I said I would talk a little more about my eye surgery, the experience and answer some of the questions that were left in my comments.
So first off, I have needed glasses for distance since my early 20’s. After a year of wearing glasses I got contact lenses and I’ve worn them ever since, but I always had a pair of glasses that I wore at night when I took my contacts out. I always said I would NEVER have corrective eye surgery because….. well, I figured it must hurt like h!@# and I have a VERY VERY low pain tolerance! Just the thought of the procedure put fear in to me. And I would never have considered the surgery if my contacts had not become so uncomfortable over the past year.
When Jason mentioned a couple of months ago that I should maybe check in to Lasik, for some reason it sounded reasonable to me and not something I immediately disagreed with. After all, over the years I have heard that the technology they used now was so advanced that you hardly felt a thing, and recovery time was literally just a few hours. In fact you walk out of the surgery with immediate results, if a tad blurry, you can definitely see things pretty clear.
I didn’t think my insurance would cover anything like this, but turns out that they do in fact give a ‘discount’ if you go to certain doctors. I didn’t have to file a claim or anything, I simply used the nearest doctor on their list and when I showed my insurance card they gave me 15% off the price of the treatment. I actually later got another discount of $500 because the doctor wanted to reschedule my appointment!
There are different prices for the treatment depending on which lasers are used. The range at this office (LasikPlus Vision Center) was between $899 - $1,999 per eye! I have astigmatism in both eyes and after all the tests I was quoted $1850 per eye (inc tax, and minus the 15% discount). This was later reduced to $1600 per eye. So my total procedure cost $3200 with a lifetime guarantee so long as I get regular yearly eye tests.
Right now, they can only correct nearsightedness (called Myopia, where you can see close up but not things at a distance, which is what I had), farsightedness (called hyperopia) and astigmatism. They cannot correct blurred vision due to age (when you need glasses for reading etc, which is called Presbyopia). Presbyopia happens usually in your early 40’s. I have found in the past year that I needed to use reading glasses on top of my contacts in order to read things clearly or to do knitting. I was told I would probably still have to use reading glasses after the procedure. That is true now to a certain extent. Since getting my eyes done this week I’ve found that I can still read without the glasses but when I’m knitting (because I hold the needles pretty close to me) I still need to put the reading glasses on. This doesn’t bother me at all. What’s wonderful is getting up in the morning and not having to reach for glasses or put contacts in to see.
As for the procedure itself, some people have told me they would give you a sedative, but you could refuse it if you wanted to. I honestly didn’t want to take anything because from past experience (at the dentist) I find stuff like this makes me pretty dizzy and nauseas. On the day of the procedure I was offered nothing anyway (which was a good thing for me). I thought I would be very nervous, but I kept reminding myself that there was no pain involved, and I started praying too. Praying really helped me, I just felt so calm and peaceful that I knew I would get through the procedure and be ok.
And there really wasn’t any pain! There was NO PAIN at all. I was told I would feel a pressure on my eye for a few seconds, but in my experience the pressure that I felt was not on my eye at all. It was more on the bone below my eye. I’ve marked on the picture below where I felt the pressure, and it was a warm kind of feeling. Like someone was pressing their finger on that part and their hand was hot?! This only lasted a few seconds.
Then I had to focus on a red flashing light above me. When the laser was working I could feel nothing happening. There was just a clicking noise, but no feeling of anything touching my eye. Even when the doctor seemed to be using a swab (to smooth back the flap) I could feel nothing. Everything is over with in about 10 minutes! You sit in a darkened room for a few minutes afterwards and the doctor checks your eyes before releasing you and telling you to go home and take a 3-4 hour nap.
When I got home and went to bed, I couldn’t get to sleep! I lay there for an hour with my eyes closed and goggles on (that they give you to wear for the first week incase you touch/scratch your eyes as you sleep) and sleep would not come. And by this time the numbing drops were wearing off and my eyes began to sting and water a lot. After an hour I got up and took some Nyquil! (I was told to take either Tylenol PM or Nyquil if I thought it would help me sleep) and it worked. I napped for about 3 hours. At 4pm I woke up and got up and my eyes felt great. No pain, no blurriness, just a little sticky from the drops I was using and had to keep on using every 2 hours that day.
All in all, it was an amazing experience with very little ‘down time’ and a very fast recovery. My eyes have felt great every since, just a little dry (which to me is the same feeling I had every day at the end of the day with my contacts) and I just have to keep taking drops 4 times a day to fight any infection that might occur and to keep my eyes moist.
If you are thinking of having this procedure done and are scared or worried, I can reassure you, there is nothing to be scared about (a little nervous is natural) but there is no pain to be scared about – so, JUST DO IT J It is SO worth it.
OK, I know this is probably the longest post I’ve ever written so I better end it there. That’s all I’ll say about my eyes for now, so if you have any other specific questions, please leave me a comment or email me and I will reply privately to you and try to answer them.
Despite the fact that I spent nearly 35 years in England (more than 20 years in the North East) I have to admit I haven't seen half of the sites there is to see there. It's usually like that wherever you live, or at least wherever I live! You just kind of take for granted what's on your door step. Sad to say really, but that's how it is. That's not to say I didn't visit any places, I've seen quite a lot really and vacationed in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of White, Jersey and Guernsey. But I know there are many places that I haven't seen in the North of England where I grew up. That probably had a lot to do with coming from a family that never had much way back then and we never owned a car! So I am excited to do a little site-seeing this time around :-) And of course I can't wait to share it with you all too.
