Friggin LAZERS!

So, yeah... Lasik.  I'm a fan.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let me start at the beginning.  I'm 31 years old.  My vision has been bad as long as I can remember.  In fact, I don't think 'Bad' is a strong enough word to describe my vision.... my vision has been a TRAVI-SHA-MOCKERY* for all this time.  In the layman's terms, I've had 20/110 vision or worse in either eye, and Astigmatism** in both eyes.  I probably should have gotten glasses by the time I got into Kindergarten, but what do you expect... it was the 80's, and it went unnoticed.  I was finally diagnosed and put in glasses in the 6th grade, which would have put me at about 11, if I recall properly.  That means I've been wearing glasses for 20 years, and been almost helpless without them.

Without my glasses, I could not read the text on my monitor a mere 2 feet in front of my face.  I had to get within 6-12" before the fonts became legible.  With vision that bad, I quickly learned the importance of my glasses.  They were my life-line to something resembling a normal life.  In 20 years, I've never broken or lost a pair of specs, I've only worn out frames and grown out of prescriptions.  I treated my glasses better than most people I know, because most people I know didn't have the power to prevent me from living a normal life.  My glasses held that power over me.  I resented and loved my glasses all at the same time.  They were life saving shackles that let me live a normal life, but only if the things I wanted to do could be done with glasses on, or if I didn't need to see what I was I doing.

In my mid 20's, I began to tire of my predicament, so I started looking into laser corrective surgery.  The price redefined 'sticker shock' to me.  I was still in college at the time, making around 20-25k/year, so the idea of a procedure that would cost upwards of $4000 blew my mind.  I had to pass on Lasik back then, and I opted for the lesser alternative, contacts.  For a time, this gave me the appearance of freedom.  I could finally go SCUBA diving and see what I was swimming with.  I could ride my road bike without worrying about my $400 prescription ray-bans flying off and shattering to dust on the hot Tennessee asphalt.  I could see the world with a clear field of vision, not just the parts offered by my portholes of vision.

However, the Contact solution was not perfect either.  Getting my lenses in and out was a mess, and took sometimes as long as 10-15 minutes in the morning and again in the evening.  Some days I couldn't get them in at all.  Cleaning or replacing the lenses was costly, and at the end of the day, I was still always reduced to wearing my glasses again when I took my contacts out for the night.  The fact that I opted for the doc-in-a-box optometrist meant that I had a bad fit on my lenses, so they were uncomfortable to wear for more than 4 hours at a time.  After a summer of fighting a losing battle with the contacts, I finally put them away and resumed wearing my polycarbonate prison.

Fast forward a few years... I'm older... wiser... I make a lot more money, and I have a much better line of credit available to me.  My glasses are over 4 years old at this point.  My Ray-Bans are on their last legs, and all 4 lenses (regular glasses and sun glasses) are scratched up and showing their age.  I was presented with the choice of shelling out for new glasses (for which my paltry vision insurance would pay only $140, give or take), or take another, serious look into Lasik.  Fortunately, one of my co workers is married to a well connected doctor here in Mobile, and the 2 of them were able to point me to 'THE GUY' in Mobile for Lasik, Dr. Richard Duffey (I like him already!)

Dr. Duffey holds an information seminar and pre-screening session once a week at his office.  So, I headed over there after work one day to get the info.  I'm glad I did.  It turns out that they have made dramatic strides in the field of Lasik since the last time I looked into it.  The 2 big enhancements they've made are 'Custom Lasik' treatments, and Tracking Lasers.  Custom lasik uses several 3D scans of your own eyes to make a completely tailored treatment for you.  This method, unlike conventional lasik, can also fix astigmatisms.  Tracking lasers can monitory your eyes and follow the involuntary movements your eyes make during the procedure, at a much faster rate than your eyes can actually move.  The combination of these 2 technologies means that you get a nearly perfect treatment with custom Lasik.

So, after the seminar, I was given my prescreening exam.  The Dr. said I was a good candidate for custom lasik, and I  should schedule a detailed exam to get the 3D maps made and make sure I was a good fit.  I was given a price and the number of a good medical finance firm.  I told the Dr. that if I could get the financing lined up, he would see me again inside the week.  I called, got just enough to cover about 2/3 of the cost, and pulled the other 1/3 from my savings.  When I established that I could actually afford the procedure, I called him back and set up the appointment.

I was told that the detailed exam would be the 'longest eye exam of my life'.  I figured he was exaggerating a bit, but I was expecting more than a standard doc in a box eye exam.  I was not disappointed.  It was a 3 hour exam, in which many pictures, scans, and readings were taken.  My eyes were dilated and numbed.  I was probed, prodded, and poked.  Two hours and 45 minutes into the 3 hour eye exam, I finally got to see Dr. Duffey again (everything up to this point was done by nurses).  He spent about 5 minutes looking over my charts, and told me that I was, in fact, a good candidate for Lasik.  We scheduled the procedure for the next week so I could make arrangements for transport and work, and I went home feeling mildly excited about the whole thing.

The following week was interesting, but for entirely different reasons...  I got the worst case of food poisoning I've ever had the night after the eye exam.  Over a week later and I'm still feeling the effects.  That is one Sushi joint I will NEVER eat at again!  But I digress...

After a particularly excruciating week, the appointed day and time finally came.  I didn't have anyone to drive me to or from the operation center, so my friend Laura from work graciously offered to take care of me.  I got there just in time, popped my prescribed Xanex (for the nerves and to help get to sleep later), and waited my turn.  They put me in one of those silly gowns (over my normal clothes, thankfully) and a silly hair net, then there was nothing left to do but wait for Dr. Duffey.

Dr. Duffey showed up shortly thereafter to go over the procedure with me.  We agreed that he was doing both eyes, but he would do the right eye first and not touch the left until the right was perfect.  He ushered me into the Laser room, put me in the chair, and swung me into place.  I was feeling a little nervous at this point, not because of the laser, but because of the what had to come before the laser... the microkeratome!  That is the device that has to be clamped DIRECTLY onto your EYEBALL, so it can slide a knife across the surface of your eye to cut back a flap in the outer layer and expose the inner cornea.  As gruesome as this sounds, this procedure shaves several weeks off the recovery time, over the original procedures that did not include the cornea flap.  Knowing all that, however, did not make it any easier to get through.

So, Dr. Duffey pops this thing on my right eye and asks his nurse to begin suction.  In what I can only describe as the gift of a merciful god, the process of applying the suction to clamp the device to my eye had the side effect of making my entire vision go black... so I couldn't see what was about to happen.  When I informed Dr. Duffey that my vision was gone (which was expected, as it turns out), he turned on the device.  This caught me by surprise... I *thought* that this device was simply a very sharp blade that was pushed across the eye in 1 smooth movement.  I was wrong.  He turned it on and I shit you not, it felt like he turned a fucking chain saw on over my eye!  Words can not describe how utterly and completely *fucked up* that felt.  The fact that it only took about 3 seconds to make the flap meant I was in shock the entire time, and I didn't have to focus on it.

Once the flap was made, Dr. Duffey took the torture ring off my eye and my vision returned, though it was obviously so blurry I couldn't see anything but the blinking light directly over head.  That's good though, because that's all I needed to focus on.  Before I had even gotten over the shock of the whole microkeratome ordeal, Dr. Duffey had turned on the laser.  The entire process took less than 30 seconds to burn out the custom lasik pattern that was mapped for my eye.  When it was done, Dr. Duffey slid the skin flap back in place and smoothed it all out, and I'll be damned if I couldn't already see better out of that eye!

Once the right eye was one, it was time to move to the left eye.  This was where the fun started.  For those of you who know me, I favor my right eye, and that leads to my left eye being slightly squinty most of the time.  Well, that condition manifested itself when Dr. Duffey tried to attach the microkeratome to my left eye.  He got it on once, but wasn't happy with the positioning of it.  So, he took it off and repositioned it.  It felt like he needed a crowbar to get it in place.  Then he called for suction, and once again my vision went black... only this time, I knew what was coming...  Allow me, for your benefit, to provide a reenactment of what was going on in my head when he kicked that thing on...

OH GOD NOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!

To my credit, all I did was jump a little bit in the chair.  But yeah... despite the fact that he doubled up the numbing drops for my left eye... it fucking hurt.  Almost apologetically, Dr. Duffey explained that the second eye always hurt worse than the first.  Thankfully, that was the only hard part of the entire thing.  Again, the laser work was less than 30 seconds.  When he was done, he moved the skin flap back in place, smoothed it all out, and added several different eye drops to both eyes.  He taped a couple of plastic shields over my eyes and sent me on my way, with instructions to be back at 7:45 the next morning.

Laura drove me home, and I tried to sleep, I really did.  I rolled around for 5 hours.  I must have drifted in and out of sleep in the process, but it was not terribly restful.  My eyes were watering the whole time, felt itchy and sore, like they were bruised (which, oddly enough, because they were... more on that later).  I was not a happy camper.  Even after I woke up 5 hours after I got home, I couldn't open my eyes at first.  Finally, I managed to coax them open, and after about 5-10 minutes of excessive watering of my eyes and blinking, then trying to get my eye drops in each eye, I finally managed to clear my vision enough so I could see...

I was shocked.

For the first time... well, ever... I could see perfectly clear without the assistance of anything.  No glasses, no contacts, no seeing eye dog, no Borg Implants, nothing!  I had nearly perfect vision, and my operation was less than 5 hours ago.  Suddenly the discomfort in my eyes really didn't seem all that bad...  but I was curious as to why my eyes felt so sore... so I looked in the mirror... and Diablo was looking back at me!  The irises in both eyes were just covered in blood!  CREEPY!

Fortunately, I was expecting that, so I didn't start screaming like a little girl.  My friend Lee had the same thing happen to him when he got Lasik done 5ish years ago, so I asked about it during my screening exam.  I was told that the microkeratome usually causes bruising of the iris when it gets clamped on, and because the blood was so close to the surface of the eye, it never ran out of oxygen, which is why it stayed red.  The blood should absorb back into the eyes in 2-3 weeks, no harm no foul.

So, I wandered into the living room, and turned on the TV.  Watching my HDTV with my own eyes last night was like watching it again for the first time.  I was pleased!  I called my mom, let her know how it went.... she didn't even know I was having it done that day, she just knew I was looking into it... I know, I'm a bad son... sue me.  I sent out some text messages, and kept my Facebook friends appraised of the situation.  I was trying not to sound like a giddy little school girl, but it was hard ;)  I went outside at one point to see if I could find an old pair of shades in my car, and I found that my night vision was much improved.  That was unexpected, but welcome.  Walking around in my apartment in the dark showed the same thing:  greatly improved night vision!  I went to bed a very happy man.

The next morning, I got up and went in for my followup exam, and the hits just kept on coming!  They checked my vision using the old familiar E-charts, and even though my eyes were tender, a little swollen and very watery, I rocked a 20/15 score on my vision test, in both eyes!  Better than perfect in both eyes, less than 24 hours after surgery!  Holy shit!  I had to celebrate by indulging in something I've been wanting to do for the past 8 years... I went down to the mall, found the sunglass shop, and bought the best looking pair of Oakley's they had!  And I gotta tell ya, folks... they look GOOOOOOD!

As I right this, it's the evening the day after surgery.  My eyes already feel much better, they've stopped watering and my vision is getting sharper and sharper.  I've also finally gotten the hang of putting my drops in, so that's a non-issue as well.  I have to put my medical drops in 4 times a day for a week, and the watering drops for a month or so, as needed... then I'm free and clear!  I've got another follow up exam in a month to make sure everything healed up smoothly, but it looks like I got though this process without a hitch, and wound up with better than perfect vision for my trouble!  Score!

So, like I said at the beginning... Lasik!  I'm a fan!

Rich


p.s.  One of the things I used to do to people who asked how bad my vision was, was hand them my glasses and tell them to put them on.  The look of intense pain followed by the short term headache that wearing my glasses caused them was always good for a laugh ;)  Well, I figured that since I've got perfect vision now, I should see just what I was inflicting on my friends for all these years... and to everyone I've ever done that too... you have my sincerest apologies!


*I did not coin the phrase 'travi-sha-mockery'... that was courtesy of James VanDyne and Matt Seese at my office.
**I didn't even know what 'Astigmatism' meant until a week ago... it's when light focuses on 2 separate points in the back of your eyes, causing super-extra-ultra-blurry vision.