My Experience With Laser Eye Surgery

I’ve been wearing glasses ever since I was a kid. I think I got my first pair of glasses around the 4th or 5th grade. At the time, I’ve had people tell me that this is pretty young to get your first pair of glasses. I’ve seen people giving infants glasses to wear. I don’t think there’s a young enough age to give glasses to, but I’m not a doctor who can make those decisions. People should have good vision.

I wore glasses all throughout my childhood, then I left and joined the military where my peers would convince me to wear contacts for the first time. I got my first pair of contacts, and they were absolutely horrible, but I would wear them. I have very sensitive eyes, and very overactive tear ducts. A slight breeze, or a sun that’s too bright would cause me to start tearing up. Putting in the contacts was an absolute nightmare, and giving myself eyedrops was pretty bad as well. Once I got my contacts in, I would leave them in for a couple of days, and by some miracle, they wouldn’t affect my eyes. I would take them out and wash them, and switch between my glasses whenever. I didn’t really care much about my physical appearance, so I didn’t really care about what I looked like either wearing glasses or contacts.

When I got out of the military, I had saved up quite a bit of money. I started using the GI bill to attend college, and I was receiving a monthly stipend of cash to help support me. I was also living with my parents while attending college, so I didn’t have to pay rent. With this surplus of dispensable income, I bought a car, and decided to pull the trigger and get laser eye surgery.

I was 22 years old at the time, so I did some searching and I found a few places. One stood out which was nearby to my home, so I decided to go in and get evaluated for eye surgery. I scheduled an evaluation appointment, and they gave me a couple of options for eye surgery. I didn’t know that I had these kinds of options because I had only heard about LASIK, and it was apparently the greatest thing since sliced bread, but they told me about another type of surgery called PRK. PRK stands for photorefractive keratectomy, and during this procedure they reshape the layers of the cornea to fix any irregular curvature in your eyes. With LASIK, they make an incision into your cornea, raise this flap up, and use the laser to reshape the cornea.

I got to choose between these two options, and I decided to go with PRK. The deciding factor was when the eye doctor told me about the risks associated with LASIK where the flap could reopen. This put a HORRIBLE vision in my head of this happening, and I said no thank you. I do sports and ride a motorcycle, so the high speed and wind blowing in my face and eyes would raise the risk factor of this happening. I was told with PRK that this wouldn’t be an issue because they wouldn’t create a flap. I was scheduled to go in for my surgery in 2 months. I don’t remember how much it cost, but I think it was around $3000 USD at the time.

On the day of my surgery, I went in with a friend who was going to drive me home, and I was informed that the laser’s cooling mechanism had broken, so they rescheduled me out for 1 more week. I came back the next week with the same friend, and I was ready to go. They put me in a gown, and I got talking to the anesthesiologist who wasn’t going to put me under, but make sure I was numb so I didn’t feel anything. Turns out his son had just joined the military, and he liked to ask other members of the military which eye was their shooting eye. I had to think about it for a second because I was nervous before the operation, but I gave him my answer.

They numbed up my face and brought me into the operating room which was really cold. The surgeon put these clips on my eyes to hold my eye lids open for the procedure like that scene in A Clockwork Orange. You need to be awake for the procedure because your eyes need to focus on an object. The object I was focusing on was light projection of a barn that was on the ceiling. The procedure started, and the surgeon took a scalpel, and was scraping away the surface of my eye. I didn’t feel a thing, but it was incredibly disturbing to watch. I don’t remember a lot of the procedure, thank god, but it was over in just a few minutes. I remember the smell of the burning flesh when he used the laser, and when he cleared away some of the “scrap” he scraped off, he would use very cold water in a bottle to spray across my face. I didn’t know it was cold water until it reached the back of my neck where I wasn’t numb.

After the procedure, I was given a t-shirt, and some really thick sunglasses to protect my eyes. I had done some shopping earlier, because I was told the recovery process could take up to a week. I was given a prescription for some Vicodin to help with any pain, and I was sent home. I filled the prescription on the way home, and when I got home, I went right to sleep. Over the next few days, I would get pain in my eyes, and I would take the Vicodin to alleviate the pain until I ran out. I called my eye doctor for a refill, and I got one. My friend took me to fill it, and eventually that ran out as well. They wouldn’t give me another refill, and told me to take a cold washcloth and put it across my eyes. I grabbed the t-shirt I was given because I couldn’t see well, and was in a lot of pain, and I ran this t-shirt under the faucet in my bathroom to soak it, and put it on my face. I didn’t realize how warm my eyes were until I did this, because the t-shirt started gettin really warm, and I would just move it across my face. After about 12 hours of doing this, all of the pain was gone, and I no longer needed any pain killers or cold cloths on my face.

The next issue I ran into was light sensitivity. I would be wearing sunglasses for the next 6 months because my eyes were so sensitive to light. I was going to college, and would wear my sunglasses indoors. I had a few people ask why I did this, and I said it was because my future was so bright. I also had a major issue with my eyes drying up that would leave me in pain for up to 20 minutes. When I would wake up in the morning, my eyes would be so dry that my eyeball would stick to my eyelid. As I’m waking up, I wouldn’t be able to catch this and stop myself, but my eyelid would move and unstick itself, and it would HURT. This happened about 10 times in total, and I would get eye drops to help alleviate this, but they wouldn’t always work.

It took me about 6 months to go from surgery to fully recovered — as if I never had to wear glasses. It’s been 13 years since I got my eye surgery, and I was told that I would eventually need to get glasses when I get older. I recently got my driver’s license renewed, and was given an eye exam, and I noticed that one of my eyes is not as sharp as the other. Overall, $3000 USD for 13 years of perfect vision has been an amazing investment, and I’m glad I did it.