One of my goals for this year was to undergo Lasik surgery to improve my vision. I started wearing glasses in 7th grade and switched to contacts in 9th grade, so it’s been a long run with corrected vision for me. I’m really looking forward to being able to wake up in the morning and see what time it is – not to mention not having to mess with glasses or contacts.
Here have been the steps so far – in January I went in for an initial consultation to see if I was a candidate for lasik. They checked me over and said that I had a thin cornea and I’d be best suited for the intralase (all-laser) lasik. Of course, that costs the most, but on the bright side it has the quickest recovery time and is the least risky. They told me that if I wanted to have the surgery, I’d need to take my contacts out at night for a month and then wear glasses for at least 2 weeks prior to the surgery date. I have been wearing disposable for the past several years and I’d been wearing them overnight and throwing them out every 3-4 weeks. So it was a change for me just to take them out at night. My current glasses were about 12 years old, so I decided to pony up the money to get new ones before I had to wear them for two or three weeks.
My surgery is now scheduled for next Wednesday at 1:30. Today was my pre-surgery consult, where they reviewed my vision again and came up with how much correction they need to apply. They also spent time going over the possible side effects and risks incumbent with the surgery. There were two bad parts to today’s visit and one interesting discovery. The bad parts were they had to test my eyes for dryness, and they did that by sticking what felt like sandpaper in my eyes for 3-4 minutes. It felt like my eye was being scrathed the entire time, but on the bright side it’s supposed to be the most painful part of the entire process. The second bad part was they dialated my eyes in order to get an accurate reading of my vision. The problem is the dialation lasts for 24 hours. So on my way back to work, I couldn’t lift my head up because the sun was so bright. I’m sitting in my living room now typing in the dark, just to keep the glare out of my extermely wide eyes.
The interesting part is that the doctor found my vision is much better with my eyes dialated than normal. He said with all the work on the computer that I do, my eyes are focusing on a near image and it’s hurting my distance vision. Without dialation my correction is -5.25 and with it my correction is -3.75 or so. So after my appointment, my new glasses were so strong that I couldn’t really see through them. For the next day, I need to wear my ten year old glasses and keep out of the light as much as possible. The problem with this is that my old glasses are gigantic – I’m definitely going to get made fun of over these behemoths.
Still, there’s only 5 days left – I’m excited about being done with glasses and contacts.
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