Niles Standish
Footballguy
In case anyone is interested and considering lasik but hasn't done it. Or maybe did it in the past and curious how it goes nowadays. Here is my experience so far. First of all I went to one of the more expensive places so it was over $3000 (that's with a work discount). Not very cheap. I had the surgery yesterday and this is how it went step by step.
They talked to me in a room and I was pretty freaked out. They explained procedure. Gave me some eye drops and went over risks etc... I know they have to do that stuff legally but it was making me more freaked out. Then after everything was signed they gave me some sort of anxiety pill. Benzo I think. About 30 minutes later they started on the surgery.
They tape your eye lids back and then numb you even more and put some sort of contraption in your eye that doesn't let you blink. That is kind of scary but you don't really feel anything except in your eyelid and it wasn't really painful just uncomfortable. Then they put something over your eye which is the laser that makes the flap it was very uncomfortable lots of pressure feels like they are trying to push your eye into the back of your skull. Good news is it's only 45 seconds or so but it feels like 5 minutes. I was counting one one thousand two one thousand in my head and that helped it some. Plus I had a squeezy ball but I'm not sure that really helped. After that they have the other laser which is just a bunch of colors and you don't feel a thing at all from that but it's the one that is lasering your eye. The one bad thing about that is you smell burning which you have to assume is your eye. Not the best smell but no feeling so that one wasn't too bad. That's it. Then they go to the next eye and do the exact same thing. The pressure and the smell of burning were about the only bad things. The first eye was so fast it was pretty easy the second one the pressure thing seemed a lot worse and I was just sitting there squeezing and really happy that this was the last eye.
Walk out of the laser room and I already can see better than I could with my glasses (note they were 7-8 years old and really scratched to hell so we're not talking 20/20 at that moment). No pain at that moment and they gave me numbing eye drops that were good for another 30 minutes which was just enough for my driver to get me home. I sat in the car with my eyes shut and got home went to sleep for a few hours. Woke up at about 6-7 last night (surgery was 2ish) with sore/dry eyes. But not nearly as bad as I expected. Watched South Carolina game. Went to bed with the goofy goggles. And then woke up now with no real pain this morning. My vision is probably 20/20 right now. Have my next day followup in a few hours.
But so far (and I know a lot of the bad things that can happen are not day of the procedure but a few days after) the procedure was not as bad as I was expecting (although still not fun). The recovery (again so far since lasik was only about 12 hours ago) is way way way less than I expected. I pretty much woke up this morning feeling 90-95% my eyes don't hurt just feel slightly tired. At this moment I'm very happy I did it. If an infection or something sets in well that changes things of course. But hopefully it won't.
They talked to me in a room and I was pretty freaked out. They explained procedure. Gave me some eye drops and went over risks etc... I know they have to do that stuff legally but it was making me more freaked out. Then after everything was signed they gave me some sort of anxiety pill. Benzo I think. About 30 minutes later they started on the surgery.
They tape your eye lids back and then numb you even more and put some sort of contraption in your eye that doesn't let you blink. That is kind of scary but you don't really feel anything except in your eyelid and it wasn't really painful just uncomfortable. Then they put something over your eye which is the laser that makes the flap it was very uncomfortable lots of pressure feels like they are trying to push your eye into the back of your skull. Good news is it's only 45 seconds or so but it feels like 5 minutes. I was counting one one thousand two one thousand in my head and that helped it some. Plus I had a squeezy ball but I'm not sure that really helped. After that they have the other laser which is just a bunch of colors and you don't feel a thing at all from that but it's the one that is lasering your eye. The one bad thing about that is you smell burning which you have to assume is your eye. Not the best smell but no feeling so that one wasn't too bad. That's it. Then they go to the next eye and do the exact same thing. The pressure and the smell of burning were about the only bad things. The first eye was so fast it was pretty easy the second one the pressure thing seemed a lot worse and I was just sitting there squeezing and really happy that this was the last eye.
Walk out of the laser room and I already can see better than I could with my glasses (note they were 7-8 years old and really scratched to hell so we're not talking 20/20 at that moment). No pain at that moment and they gave me numbing eye drops that were good for another 30 minutes which was just enough for my driver to get me home. I sat in the car with my eyes shut and got home went to sleep for a few hours. Woke up at about 6-7 last night (surgery was 2ish) with sore/dry eyes. But not nearly as bad as I expected. Watched South Carolina game. Went to bed with the goofy goggles. And then woke up now with no real pain this morning. My vision is probably 20/20 right now. Have my next day followup in a few hours.
But so far (and I know a lot of the bad things that can happen are not day of the procedure but a few days after) the procedure was not as bad as I was expecting (although still not fun). The recovery (again so far since lasik was only about 12 hours ago) is way way way less than I expected. I pretty much woke up this morning feeling 90-95% my eyes don't hurt just feel slightly tired. At this moment I'm very happy I did it. If an infection or something sets in well that changes things of course. But hopefully it won't.
