Lasik

On May 15th, I got Lasik, which is laser assisted in-situ keratomileausis (basically that a laser shapes your eye). I opted for the IntraLase laser as opposed to microtome blade. I also opted for CustomVue with wavefront techonology, which corrected internal refractive errors and higher order abberations within my eye.

It started on Monday May 12th, when I went to see Christ Peterson, our optometrist and long-time friend, at First Eye Care. He dilated "the crap" out of my eyes so they could get a precise vision measurement independent of any control I had. Having my eyes dilated was very freaky. Everything was blurry except for a one inch margin about eight inches away from my face. I was left with some paperwork to read over and could only read it at this exact distance (and even that gave me a headache). Putting my glasses on made it worse. It was a panicky sort of feeling to know that even though I had my glasses right with me, I wasn't able to see anything except for stuff on an invisible plane eight inches out. I got my distance vision back by the time I left the office, so I could drive. I got my up close vision back that evening, so I was able to read my mothers day card. I never realized how much I read things during the day until I was unable to do so. It drove me absolutely crazy.

Just as freaky is the process of having your eyes numbed and then having a technician poke your cornea with a pen-like instrument to measure the thickness of your cornea. You don't feel a thing, but the pressure of the pen creates a ripple effect in your vision that makes you feel like you are looking up from the bottom of a pool and something disrupts the surface of the water. I felt a little sick to my stomach and the tech reassured me that any symptom I might have would be psychosomatic (i.e. all in my head).

Fortunately, my vision measured almost exactly the same as when not dilated, and I had nice thick cornea somewhere in the 600+ range. They also took a wavefront scan of my eye, which measures internal aberrations, much like astigmatism is aberrations for the outer shape of your cornea. I don't even remember which machine did it, so it obviously was not as scarring as other machines (like the puff of air machine that everyone dreads). The scans looked like a topography map with hills and valley, slopes on one side and dips on the other. Since there were no intense changes in elevation, this was also promising that the surgery would be successful.

On Wednesday the 14th, I went to see the surgeon at Cornea Associates of Texas. I had a very nice tech named Myra, I believe, who wore the same Asics gel tennis shoes as Michael. She said she ruined her feet and the alignment of her hips and back by running along a tilted beach for most of her early twenties. She measured my eyes on all the same machines as First Eye Care had done, but without dilating, numbing, poking, etc. These were just to double check measurements, so I was glad they didn't go all the way for the sake of perfect accuracy.

Then the doctor, Tyrone McCall, came in. He was a fast, smooth talker, but that was fine, because I wasn't worried about his people skills. Chris Peterson said he was his favorite of all the surgeons there, and I figured that was as good as I was going to get on ranking one over the other. He answered all my questions (especially my concern about rubbing my eyes). I asked about the risks, and he said that most of the risks were either from flap dislodging or infection. He said if I took the antibiotic drops, then I wouldn't have to worry about infection, that he had zero patients get an infection with Lasik in the ten years he'd been doing it (although he had other clinics refer patients to him who had gotten an infection because he is a corneal surgeon and treats such things). He said if I used the steroid drops as indicated and didn't rub my eyes and avoided air borne debris like smoke and dust, then the flap would not dislodge.

Then I went and saw Candice, who looks surprisingly like Jennifer Aniston (she said since her new hair cut that she got that comment all the time). She was the paperwork lady, who gave me prescription for my antibiotic drops (kill bacteria in my eyes the morning before surgery), and gave me brochures, disclaimers, fee totals, etc. She also explained the procedure step by step and said Dr. McCall was the one who did her eyes (although she had PRK due to the extreme astigmatism on her eye surface). She said that Dr. McCall is very reassuring and will tell you over and over again what a great job you are doing (which he did, even though I was doing nothing but staying calm...and even that was due to the Valium and not my skill). She also explained that your brain subconsciously knows not to rub your eyes after eye surgery, and you just won't let yourself do it (true...I've woken up in the night about to rub my eyes before, and stopped myself just in time...your subconscious never sleeps).

Michael stayed home from work on Thursday and Friday to help me out and watch the kids while I recovered (and I was doing so great by the second day that I let him go on a bike ride in the afternoon). Thursday I went in about 1:15, and was ushered to a side room off the lobby of the regular office. A skinny older lady with a slow but chatty southern belle style and jewel encrusted horn-rimmed glasses instructed us. From her, I got my shower cap and Valium. Before the Valium, I was a little tense and worried. After the Valium started to work, I couldn't even control the volume of my voice. I said to Michael, "I think the Valium is working now." And he shhd me. Then I could really tell it was working because I could care less that my husband had just shhd me. Chris Peterson also came because he hadn't seen the new surgery center yet.

It was just us in the waiting room. They said it was a slow day, but there were only four chairs in there, so even their busy days can't be too bad.

Dr. McCall came in about 2pm, and I donned my sweatshirt (the surgery room was about 60 degrees...I think it kept the air cleaner so nothing got in my eye, or the equipment works best at that temperature). They had a dentist-like chair with two big white machines on either side. I laid down on the chair and they covered my legs with a blanket (very nice). I have to say I felt like I was going to get my hair shampooed and not my eyes cut open. Valium is a magical little pill.

They put the numbing drops in my eyes as close to the surgery as possible so they would last for as long as possible afterwards (too many numbing drops eat away at eye tissue so they can't send you home with any, believe me, I asked). Then they taped one eye shut and put eyelid holders and a plastic ring in the other eye. I hardly even noticed the eyelid holders, which look totally horrific to somebody watching. The plastic ring hooked up with the first laser machine and pressed down, like pressing the heel of your hand into your eye socket. Just pressure, no pain or pinching or discomfort. When it presses down that much, your vision goes black, and it feels like you have both your eyes closed and you're pushing with the heel of your hand against one eye. Then I heard a machine noise like a laser printer, and then the flap was apparently cut, because they took the ring out, I got my vision back, and then with tiny eyeball tweezers, he pulled back the flap. To me, it just looked like someone was slapping a blurring sticker onto the windshield of my car.

They swung the head of the chair so it was under the machine on the right. I looked at this black circle with white rings in it and a light at the center, like a high-tech bullseye. I was told to focus on the light in the middle and not look away. The machine started up with a loud CLACK CLACK CLACK CLACK and the black circle started to look very interesting. There were various rings of super intense colors growing and shrinking, It felt very much like that weird sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I also imagined this is what people high on drugs saw when they hallucinated (and hey, I WAS on a drug!). When they were finished, it smelled a little funny like ummm a hot computer? It's hard to describe and sort of hard to remember now.

They swiveled me to the center of the two machines and used a very tiny tiny brush to wipe my flap back into place, which looked like a windshield wiper cleaning the blur off my eye in a big sweeping motion. They put steroid drops in my eye (and maybe antibiotic, too) and taped it shut. Then they untaped my right eye and repeated the whole thing. Then they untaped both eyes and gave me some tinted goggles, which Michael referred to as "Riddick" glasses, because they looked like the ones Vin Diesel wore in the movie.

I got up and I could read the clock on the wall. Not perfect, but maybe 20/40. Michael drove to pick our kids up from the Reeds (oh, the wonderful Jennifer Reed who is always happy to watch my kids in times of dire need). Then we drove home and I went to sleep. I slept over six hours. I think it was the Valium and all the tension from before the Valium that wore me out. When I woke, it looked and felt like I had really bad contacts in. There was a whitish haze over my whole area of vision, and my eyes were ever so slightly irritated. Being the kind of person who over-wears contacts until they are this bad all the time, it was really no big deal at all. And since I was allowed to rub anywhere I felt bone, and could pull my eyelid away from my eye to rub it, I actually didn't need to rub as much as I thought. I did ask Michael to empty the vacuum a few days later, and refrained from taking part in sanding the beds we were working on.

On Friday, I saw Chris Peterson for a post-op visit. My right eye was 20/40 and my left eye was 20/20. By a week later, both were close enough to 20/20 to call it a success.

Three weeks later, I still need sunglasses to leave the house, and sometimes wear them in our window-rich home by afternoon. It hurts my sensitive recovering eye muscles to have to tighten my iris that much. Other than that, and perhaps the occasional headache, everything is normal now. I have to keep reminding myself that I don't have contacts to take out at night, and that I don't have to reach for my glasses getting out of bed in the morning. But of course I consider those moments perks rather than drawbacks.