The Schoolyear of Scott

Well, yes actually!

A week ago today, I had Lasik surgery in both eyes.  Lasik surgery, for those that do not know, is type of refractive surgery for correcting myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism.  Having astigmatism in both eyes (basically, a condition where the eyeballs have little craters in them and therefore aren’t perfectly round), I was a prime candidate for the surgery.  I thought I would use this forum as a public service and discuss the surgery, and even open it up for questions for those that are on the fence about getting the operation (that is, if anyone even reads this site anymore.  Seriously, if you want a prime example of someone not living up to their word, read the first paragraph of my Passover entry nearly two months ago).

I had been wanting to have laser surgery for years.  I first got glasses the summer after my junior year of high school, and after about a month of thinking that the glasses made me look scholarly, I started hating them.  Luckily, I only really needed them sparingly, and could make it through the day, for the most part, without wearing the glasses.  Soon after school started that fall, I went to the eye doctor and got contact lenses.  Unlike normal contact lenses though, contact lenses for astigmatism have super tiny weights in the them to ensure that they stay in place (as mentioned before, your eye ball isn’t round).  Even though the eye doctor assured me that I would get used to them, after a month of wearing the contacts, I still didn’t find them to be comfortable at all.  Couple that with the fact that it was still taking me about 20 minutes every morning to put the contacts in, and soon the idea of me wearing contacts went the way of the Pony Express.

It wasn’t until college when I had to start wearing my glasses on a more regular basis.  By this point I had become a master of squinting to get by, but in those big college lecture halls, it became harder and harder to read the blackboard.  So I started wearing my glasses to classes where I had to pay attention (or should I say, wanted to pay attention.  Luckily for me, this wasn’t that many classes).  Soon, I wasn’t able to use the computer or read without glasses.  The fact of the matter wasn’t helped much by the fact that my friend Hillary would literally kick my ass whenever I would drive her someplace without wearing my glasses, so I soon started having to wear my glasses pretty much all the time.

I asked my parents for Laser surgery as my college graduation present that year and they were receptive to the idea.  You can imagine my disappointment when I went to the eye doctor and he said that men aren’t recommended to have the surgery until they turn 25, as that is when the eye is fully matured (in girls, however, it is age 18…ridiculous).  As long as my prescription didn’t change, at that point, I could have the surgery done.  So for the past three years, I have diligently been going to the eye doctor to make sure my prescription didn’t change while at the same time compiling enough money so that when the time came, I could afford it.  Thankfully, my eyes stayed the same the past three years.  I scheduled my surgery for May 29 and it was Game On.

To prepare for the surgery, the doctors make you come for at least two pre-op inspections.  They run your eyes through more machines then I even knew were possible, including taking x-rays of your eyes.  All in all, you are there for about 4 hours as they map your eye and determine exactly what path the laser is going to take to correct your vision.  Then, the day of the surgery, they double check some of the tests to ensure they get it all correct.

The week before surgery, they gave me a prescription for this goo to put in my eyes before bed time to soften the cornea and make it easier for the surgeon to make an incision.  It was quite gross, having the consistency of Vaseline, and causing you to pretty much have super blurry vision for 20 minutes or so after applying it.  There were two other prescription eye drops that were given that I had to start the day before surgery and continue for 7 days after the operation, one being an anti-biotic and the other being an anti-inflammatory drop.  I responsibly used these drops as instructed and showed up at The Laser Center (TLC), conveniently located next to The Palm, ready for my surgery.

After receiving your name tag (the surgeries are done in basically assembly line fashion, and I assume the name tags are so that, in case the line gets out of order, they don’t accidentally correct you with the prescription of someone else, like say, correcting my eyes with Mrs. Kim’s prescription), they bring you into a dark room to start preparing you for surgery.  Sure enough, the doctor walks into my room and says something to the effect of “Mrs. Kim, are you ready for your surgery?”.  It confused me a bit but the doctor continued on and did the final check of my eyes to be sure nothing had changed.  Of course, my eyes didn’t come close to matching what was on the doctors charts.  After some frantic double checking by the doctor, she realized I was not, indeed, Mrs. Kim – She had picked up the wrong chart.  The fact that it took the DOCTOR about five minutes to realize I was not an Asian WOMAN did not give me that much confidence going into surgery.  Good thing I was wearing my name tag.

Once we got everything under control, I was given three pills and instructed to shoot them down.  I did not ask what these pills were and took them almost immediately.  Why I didn’t ask what I was taking, I still am not so sure.  After the fact, I have concluded that these were some combination of Valium and sleeping pills, but the fact that they didn’t tell me what I was taking and I didn’t ask is one of the many mysteries of life that will go unanswered, much like Tony Soprano and the guy in the Members Only Jacket.  After taking the drugs, the doctor put numbing drops in my eyes and then took a felt tip marker and started drawing on my eye balls (yes, drawing on my eye balls.  The fact that I didn’t flip out over this was the first clue that they had given me Valium).

After a few more minutes waiting in the dark room, they brought me into the operating room.  The surgeon (who went to Emory it turns out and was in DTD) had me lay on the operating table and put my feet in these stirrup things that I think are also used during childbirth.  He also gave me a football to hold, I’m not really sure why.  They do one eye at a time, so my right eye was covered up and my left eye lids were quickly taped open.  Then the doctor inserted something (it felt like a big cylinder) into my eye and wheeled me over to a machine that was hanging from the ceiling.  The machine was then hooked to whatever cylinder thing was already in my eye and everything went black.  The surgeon explained that the machine was sucking my eyeball up, which is what caused the blackness, and that it would only take 20 seconds.  Now remember, my eye is numb at this point, so I really don’t feel anything, but at the same time, I am feeling very weird sensations in my eye.

Once the 20 seconds are up, the surgeon wheeled me back to my starting position.  My vision, at this point, looked like you were trying to look through a smashed windshield of a car, as the machine had cut a flap in my cornea.  The surgeon then takes his scary little chopstick tool and lifts the cornea flap off of your eye.  Now THIS is a trip.  When the cornea moves, your eyesight moves.  So even though I am looking straight up, I am looking all over the place, though I am looking through a busted windshield.  Again, the fact that this didn’t bother me one bit was another hint of the Valium.

The surgeon then hooks another machine up to my eye, which is the laser.  He instructs me to follow the little red dot that I am seeing, which is actually the laser.  The laser sounded a little bit like a hairdryer and it smelled a little bit like, well, burning eye ball.  That was because, the laser was burning my eye ball.  This took maybe 30 seconds and to pass the time the surgeon and me discussed how Emory tore down the DTD house.  It was very strange but yet lovely, all at the same time.  Once the laser was finished, the nurse poured what felt like a bucket of eyedrops on my eye, covered it up, and repeated the proceedure on my right eye.

Once my right eye was done, the nurse unconvered both of my eyes and said I was done.  I slowly opened my eyes and, astonishingly, I could see.  It was amazing.  The surgeon put me through a quick test to make sure that my eye flap was back in place, and once he ensured it was, he directed me to the exit.  My dad had to drive me home because you can’t drive yourself at this point (both because of your eyes and because you are high as a kite) and you get to wear these snazzy Stevie Wonder glasses home.  Almost immediately when I got home I passed out, which is important, the doctors say, because it takes 3 hours for the flap to heal and when the drugs start wearing off, it is going to be painful.  I could feel the pain slowly started by the time I got home, but luckily, the sleeping pills that were given to me started to kick in, so it was easy to ignore that pain.

The rest of the day is a little bit of a blur to me, but I had my followup appointment the next morning and, astonishingly, I was already 20/20 in one eye and 20/25 in the other eye.  100% healing, and thus 100% vision, doesn’t occur until three months after the surgery, so the fact that my eyes were that sharp less then 24 hours after surgery was a great sign.  The doctor gave me some steroids (STERIODS!) and some other drops to take to help the healing and sent me on my way.  I was thrilled and was driving a car without corrective lenses for the first time in I can’t tell you how long.

Fast forward to yesterday.  I had my one-week followup appointment and both eyes were nearly 20/15.  That is MORE THAN perfect.  Supposedily, eye sight can get as good as 20/12.5 after surgery, and being that my healing is in the “excellent” range, I could get that sharp.  Amazing.  Since my healing was going so well, the doctor said I could stop taking the steroids (which was making my eyelashes curl up) and stop sleeping with goggles on (not very comfortable).  I still am not allowed to wash my eyes, which is kind of gross, but I am allowed to go swimming again and can even workout again.  This is all very exciting for me.

So in conclusion, I cannot speak highly enough of Lasik surgery.  I typed this whole post without glasses, which has to be the longest time I have used a computer without glasses in five years.  I can wear sunglasses now and actually see out of them.  I can read the guide on my TV from anywhere in my condo.  It’s amazing.  If you are on the fence about getting the surgery, you need to get it, as it is the best investment I have ever made.

And if you do end up getting the surgery, let me know.  If I refer you, I get a $25 gas card!

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 11:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.