Lasik

This is Day #2 following Lasik. What an experience. I’m definitely not used to it yet. The current experience is something like wearing a good pair of glasses, but having a bit of a fog or haze to look through. Initially, I would get crystalline images with a kaleidoscope effect. It’s actually more like wearing my glasses than I would have suspected, since close vision is now harder for me. I always took off my glasses for reading up close, and it’s a bit more of a strain to look at a book than into the distance—an experience I’ve only had with my glasses. I’m told this is not the final product, though. It may take 3-6 months to achieve optimal vision after Lasik.

I did have the unique experience of having the corneal flaps created in two different ways. They highly recommended the Intralase procedure, which cost $300 more per eye. This is the use of a laser to open the corneal flap instead of the surgeon-guided microkeratome (a cutting instrument). Well, to my mind, the laser sounded preferable, as they told me it had a lower rate of complications than the microkeratome, though both had a great track record. The laser had greater precision, though. More precision, fewer complications…easy choice in something as precious as your eye, eh? I had a vision of the microkeratome being something like a scalpel, with the surgeon crudely hacking away at my eye…

Turns out that my right eye didn’t qualify for Intralase, as the eye had a corneal scar. I’m guessing that scar came from when Katie, at taekwondo, poked me in the eye with the bong-mong-ee (a soft bat) during class. That eye had a red ring around the iris for a few days! Therefore, I had one eye done with Intralase and the other with the microkeratome. Interestingly enough, I vastly preferred the microkeratome.
Intralase: required 2 stations during surgery (which means the apparatus holding the eye open had to be inserted twice instead of once)—the first station involving eye suction (awful sensation!) to pull the eye up for the laser application; requires hourly drops of prednisone for a couple of days vs only 4x/d in the other eye; required an awful contact (I hate contacts) to be worn for 24 hours; resulted in a hazy eye with a lot of blurring—and my left eye was always my good eye! Oh, and it feels like something is in my eye—grit, an eyelash, or something.
Microkeratome: quicker procedure at one station; no contact; fewer prednisone drops; the eye feel great and has clear vision (20/20 24 hr post-surgically)! Also, I’ve got $300 more than I would have if Katie hadn’t fortuitously poked me in the eye last year!
They say the blurring is quite normal, and I apparently had close to 20/20 with my left eye at the 24 hour mark, but it’s so hazy…
Anyway, I’m sure it will all turn out great, and my preference is based only on one experience. Perhaps it’s true that there are fewer complications with the Intralase, but that’s difficult for me to believe, given all the extra measures that they take with the Intralase procedure, you know?
My current concern was pointed out to me last night—what I believed to be saline drops are actually propylene glycol—as pointed out to me by Michael, who says that is antifreeze! I get an awful taste from them, and they are recommended for months… Anyway, that can’t be good for me, and the absorption rate of the eye is quite high. Just don’t want to be applying something that is not so good for me continuously… I need to look up the toxicity info on that!

Okay, so it was a memorable event, that procedure. I think I’d had the idea that they just normalize your eye shape a bit with the Lasik, but now I get the sense that they were applying a prescription to my eyeball—which kind of makes me nervous, since my prescription strength doesn’t tend to stay constant. But I really don’t know…

Oh, one last bit on my Lasik experience. I was given a choice of having regular Lasik or customized Lasik—which reduces glare, improves night vision, and, in short, gives you super-deluxe bionic eyes with X-ray vision :). Anyhow, I did get the customized (for $300 per eye extra), of course, but I’m still trying to figure out how to turn on the eye lasers… Luckily, I was able to get both eyes customized, so I won’t be able to report on whether I can really sense a difference between having customized and not having it.