IC Forum Archive

skinny coder · Posts: 262

I got my first pair of glasses when I was in second grade. Putting them on changed everything. I was surprised to find with normal vision you could actually see the leaves on a tree!

I continued to get more and more powerful lenses as the years past. One of my eye doctor's said I had 'BIG E' vision, because I was unable to make out even the largest E on the eye chart. I was pretty near sided -- 20/400.

Note the was. For now I am glassesless, thanks to Lasik Eye Surgery. Woo.

I've had the surgery, I can explain what it was like for me. I'm not sure how well this story will translate into text, but whatever...

So the first step in Lasik Eye Surgery (once they've declared you are a valid candidate and they are sure your eyes aren't changing anymore, as Takashi already said) is to take some Valium... that way you don't go nuts. I was immensely calm the whole day, and while I actually found the entire Lasik process far more interesting than terrifying, I'm sure the Valium helped!

Then I'm lead into Room 1. This thing has a giant device which I'm to stick my eyes into so that they can be mapped. Basically, the computer looks at the my retina and creates a map which is used to tell the laser what to do to reshape the eye correctly.

Enough boring stuff...

Finally it's surgery time. Three people are there, the eye doctor and two assistants. One of them was there to basically keep my eyes wet during the surgery (as you can't blink.) They drop some stuff in my eye to numb all the nerves.

You know those scary alien abduction movies?? Where they do all kinds of crazy experiments to some poor human and they use this reverse clamp to hold open the poor guy's eye?

They've got that.

So now that my eye is stuck open they place this crazy eye cutting robot thing. It basically suctions onto the eye (it attached so hard that it broke a blood vessel in one of my eyes) and there's a camera or some sort of sensor so that it can track subtle eye movement. Then a cutting blade slices a near complete circle around the cornea of my eye. It sort of sounds like a tiny electric saw.

They remove the eye-slicebot and my doctor warns me. "When I flip back your cornea your vision will be extremely blurry. Don't worry, it's normal."

Holy shit. See, I'm focused on a small red LED and when they flipped the cornea back that light became so out of focus that it spread to cover my entire range of vision is a soft fuzzy orange glow. It was sorta like being underwater... but that's also inaccurate. I mean - I had bad vision, the BIG E, but this was unbelievable.

And it's finally time for the Lasers! I really have no idea what's going on at this point as I'm basically blind, but they start firing a laser into the back of my eyeball, reshaping it based on the map they created earlier. The Laser sounds incredible loud though, I assume that anyone waiting in the lobby would be slightly terrified from it.

They flip the cornea back, drop some other stuff in my eye and take five. And then they do it all again.

All in all it was very cool, and 100% pain free (well, except the numbing eye drops, there was a mild sting.)

The recovering process, though, is quite annoying. For the first day I just slept. The surgery was quite exhausting I guess, and the Valium was still in my system. And you have to wear these ridiculous eye covers for a week because rubbing your eyes will totally fuck things up.

One guy was driving his car while attempting to put in this antibacterial you get post-op. Shit happened and he ended up stabbing his eye with the tip of the dropper and pushing his cornea out of place! There was nothing they could do to fix it :/

I actually ended up going back six months later for a touch up, since my vision wasn't quite where I had hoped it would be. The process was identical except for one key step. Instead of using the robot to slice my cornea, they just found the old cut.... WITH TWEEZERS! He literally used small metal tweezer and manhandled the cornea lose.

I'll admit.. that got to me a bit.

But now my vision is 20/15+2 and I can watch TV in bed!

extralife · Posts: 3316

Your post scares the fuck out of me. I want to go hide in a corner. I am completely fucking serious.

DavidDurica · Posts: 367

skinny coder wrote:

{absolute horror}

I like contacts.

dark steve · Posts: 3002

That story kind of makes me want to get laser surgery. It sounds much wilder than I would have thought.

Why the hell don't they put you under?

chameleoneel · Posts: 1238

I started wearing glasses at the end of my Junior year in Highschool. so I've been wearing em for a couple years (graduated 2005).

I lived most of my life being able to see perfectly, better than 20/20. but, sometime around highschool, my eyes started to go bad, slowly, so slowly that I didn't really notice. eventually, I sorta noticed, but I kinda denied it for about half a year. but, when I finally bothered to get my permit, I totally flunked the eye test. so I'm near sighted, If i stretch out my arm and turn up my fingers so the back of my hand is facing my face, that is the cutoff point for my vision. can't see past the back of my hand.

I'm on my second pair of glasses. the first pair I got were really expensive, like 300 or 400 total, but that was when my parents insurance covered me. I went through numerous bendings and numerous rebendings etc. I even broke the screws, so I put sewing needles throught the screw holes and bent em around so the lenses stayed in tight. one day, while working at the Ply-wood mill that i work at, my glasses got knocked off, hit the floor, popped out both lenses, and the frame bounced onto a conveyor belt that lead to this giant spike roller (like in a mega man game). I couldn't see shit, and the dood who knocked my glasses off, instead of helping me, just sat there and said oh shit!

losing my frame was a huge problem cuz I don't have a great experience with contacts, just a decent one. I can wear contacts for only about 6-8 hours, and only when i'm like, out and about. if i want to watch a movie or play games, the contacts are not comfortable enough and interfere with my ability to relax and focus. so I NEED GLASSES. and when i lost my frame, was right when snake eater came out (now my favorite game ever). luckily, I had pre-ordered from gamestop and gotten a camo bandana with it, to which, I taped my lenses, and I wore this "headset" whenever I played games or sat at my computer.

eventually, after about two months (they took so long cuz the lenses I wanted were on back order, and I refused to choose another) I got new glasses. my work covered one lense ('cuz of the accident) and this time, I got the cheap hundred dollar package deal glasses. one lense was like 46 bucks, so I payed the difference.

skinny coder · Posts: 262

As gruesome as it might sound, it really was an interesting procedure and I had great results. No regrets at all. The only side effect from the surgery is that I see halos around bright lights after dark, and while it was really bad right after the surgery (I had to let other people drive me around after dark), it's very minor now.

Hell, I went back for more! Doesn't that say something?

dark steve wrote:

That story kind of makes me want to get laser surgery. It sounds much wilder than I would have thought.

Why the hell don't they put you under?

Well, that wouldn't nearly be as fun!

YOU GUYS ALL GOTTA DO IT!

chameleoneel · Posts: 1238

so, I just read the post about lasik surgery... :shock: yikes! man, they had better not manhandle my equipment, or I'm gonna freak out. Valium or not.

FortNinety · Posts: 4591

Everytime someone suggests I try lasik, I just tell them the procedure in gory details. Your's skinny coder has jumped to the very top!

dark steve · Posts: 3002

skinny coder wrote:

dark steve wrote:

That story kind of makes me want to get laser surgery. It sounds much wilder than I would have thought.

Why the hell don't they put you under?

Well, that wouldn't nearly be as fun!

YOU GUYS ALL GOTTA DO IT!

COME ON WHO'S WITH ME GUYS

Actually how much does that kinda thing run you?

thatbox · Posts: 816

I don't want lasik surgery anymore. I'm not going to just lay there and watch someone "peel back" my cornea. That cornea is MINE. Get your hands off it and leave it alone.

Edit: The newspaper ads they stick in with the Sunday comics usually say somewhere in the ballpark of 600USD per eye.

DavidDurica · Posts: 367

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1686228309191322424
Hey, guess what I found on Google Video!?!?!?

dhex · Posts: 2963

i know one chick who is damn happy with her lasik and another chick who is less than happy with it. but both see a lot better than before.

Psiga · Posts: 3990

There are new types of laser surgery on the horizon which use beam interference to scan an image of the retinal shape and abberations, then a computer generates a new 'topography' so to speak which corrects and enhances the cornea as much as possible. There's a mantra going around: "20/10 by 2010."

I am waiting for that. Even though I probably only have something like 20/23.

Mr. Business · Posts: 1530

DavidDurica wrote:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1686228309191322424
Hey, guess what I found on Google Video!?!?!?

What the hell was that whole thing where they made a circle in the side of the eye? Christ, I want to cry after watching that. It didn't scare me really, I just can't deal with how red that damn eye was. Seriously. What in the hell.

Also, does the cornea ever fully heal itself back up?

Psiga · Posts: 3990

To my knowledge, yes.

Also, the new technologies on the horizon supposedly don't need to make incisions. So just hold off.

skinny coder · Posts: 262

Psiga wrote:

There are new types of laser surgery on the horizon which use beam interference to scan an image of the retinal shape and abberations, then a computer generates a new 'topography' so to speak which corrects and enhances the cornea as much as possible. There's a mantra going around: "20/10 by 2010."

I am waiting for that. Even though I probably only have something like 20/23.

Yeah, what I got was similar to that. Personal Lasik is what they coined it in terms of marketing... but basically they had advanced the technology a bit and the mapping they took of my eyes were apparently far superior of what was going on just a year before. I'm sure what you are referring to is technically very different than what they did for me, but at least generally, it's about what they did.

The whole no incision thing though... wow.

I assume the cornea heals back up... I mean, it was six months and they had to literally pry it off with tweezers! So I wouldn't be surprised if they could always find that seam, but it's certainly healed enough for me to not notice a damn thing, or to have to take any special care.

And the cost, for me, and I'm sure it's cheaper now, was a shade above $2,000 an eye.

BUT! There are three reasons for this.

One, the upgrades to the system were brand new, and so I was paying for the ability to use the 'cutting edge' of Lasik tech. Two, the eye surgeon had been doing this for about 20 years, having learned in Europe long ago (it's been practiced there long before the US okay'd it) and he had a lot of experience.

Three, his name -- Dr. Cohn.

How can you not trust that.

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

I am destined to wear glasses. I mean people literally tell me, "Shit man put your glasses back on." Also I can't wear thick black lenses.

Psiga · Posts: 3990

Rud13 wrote:

I am destined to wear glasses. I mean people literally tell me, "Shit man put your glasses back on." Also I can't wear thick black lenses.

When I was much younger, I was convinced that I looked better in glasses, even though I never needed them.

Sawtooth · Posts: 2350

dark steve wrote:

That story kind of makes me want to get laser surgery. It sounds much wilder than I would have thought.

Why the hell don't they put you under?

I should have refused anaesthetic when they removed my wisdom teeth.

It would have been XXXTREME.

Although, yeah, same here. Really don't need it that badly, though. Astigmatism in my right is kind of bad, though, which makes me want to keep it half-closed all the time.

Hot Stott Bot · Posts: 2097

I'm considering getting lasik one of these days... it isn't very expensive, and it would be kind of nice! The peeling back of the cornea's thing doesn't really bother me much... I've known people who've had it done and say that it isn't a big deal.

Anyways, my main concern is that some people don't get very good results, and having better-but-not-good-enough vision would... kind of suck.

Baron Patsy · Posts: 573

I've worn glasses since I was like five years old. I have a yearly appointment with the eye doctor. This year, I only made it six months before I needed new lenses; I couldn't read the board at school anymore.

I went to the eye doctor like two weeks ago, and I literally couldn't see the big E at the top of the board without my glasses on. The eye doctor thought that I was lying to him. (He's a pretty funny guy. Giant Chinese man, like six and a half feet tall, heavy accent. Name's Dr. Fu.)

I've also got those floater things all over, with my glasses off. They're fun.

BalbanesBeoulve · Posts: 2126

Baron Patsy wrote:

I've also got those floater things all over, with my glasses off. They're fun.

Cataracts?