I am a little nervous, but after 24 years of wearing glasses, I am looking forward to no more glasses. I am an excellent candidate for 20/20 correction. The Intralase procedure is supposed to prevent night blindness.
I scheduled for a Thursday, so I could take tomorrow off and have 4 days to recover before having to drive 40 miles to work. I am supposed to be able to drive tomorrow after my 9:15 follow-up appointment.
If anyone has any questions I will try to answer them.
What is the cost of the surgery? Is it covered by insurance?
How does one choose a place to get the surgery?
My vision was once 20/40. Nowadays it seems to be not as good. I’ll need to get them checked soon. I’ve also discovered that if I want to keep a book with small print at my ‘normal’ reading distance, it often helps to have 1 diopter reading glasses. If I were to fix my far vision, how will it affect my near vision?
Best of luck to you. I’m planning on getting the procedure done myself. I have three friends that have done it and their only regret is that they didn’t do it sooner.
Cost is $4800, but on the advise of someone* on the board, I looked for the best Doc and not the best bargain. I have no insurance to help with this, but we do have a Health Care FSA with $4800 in it that is pre-tax. This is basically a pre-tax fund to pay for medical cost. The best part is I can get the surgery now, but we only pay $200 per month into it over the year. The pre-tax part means we save roughly 28% of the cost of the procedure.
I checked with my regular Eye Doctor to recommend some Eye Surgeons.
I then checked with my sister who is a Sr. RN in a large medical practice on who the nurses and doctors in the practice use and recommend.
I then researched on the web. I have a local doctor only 20 minutes from my house that appears to be the second best in NJ. I do not think I can post his name here, but anyone interested can Email me.
I am far from an expert, but my understanding is that there is an option to correct for both near and far sighted conditions. There are others on the board that can answer this much better than I. Maybe they will pop into the thread.
The night blindness apparently was a large concern in earlier procedures and with lesser skilled surgeons. My understanding is that it is far less of a concern now.
Thank you **Nava ** & brewha, I will report back probably tomorrow.
I have done a lot of research on this and there was some concern with night vision. It seems that some people see halos around lights at night. Of my three friends that had it done, only one experienced the halos. They lasted for about a month and he hasn’t had any trouble since.
I had it done in 2004 and it cost roughly the same amount. Considering we are both in Jersey I wonder if we used the same doctor/location. Mine was in North Jersey.
Mine worked out great for me, although my right eye is still around 20/40 (haven’t bothered to get it touched up, since I’m still legal to drive).
I know this is coming too late, but my one piece of advice for folks getting LASIK is: hold your breath. It helps you keep still, plus that “burning eyeball” smell is really nasty.
The halos are from the lased area of the eye being smaller than the iris when it’s fully open in the dark. Not really night blindness. In the short-term after the procedure, I had halos, but nearly five years later, that’s evened out to looking more like I’m wearing dirty or dry contact lenses.
My LASIK had no particular effect on my existing night blindness, actually. Driving at night has always been fairly abstract with a lot of red and white lights and not much else, so I do what I can to avoid it. :eek:
I had LASIK done in 1998. The staff were quite excited, since they rarely got to perform that kind of surgery on someone as blind as I was. If my glasses fell off, I couldn’t see to find them. Being able to see the alarm clock, see in the shower, have all of my peripheral vision back, that was awesome. Every once in a while, if I’m really tired and my eyes are dry, I still try to push my glasses up and end up smacking myself in the face.
I had issues with night vision on and off for a couple of years, as well as being effectively blind in low light, but that’s not really a problem any more. I also had super dry eyes for several years afterwards, but that’s also cleared up.
Because I am extremely twitchy, and the surgeon did both eyes at the same time, I ended up with a pair of spectacular black eyes. (When they had finished the first eye, and covered it, and then sucked up the second cornea for surgery, and everything faded to black, I started fighting like mad and they had to restrain me.) I think if I had been warned before I took the Valium, I wouldn’t have freaked out like that. I only needed a couple of Advil for pain afterwards, and I was fine. I ended up with 20/60 the day after surgery, and 20/20 a week later. It was definitely worth it and I’d do all over again in a heartbeat.
The Procedure went well, 4 hours later I can see writing on the TV, my alarm clock across the room and I would estimate I am at about 20/60. By Tomorrow I will hopefully be 20/40 and a lot less blurry.
I did not experience any burning eyeball smell. The Laser part of the procedure took less than 90 seconds per eye.
skittles: My Doc is in Little Silver.
They gave me 4 Valiums and I slept for about for hours.
sorry for the typos, I probably should not even be typing this,
Jim
I just got back from the first followup. They checked my eyes and I am already at 20/20. This is pretty exciting. The Doctor removed the clear band-aid from my right eye, but left the left eye until Monday to give it a little more time to heal.
I am cleared for driving, reading, and being on the computer.
I have a good chance of having better than 20/20 vision.
I got the protective contact and clear band aid of my left eye today. My vision is 20/20 in the left eye and 20/25 in the right. I am down to a single prescription eye drops and artificial tears.
I really want LASIK. Unfortunately, my eyes are still degenerating to the point where getting LASIK now would be stupid because my eyes would, apparently, just continue to get worse even after they healed.
But once they stop, hoo-boy. I’m gonna start savin’ up for that. I hate putting contacts in, and my glasses give me a headache.
Congratulations again! I’m glad there weren’t any complications.
