Just had my LASIK a few hours ago.....

I had mine done almost three months ago for 3500 but my wife's work benefits picked up 700 of it, woo hoo! I'm happy with it. No more contacts, no more (broken) glasses.

Use those artificial tears liberally even after the other drops aren't used anymore. Keep them eyes wetted down! Just in case you didn't ask the eye doc about shooting & recoil...You're dry firing for a month minimum, but it's worth it. The recoil may unseat the cornea. My doc was a shooter and we talked all about it. He said even a 223 recoil may unseat the healing cornea. He may have just been saying that to cover his butt but I decided to take his advice to cover my butt! Full healing takes a year or so.

I'm at about 90 days now and shot about 60 rounds of 45/70 yesterday, good to go.

That was the weirdest thing watching your cornea be flipped over.:eek:

I was in and out in about 15 minutes. Wish I could make money like that.
 
ISP - have you noticed that you have trouble finding things, even if they're laying out in cluttered plain sight, or only partially concealed by something else?

My theory is that I never developed a strong set of habits and techniques for using my vision to find things. Might be just me, but at least this theory keeps my wife from mocking me too severely when I need her help to find my car keys that are sitting out on a shelf.
 
"ISP - have you noticed that you have trouble finding things, even if they're laying out in cluttered plain sight, or only partially concealed by something else?"

I've always had that problem. I figured it's just part of getting old.:D
I do know what you mean tho. It must be similiar to those who are deaf, blind, whatever, where when one of the senses is lacking then the body relies on other senses to compensate.
I had halo for a couple of months but it eventually went away. Even the halo I had wasn't bad. Sort of like when contacts needed cleaning.
One of my people had lasik and had complications. She didn't wear the goggles the first night and knocked the flap off by rubbing her eyes that night. They put the flap back and gave her some kind of different drops for a week. She's running good now.
There are risks with any surgery, and lasik is surgery. Even going to the dentist has some risk.
You gave excellent advice about picking a doctor. I have glaucoma in my right eye and beginning in my left. My doc was at first reluctant to do lasik. Other than the glaucoma everything else indicated I was a perfect candidate. I was presistent and he did additional tests which showed that the glaucoma was controllable and wouldn't affect the surgery or outcome. If lasik wasn't an option then the next possibility was PRK. It didn't sound as quick or painfree as lasik but doc said it was actually better for those in heavy contact. He said the military usually does PRK instead of lasik for those involved in heavy ops. He said if I was going to play pro football or go back into the military in some kind of spec ops unit then he'd recommend PRK instead of lasik. Since I've already done 26+ yrs in the military I didn't figure they needed me nor that I'd be running down anytime soon to get back in. And even tho the Bears need all the help they can get, it's not likely they'll be calling. So lasik it was. Before surgery not only could I know see the big E on the chart, I couldn't even see the chart. It was just a light colored blob on the wall with absolutely no hint of letters printed on it. My astigmatism was bad enough that every doorway in my house looked like an archway. Wasn't a straight line anywhere. My vision was so poor that the doc said he probably could have hit me upside the head like a broken TV and it would have improved. A year after surgery, perfect. 20/15 in my left and 20/20 in my right, and no astigmatism. I do need reading glasses. I needed them before surgery. Comes with getting older.
 
One of my people had lasik and had complications. She didn't wear the goggles the first night and knocked the flap off by rubbing her eyes that night.
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I wonder how many people complaining of bad results from LASIK did something intensely stupid like this?

I was also taught "don't screw with your eyes," and while that didn't ultimately dissuade me from getting LASIK, it was what motivated me to be religious about the post-operative drops and carefully protecting my corneas during the healing process.
 
I wonder how many people complaining of bad results from LASIK did something intensely stupid like this?
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Bingo. My brother-in-law is an opthamologist and 99% of the time when he discusses a complication, the story starts with "I told the patient not to do something, and they did it."
 
It was like A Clockwork Orange for me - the idea of dislodging my eye flaps made me so nauseated that I was willing to do just about anything to avoid it.
 
I was working as a potential supplier for the makers of the Lasik equipment years ago. Every Bausch and Lomb engineer I dealt with wore glasses... When asked why they all had some BS reason why they hadn't had the surgery.

They then joked about the doctor who had been making the demo movie for the procedure. On camera he mis set the depth of the cut for the flap by an order of 10. Something like 100 microns in place of 10 microns. He lopped the lens off the patient's eye on camera. That is not something typically shown at demos...

I know two people who have had it. Both have gone back regularly, one for years. The recent one has had one problem after another but still swears by the surgery... perhaps it is a case of the "Emperor's New Clothes" or not wanting to admit he dumped a load of cash...

When they prove to me they can grow me a replacement eye and implant it I might let them muck around with my vision. Until then I will stick with my glasses.
 
I plan on getting it done as soon as I get back to the states from Iraq this coming fall. I have one possible advantage, the military will fix my eyes for free. That's quite the incentive.

Like many of you, I've had glasses for most of my life. Probably about 25 years or so. I need them to do everything. Literally.

I will be glad to be rid of glasses. I hate them.

I believe the risks are worth the benefits.
 
Well, I'm 72 hours post-op, and still doing great. :)

I sleep with the dorky patches on, but if it keeps me from rubbing my eyes, it's worth it. I use the drops (about 15 a day) religiously. I still have halo effects when looking at headlights, but that's to be expected at this stage, and may never fully go away. Like someone else said, it's just like wearing contacts that haven't been cleaned for a day or two.

I'm wearing sunglasses at work today to keep myself from absent mindedly rubbing my eyes. People think I look "Hollywood" by wearing them while indoors. :) No autographs, please.
 
For me the greatest advantage of Lasik was being with my wife and SEEING what was going on, I had work contacts before we dated, but two months before I got married I got splashed with some stuff that made it impossoble to wear contacts for a long time, and once I was out of practice, my eyes would reject contacts violently.

I went to the eye doc that did the eyes of several local pro baseball players, he was more expensive but he was much slower paced than the first place I had gone, where I just got that nope, this aint the place for me feeling and I left. The second guy took much longer, made three different maps of my eyeballs, one laying down, one standing, and one sitting, saying that the differences in blood pressure actually affected your eye pressure and thus the shape of the eye.

Once he was done I could see, I mean I had ted williams eyes, I went to a gold tournament and I was able to see a guy tee off, one hole before the one I was on. I would tell my buddies that John Daly just hit it to the right of the bunker and they would say no way, and he would end up walking to wear I had called it. I was picking up a golf ball at a thousand yards!!!!, this sort of hyper vision slowly faded, and now I am at 20-15 left and 20-20 right.

Now when the Mrs says yes, I can enjoy it all the more.
 
Have any of you with lasik had astigmatism? Did that effect your surgery/qualifications?



DANZIG, how are you getting Uncle Sugar to pay for eye surgery? I'm deployed right now, and if you wouldn't mind sharing your secret..;)
 
Now when the Mrs says yes, I can enjoy it all the more.
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Yeah, but some women are so ugly, you don't wanna see them! :eek: .......That wasn't very nice was it?

I've been so scared of this procedure it makes my skin crawl but after reading all of these replies I'm now seriously looking into it, if I can afford it.
 
Now when the Mrs says yes, I can enjoy it all the more.
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My main problem is that she prefers the lights off. :/

That ICL procedure looks pretty interesting, you should check into that too, it's good for -3 to -15. I like the fact that it doesn't make any physical alteration to the visual field of the eye, and that it can be tweaked and adjusted if necessary.

I think my wife and I will look into this for her, it looks like it would be a much better option than LASIK given her health issues.

WestPhoenix - do you have a name of a doctor you could pass along?
 
No that was a thread from another forum I frequent. Shifty is well known there and that was his experience. I got glasses/contacts for the first time a year ago and have been looking at options. I don't like the Lasik idea, but this new one sounds pretty good.
 
"Have any of you with lasik had astigmatism? Did that effect your surgery/qualifications?"

Yup, I had bad astigmatism. They plug that into the computer to correct it too. Not a problem.
 
With some web searching I found the closest ICL doctor to us, down in Connecticut (we're in NH), and sent an e-mail.
 
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