LASEK surgery

[glo]

I went through a LASEK surgery on Wednesday. It's pretty much a popular procedure for sight correction these days.
Man, this thing is supposed to hurt for a couple days more. I can barely sit behind the screen, so be back when I feel better!

[hyperlinked]

Ouch! I think you need a Topre.

[didjamatic]

I had LASIK a few years ago, if you're that uncomfortable you probably need to hydrate your eyes with drops more.  Do what the doc says exactly.

[wellington1869]

i'd love to get lasik surgery but i'm convinced something will go horribly wrong. NYT had an article on this not long ago, profiling some lady who had persistent "dry eye" and blurred vision after getting it done. That article prolly scared off a lot of folks (like me). Of course she was in the minority, but its a terrible minority to find yourself in. So I'm too afraid. But who wouldnt want to get rid of bulky glasses. Every few years I'm always tempting to take the chance and then talk myself out of it. My glasses are nerdy but they work 100% of the time. Except when i sit on them, but then they're cheap to replace too.

I was a contacts wearer for 10 years, but eventually i became too lazy even for that.

[kishy]

When a friend of mine needed Lasik it was relatively new so we flew up to Canada of all places to get it done.  I had to stick lotion on his eyes in the middle of night and stick these bee looking aluminum things on him.  Then drove him back to the airport next day.    The Hotel probably thought we were gay but since it's Canada nobody cares.

Show Image

Doctor, if I may ask?

ISTR hearing that our local LASIK expert was one of the pioneers in the method, at least in Canada.

[ricercar]

i'd love to get lasik surgery but i'm convinced something will go horribly wrong.

I'm going to need my eyes to continue seeing longer than LASIK has been around. That's a decent argument to prevent experimentation with a non-reversible surgery.

I was a contacts wearer for 10 years, but eventually i became too lazy even for that.

"We are brothers!" -Highlander

[Rajagra]

You're a braver man than me. I looked into it years ago, but the stuff they don't tell you in the sales pitch was enough to scare me off. Most people get good results though, so well done.

[ricercar]

When my optician/optometrist had unsuccessful LASIK, my enthusiasm vanished with the clarity of his eyesight.

[Rajagra]

Damn, if someone in the business can't get good results where does that leave the rest of us?

(BTW, the bit that put me off was where they slice off the epithelial layer of the front of your eye while you watch. Not going to do that to me without general anaesthetic, ever.)

[wellington1869]

When my optician/optometrist had unsuccessful LASIK, my enthusiasm vanished with the clarity of his eyesight.

[itlnstln]

I know three people at work that have had LASIK, and all three love the results.  Fortunately, it seems to have a good success rate.  When it goes bad, however...  I asked about LASIK for my astigmatism (I don't have any near/farsightedness), and my optometrist  told me not too.  Apparently, it doesn't work well for astigmatism and can actually end up worse, so I am stuck wearing glasses.  I tried contacts, but Toric lenses suck.

[wellington1869]

I tried those 24-hour contacts once. Once.
Nothing so pleasant as to wake up and feel like someone has crazy-glued your eyes  shut.

Messing with your eyes is a little like messing with your penis. Its a hell of a thing to lose.

[Rajagra]

Especially when you don't have a spare.

[wellington1869]

Especially when you don't have a spare.

we cant all be blessed like you

[ricercar]

Toric lenses suck.

uhhhgnnn. the way they rotate when one first puts them on always creeped me out.

[itlnstln]

The biggest problem is when they wouldn't rotate.  After about 6-8 hours, they would start to dry out.  Inevitably, they would rotate out of alignment and get stuck making everything blurry.  That, and the thick bottom edge would be uncomfortable at times.

[EverythingIBM]

I'm into the hipster look.  Big Glasses are BACK!

But I don't want to look like a hipster so I'll stick with my old ones.

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I hope this isn't inappropriate, but, it seems your nose has the texture of salami. Unless you have freckles or something.

And that wig kind of creeps me out. Why do you have wigs anyways?

[itlnstln]

I would show you my salami, but that would be inappropriate.  You could ask your mom, though, she's seen it.  Stop calling me daddy, too.

[kishy]

ripster's wig looks quite concerningly like real hair.

Mine (real hair, that is) can occasionally look approximately the same. Freaky.

[wellington1869]

kishy, have you inserted a squirrel in your butt?

[itlnstln]

Kishy's real name is Richard Gere.

[kishy]

kishy, have you inserted a squirrel in your butt?

...can't say that I h...OH I GET IT!

[TexasFlood]

kishy, have you inserted a squirrel in your butt?

...can't say that I h...OH I GET IT!

[wellington1869]

Show Image

:) well he looks uninjured by the experience

[Rajagra]

kishy, have you inserted a squirrel in your butt?

Actually, looking at YOUR avatar....

[wellington1869]

Actually, looking at YOUR avatar....

thats what i look like when i sit on my check spindle

[glo]

Ok here's an update.
First three days are over and the doctor took out the temporary lenses.
Those lenses were very irritating and I'm glad they're gone now.
My sight has not become much better yet, but that is supposed to be achieved within the next month.

[gr1m]

I'd take Lasik over contacts but I'd take glasses over both.

[microsoft windows]

My mother had 20/800 vision and had LASIK. She had good results from it.

[didjamatic]

[kriminal]

ahahaha

[hyperlinked]

Has she recovered after seeing you clearly for the first time?

I'm sure if you're offering enough money someone will be willing to undo the surgery for you. Either that or she can go stare at the sun for ten minutes.

[Voixdelion]

i'd love to get lasik surgery but i'm convinced something will go horribly wrong. NYT had an article on this not long ago, profiling some lady who had persistent "dry eye" and blurred vision after getting it done. That article prolly scared off a lot of folks (like me). Of course she was in the minority, but its a terrible minority to find yourself in. So I'm too afraid. But who wouldnt want to get rid of bulky glasses. Every few years I'm always tempting to take the chance and then talk myself out of it. My glasses are nerdy but they work 100% of the time. Except when i sit on them, but then they're cheap to replace too.

I was a contacts wearer for 10 years, but eventually i became too lazy even for that.

Yeah I used to hate the whole take em out and put em back in routine til I discovered extended wear.  
Ever try Focus (ciba vision) Night and Day?  I put em in once a month then throw em away.  Wake up in the morning and go to bed able to see and they are the most comfortable pair I've ever worn.  Who needs surgery when you've got these?  About the only thing I can't do is swim with my eyes open, but I don't much care for swimming without scuba gear anyway.

[Phaedrus2129]

I've been told that even LASEK couldn't fix my vision, the corrections needed would be enough to detach my retina. My optician told me to get a partial fix through LASEK, then wear contacts.

[Oqsy]

Keratoconus FAQ.

No LASIK in Oqsy's future.  I might get to wear some dead person's corneas, though!  

Every day I feel more disconnected from the seeing world.  I have RGP contact lenses, but my eyes are always dry, and they are the equivalent of putting fingernails against my eyeballs.  Not bearable in the least.  I've recently started Restasis for the dryness, so hopefully the contacts will become bearable soon.  

I'm beyond the help of glasses.  I'm wearing mine now, but it's more for psychological reasons that vision correction.  I guess they do still help my left eye a bit.

My brother had LASIK years ago and has had no problems or complaints after the first few days of "itchiness" and "weird blurriness like halos around light sources".  All of that resolved quickly and he's better than 20/20.  

I recommend always finding the BEST ophthalmologist / optometrist, even if that means some traveling or personal expense, and doing LOTS of research before getting any procedures performed on your eyes.  Finding a patient of that particular doctor that has had that particular procedure is a big plus, because you can find out what negative experiences they had, if any.

I'm going to take some fish oil and flax seed to try to boost my tear production.  

Peace.

[EverythingIBM]

Keratoconus FAQ.

No LASIK in Oqsy's future.  I might get to wear some dead person's corneas, though!  

Every day I feel more disconnected from the seeing world.  I have RGP contact lenses, but my eyes are always dry, and they are the equivalent of putting fingernails against my eyeballs.  Not bearable in the least.  I've recently started Restasis for the dryness, so hopefully the contacts will become bearable soon.  

I'm beyond the help of glasses.  I'm wearing mine now, but it's more for psychological reasons that vision correction.  I guess they do still help my left eye a bit.

My brother had LASIK years ago and has had no problems or complaints after the first few days of "itchiness" and "weird blurriness like halos around light sources".  All of that resolved quickly and he's better than 20/20.  

I recommend always finding the BEST ophthalmologist / optometrist, even if that means some traveling or personal expense, and doing LOTS of research before getting any procedures performed on your eyes.  Finding a patient of that particular doctor that has had that particular procedure is a big plus, because you can find out what negative experiences they had, if any.

I'm going to take some fish oil and flax seed to try to boost my tear production.  

Peace.

I'm sure something can be done eventually for your eyes. If not, then all doctors are lazy *******s who don't want to help anyone but their own wallets.

You don't want my corneas! They're really scratched up. It's quite annoying, at winter it's horrible because I can see all the marks and scratches.
But I guess you do want my DDR400. I'd rather give up my corneas (probably worth less too!) than those expensive shiny sticks.

[hyperlinked]

Apparently, it doesn't work well for astigmatism and can actually end up worse, so I am stuck wearing glasses.  I tried contacts, but Toric lenses suck.

I have astigmatism too and I got a regular pair of contacts once. They were fine in one eye and in the other, they wouldn't ever stay put. I kept having to blink to get a corner pasted back down again. While I was out one day, that screwy corner lifted up again and wouldn't get back down. I had to walk around with one eye closed for around an hour until I could get back home to grab my glasses.

I ditched the contacts after that. I wasn't too fond of them anyway. Like a lot of other people here, I'm a bit too lazy to fidget with handling and maintaining tiny pieces of plastic that I'll be shoving into my eyes.

As for LASIK, I do know one guy who had a bad experience and ended up seeing double for a while, but many who have had great results. I wouldn't be scared to try it if I really really wanted to ditch my glasses, but they really don't bother me.

[Rajagra]

I might get to wear some dead person's corneas, though!

Cool. Is your name Richard?

[kishy]

The eye doctor with an eyeglass store in the same building told me I had astigmatism and needed glasses.

The eye doctor with no relationship with an eyeglass store told me there would be no perceivable difference and that my vision is pretty much as good as any glasses could help it be.

While it is true that I tend to see 8s and Bs (and other combos of course) as the same thing at certain distances, when they set up the big lens thing that they can dynamically change which helps identify the specs for your glasses (not sure what it's called), there was no setting which corrected it or even made it slightly better. Odd.

Interestingly I have no problem at all reading the electronic signs on the front of buses several blocks away.

[HaaTa]

Yeah, I have a very slight astigmatism in my right eye (not realistically correctable). So even though I only need a -6.75 correction in that eye, my left eye (which doesn't have an astigmatism) sees things much clearing, but needs an -8.50 correction.

Besides that I apparently have perfectly healthy eyes.

[EverythingIBM]

The eye doctor with an eyeglass store in the same building told me I had astigmatism and needed glasses.

The eye doctor with no relationship with an eyeglass store told me there would be no perceivable difference and that my vision is pretty much as good as any glasses could help it be.

While it is true that I tend to see 8s and Bs (and other combos of course) as the same thing at certain distances, when they set up the big lens thing that they can dynamically change which helps identify the specs for your glasses (not sure what it's called), there was no setting which corrected it or even made it slightly better. Odd.

Interestingly I have no problem at all reading the electronic signs on the front of buses several blocks away.

Hey! It's interesting you mention that, I too can read bus signs, or any type of digital things (like traffic signs) as far as can be, without any trouble seeing what it says.

Text is affected vertically and horizontally for me however, especially at distances. Horizontally it kind of morphs thinner and wider if I observe it while moving (you can emulate the same affect with a high resolution object placed in a low resolution environment), and vertically it likes to split -- that's common with myopia though I presume.

[Voixdelion]

The eye doctor with an eyeglass store in the same building told me I had astigmatism and needed glasses.

The eye doctor with no relationship with an eyeglass store told me there would be no perceivable difference and that my vision is pretty much as good as any glasses could help it be.

While it is true that I tend to see 8s and Bs (and other combos of course) as the same thing at certain distances, when they set up the big lens thing that they can dynamically change which helps identify the specs for your glasses (not sure what it's called), there was no setting which corrected it or even made it slightly better. Odd.

Interestingly I have no problem at all reading the electronic signs on the front of buses several blocks away.

As I understand it, astigmatism is where the eye shape is not quite round but oblong or oval in some way causing a slight distortion or doubling of focal points that would ordinarily be one point, which differs from the all around blurry that is more traditional near or far sightedness? (where I guess the focal point is not as narrow?)  So therefore the correction for astigmatism would have to be specific to the actual shape of the eye as opposed to varying magnifications or adjustments of focus on a spherical eyeball - and this also why contacts for astigmatism have to be weighted to always lie in proper alignment with the distortion?

[EverythingIBM]

As I understand it, astigmatism is where the eye shape is not quite round but oblong or oval in some way causing a slight distortion or doubling of focal points that would ordinarily be one point, which differs from the all around blurry that is more traditional near or far sightedness? (where I guess the focal point is not as narrow?)  So therefore the correction for astigmatism would have to be specific to the actual shape of the eye as opposed to varying magnifications or adjustments of focus on a spherical eyeball - and this also why contacts for astigmatism have to be weighted to always lie in proper alignment with the distortion?

No, astigmatism is actually the irregular shape of the lens, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the shape of the eye. You can have an astigmatism with either myopia or hyperopia.

They have lenses that dynamically change to accommodate astigmatisms, our physics teacher has some.

[microsoft windows]

The eye doctor with an eyeglass store in the same building told me I had astigmatism and needed glasses.

The eye doctor with no relationship with an eyeglass store told me there would be no perceivable difference and that my vision is pretty much as good as any glasses could help it be.

While it is true that I tend to see 8s and Bs (and other combos of course) as the same thing at certain distances, when they set up the big lens thing that they can dynamically change which helps identify the specs for your glasses (not sure what it's called), there was no setting which corrected it or even made it slightly better. Odd.

Interestingly I have no problem at all reading the electronic signs on the front of buses several blocks away.

Did the optometrist with a relationship to the eyeglass store recommend you "designer" frames?

[microsoft windows]

Has she recovered after seeing you clearly for the first time?

Didn't I tell you that she had good results from it?

[Rajagra]

I wonder if any of you have this symptom. If you are in a dark room and look at a pinpoint source of light (e.g. an LED on some equipment) do you see multiple images of that point? When I do this with my glasses on I see a sharp point. If I take my glasses off I would expect to see a blurry circle of light. Instead I see this pattern of dots, with the real one in the middle and several dots scattered within a roughly circular area around it.

My first thought was a problem with my retina, but this is disproven I think by the fact that I see the same pattern even if I look to the side, or up/down. This makes no sense. If I look at a different angle, the stream of light goes through a different part of the lens, and hits a different part of the retina. So what kind of flaw could explain this?

I once found a blog that mentioned the same thing, by someone who couldn't get an explanation from his optician, but I lost the link when my browser crashed.

[wellington1869]

Instead I see this pattern of dots, with the real one in the middle

that might happen if you've unfocused your eyes (like when trying to look at one of those computer generated 3d images).

while watching "cyrus" i was so uninvested towards the end that I unfocused my eyes (like preparing for sleep) and the movie screen appeared in triplicate like how you describe. So I watched it on three screens for the last five minutes.

[Oqsy]

That sounds similar to kerataconus.  At least your corrective lenses are doing their job and resolving the led as a single point.

A single point of light looks to me like an almost oval shaped hollow blur of light with some sections of the line being brighter than others.  Each eye gives me a different size and orientation of the oval, making it MUCH easier for me to read, drive at night, or look at the stars with one eye closed (or my contacts in, but read above about that option).  Since driving at night without contacts and one eye closed is definitely not a good idea, I typically avoid it, or make sure I have my contacts in when I do so.  

There is a led on the front of my PC case that I would love to be able to resolve as a single point of light again sometime in the future.

If your corrective lenses eliminate the "double-vision" then it's not your retina.  Double-vision that is corrected by refraction (glasses, contacts, etc) is based on the shape of the lens, cornea, or an irregularly flattened or oblong eyeball.  Double vision that is caused by the retina or nervous system would not be helped at all by refraction.

[ricercar]

Without correction, a point of light appears to me

Left Eye
Three dots, one major and two minor, shaped roughly as an L

Right Eye
a blurr, about 4 units wide (where 1 is the actual diameter of the light), with a dark center, rather like a picture of a lunar eclipse.

I have Map Dot Dystrophy, astigmatism, and near sightedness. Driving at night is a trial, unless I wear gas-permeable (hard) toric contact lenses, the only manner in which i can fully correct all problems.

[wellington1869]

without correction, I see pixies