. And it only costs 24 monthly payments interest free with approved credit. Have to say, it's a little weird getting elective surgery on the same terms as buying a sofa or carpeting, which we did last fall. And as it turns out, the finance company is the same for both. At least I'll be able to see the new carpet and the bills with the new vision.

After the Valium took effect, they walked me into the operating room, which looked amazingly like a room at a spa, but with a huge mechanical contraption in the middle of it. It was like a cross between a CAT machine and facial steamer on steroids. I'm not too sure exactly what it looked like since my glasses had been left in the other room. And hopefully in the next few minutes, I would never need them again.

My personal concierge, Rachel, walked me over to the table and had me lie down. The staff made sure I was comfortable while the Dr. readied me by explaining that he would use retractars on my eyelids to keep me from blinking during the procedure. If you've ever seen "A Clockwork Orange" then you have a very good idea of what the apparatus looks like. He then positioned the machine over my right eye and had me focus on a green dot that was surrounded by several red ones. I felt a little irritation while the laser cut the flap in my cornea, sort of like having dust or grit in my eye. Then the Dr. peeled the flap back and let the laser reshape my cornea. after that, he smoothed the flap back into place and moved onto the next eye.

Each eye took less than two minutes and the whole procedure lasted less than ten minutes. And true to their word, I could read the clock across the room. It was a bit like looking at something after coming out of a pool with water running down my face. But I could SEE! Then it was on to home, take another Valium, sleep for four hours and enjoy my new eyesight.

All in all, the procedure has went well. I can see well enough to read or watch television without glasses for the first time in my life. If I had to do it over again, I think I would have waited until summer when it's humid out to have it done. I've had a lot of dryness in my eyes due to the winter air having less humidity in it and subsequently some shooting pain in my left one from time to time. I'm not sure what that's about (other than being overly dry) but I took a picture of it to see if any of you out there can see what the problem is.