Written by Dave Homsher on Monday, 04 August 2008 Category:Random Hits:1893

I hate glasses.  I hate contacts.  I always have.  For that simple reason, I’ve always wanted to get LASIK surgery.  So, when I went to my free consultation, you can imagine my disappointment when I found out that I was not a candidate.   

However, as it turns out, all was not lost.  I was a candidate for Photorefractive keratectomy (PRK), which has marginally better long term results than LASIK, but has the distinct disadvantage of being twice as expensive with a SIGNIFICANTLY longer recovery time.  (See Wikipedia info here) 

In LASIK, a flap is cut with a laser in the cornea.  The surgeon then uses a laser to reshape the layer behind, and the flap is then replaced.  The recovery time is extremely minimal, often 3 days or less.  Unfortunately, my corneas were just too thin to allow for a safe flap.  During PRK the cornea is actually reshaped with the laser, and allowed to heal on its own afterwards.  The bad news is that the recovery process takes about a month to fully complete.  The following tale chronicles my crazy adventure.
 

DAY OF SURGERY

According to the folks at LASIK MD, I needed to take the morning of the surgery off from work, along with 2-4 days afterwards.  For that reason, I planned the surgery for a Thursday, with plans to take off through Monday, and return on Tuesday.  With my surgery scheduled for 11:30, I decided to relax at home instead of working the morning, since I knew that I had a tough weekend ahead.  To my dismay, the clinic was running SEVERAL hours late that day.  I spent 4+ hours in the waiting room waiting to have my name called.  When they finally moved me to the “dark room” for inpatients/outpatients, I was seriously excited.  Most of the folks in there had just exited the surgery, and were wearing very dark sunglasses, even though they were indoors.  I was happy to report that the sunglasses even looked wearable, and not like something out of the 1970s.  Around 4 pm, they called my name, and a little nervous, I entered the operating room. 

THE SURGERY

The first thing they do to you is give you a pair of squishy balls – you know those stress balls you store on your desk to keep from choking the obnoxious coworker 2 cubes over who is so loud that you couldn’t equal his volume level with a megaphone.  The assistant looks at me and goes “Whenever you want to touch or rub your eyes, give those a squeeze.”  I lay down on the table, surprisingly calm, and the surgeon removes my glasses saying “You won’t need these anymore.”  EFFING RIGHT!  With that, he starts the procedure.  He tapes one eye open and the other eye shut.  The open eye REALLY wants to blink.  I’m told to stare directly at the red light on the ceiling.  At that point the doctor starts POURING eye drops into the open eye.  And when I say pouring, I mean like an open fire hydrant. 

My vision goes fuzzy – sort of like frosted glass.  The surgeon takes a squeegee to my eye and cleans it off.  How appropriate.  He then loads me up with more drops – and its like more frosted glass.  He brings the squeegee in again.  Then the dude pulls out the dentist’s toothbrush – you know the one bristle thing that spins in a circle?  Well, he puts that ON MY EFFING EYE!!!!  Well, my eyes are so numb from the eye drops that I can’t feel a thing.  It was sort of like being violated, but without any feeling during whatever violation was occurring.  If the squishy balls were squishy animals, I just killed them. 

Then, in comes the green laser.  It’s the moment of truth.  At this point, I’m surprisingly calm.  Anything has to be better than the toothbrush.  I hear a little buzzing sound and a flash of purple shows in the center of my vision.  Then, there’s another buzz, and another purple flash.  At that point, I smell something burning.  What’s that?  O SNAP!!  IT’S MY FREAKING EYE!!  COOL!  Then, in about 15 seconds, it’s over.   

The surgeon then dumps a TON of cold eye drops in there.  If the first drops were like a fire hydrant, this is like Niagara Falls.  All I can think is – let it stop, let it stop, please let it stop.  Without question, this is the most uncomfortable part of the entire surgery. 

The process was repeated for the other eye, and wasn’t nearly as difficult since I knew what to expect.  I was on the table for a total of about 12 minutes, and when I sat up, I could read the clock on the wall.  WILD!  I was blind as a bat when I lay down, but afterwards could already see SIGNIFICANT improvement. 

We hung around for an hour, and my final check was pretty uneventful.  The team at the office wished me luck and told me that I had a rough night ahead.  They said they’d see me early the next morning and asked me not to hate any of them when I returned. 

I left feeling like a million bucks.  I had NO IDEA what the people at the clinic were talking about.  I was telling Michelle how cool the surgery was, and recapping my epic tale.  Even though the sunlight was bugging me, I could already see the improvement in my vision.  I was so excited I could hardly contain myself.  Even though they told me to take a nap right away, I wanted to run around all over the place.  I couldn’t have been in a better mood. 

NIGHT OF SURGERY

Then…the drugs wore off.  I was in pain like I can’t possibly describe.  My eyes felt like they were bulging out of my head.  I was loaded up on Vikotin and eye numbing drops, but they were irrelevant.  The light made things even worse.  My wife closed all the blinds and even went so far as to hang blankets over all of the windows in our living room.  The time on the cable box’s digital clock was like staring into 1000 suns.  My wife and I basically limped into the downstairs bathroom and she sat there with me in a pitch black 5X5 shoebox as I shook like a crying infant for over 2 hours. 

When the pain finally reached a manageable level, I crawled upstairs and lay in the hallway between our 3 bedrooms.  My wife brought me up an extremely healthy plate of frozen appetizers to munch on.  Somehow, I managed to make it to bed after dinner.  I slept like complete crap and woke up every few hours to take painkillers and eye drops, but considering how awful I felt just a few hours earlier, I didn’t really care. 

AFTER THE FIRST NIGHT

The next morning, I took a shower in complete darkness and my wife drove me back to the clinic.  The sun shone in the window was killing me even though my eyes were closed. She helped lead me towards the dark room and I walked headfirst into a pillar since my eyes hurt so much that I was keeping them closed as she led me around.  Some of the folks from the day before were in the normal waiting room without sunglasses or anything.  LASIK PUNKS!!  I sat in supreme discomfort until they called me into to check my eyes out.  I was 20/40 in one eye and 20/30 in the other.  Finally!  Some good news! 

The next few days were spent in complete darkness.  I spent Saturday and Sunday LISTENING to movies.  I couldn’t watch them, because the light would have destroyed me.  Monday and Tuesday I started to feel a little better, but was still unable to return back to work, so I watched movies through my sunglasses with the brightness set on 2 (It’s usually set on 31).

Wednesday, I finally forced myself back into the office.  My 7 minute drive was complete hell.  Even though it was overcast, and I was wearing extremely dark sunglasses.  The computer screen was so unreadable that I needed to set the computer to the lowest possible resolution so that I wouldn’t strain my eyes too much. 

Since then, things have steadily improved.  The mornings are still brutal, but as the day goes on, my eyes seem to get stronger, and by night, I can read the computer well enough to write crappy manrants articles. 

So, it’s 2 weeks later – what’s the final verdict?

I’m already 20/20.  It was supposed to take a month.  It took me less than 2 weeks.  As my eyes are not fully done healing, it’s reasonable to assume that in the end I’ll be even better than 20/20 vision.  ROCK ON.

However, the sunlight is still BRUTAL to deal with, especially in the morning.  I went to my first day in my new job today, and my eyes were PINK they were so bloodshot from the 15 minute drive.  They probably thought they hired a drug addict. 

The clinic told me I have 2 more weeks of supreme sensitivity to light.  Once that’s over, I’m going to be saying how this was the best thing I ever did.  My vision is great, now I just need my comfort level to catch up!

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