Curious as to what they told OP as to how long the correction would last.
I just talked to a guy at work who had Lasik eight years ago and was telling me, with disappointment, that the correction (which put him at 20/15 post-op) is starting to reverse. He said he’d probably have to go back for another surgery or just start wearing glasses again.
To the Lasik doc: Can you have a second surgery years later? What makes the correction reverse?
I’ll chime in as well, since I got my eyes zapped back in September.
One criterion that hasn’t been mentioned is pupil size. My doc almost vetoed my surgery because I apparently have freakishly oversized pupils. Nine millimeters, as I recall, is right at the edge of what they’ll do. It’s because there’s a discontinuity at the edge of the area shaped by the laser, and if your pupil expands past that point, you can get pretty severe halo and glare problems. I haven’t had any problems along those lines, so I guess I squeaked in under the limit.
I did lose just a bit of close-up vision. Things start to fuzz about 4 inches from my eyes. Since everything past that point was fuzzy before my surgery, it’s a trade I’m happy to make. I don’t need reading glasses, although I probably will eventually.
I can provide a pretty detailed account of the whole procedure, if anyone wants to read it. I didn’t have any sort of sedative, so the memories are fairly vivid.
jumping in here to comment. i had it done about eight years ago now and an adjustment about five years ago.
sounds like things have changed a little. the morning of the surgery they handed you two tablets of ativan, which, iirc, is some kind of an anxiety-reducer/relaxant. one you took before surgery to cut down on flinching during the actual procedure. the other you took when you got home to go to sleep on.
my surgeon in fact recommended i do exactly that. the surgery center even asked if i had children and to do my level best to find someone to take them for a goodly part of the day if they weren’t in school already so i *could * sleep. fortunately, not an issue for me.
you had to do it on a friday so you could spend the weekend inside. the idea behind that was that you were less likely to create possible infection situations if you were in a closed environment. then you went back to work on monday as usual, no prob. an acquaintance who is rather lacking in common sense had the same surgery one afternoon – and went golfing the next day. he’s had eye trouble off and on ever since. gee, i can’t imagine why…
i gladly gave up my close-up vision to overcome lifelong distance vision problems, as i’d been in glasses since the second grade and contacts since the last ice age, i think. it was worth every penny of the nearly 5,000 it cost back then. the only drawback, and i was warned about this in advance, is a possible tendency toward dry-eye, which has indeed happened. and, i’ve developed sinus trouble in my old age, so the old eyes can suffer doubly from time to time.
meh. such losses are nothing compared to the gains, and there are lots of products available these days to keep eyes hydrated. i don’t have to wear glasses any more to watch a movie at a theater or see the television or drive a car. if the light is bright enough, i can even read a book without a pair of cheap reading glasses (at last count i have ten of them scattered downstairs and upstairs in the house, the car, and at work), but i usually do use a pair anyway.
I’ve been thinking about having it done since 15% is covered by my insurance and I am sick of wearing contacts.
Balance, please post your story…or PM me and I’ll give you my email. I’ve been doing a lot of researching, but another point of view would be wonderful.
A question for iDoctor.
It was 8 days ago that I had the LASIK. On my next day visit I was at about 20-30. But it was ‘different’ for me (different that I am now a bit far sighted).
Before the LASIK, I was about a -6 in each eye. Pretty near sighted. About 20-400.
I am now about +1. A bit far sighted.
I just saw my optometrist for my 2nd postop checkup and he said that this is by design. They over correct a little. As my corneas heal, and settle down in 4-6 weeks my vision should improve. My optometrist said that If I was at 20-20 and 0 (instead of +1) now, he would be a little concerned.
I’m not too concerned. 20-30 is one heck of a lot better than 20-400. But a question to iDoctor. And those of you that have had LASIK……
Is this pretty normal?
I’ll answer other questions that have come up as I can. I’ve been off line for two days.
I really don’t know. It’s best if your eyes are not changing when you do it. Mine have been at a stable Rx for about 10 years.
You had it done pretty recently. Some of the older lasers could not shape enough of the cornea to accomadate for night vision. Hense the halos. I’m fine that way. But don’t know if I have large pupils.
Here’s a full recounting, then:
My father and I arrived at the hospital at about 9:00 AM. They ran through the refraction procedure first, to verify that I hadn’t undergone any last-minute changes.
Then they gave me numbing drops, and the doctor made an alignment mark on each of my eyes with a pen. We waited a few minutes for the drops to take effect, then they led me to the next station.
The next station was where they cut the flaps. They had me lie down on a fairly comfy table, and a nurse plopped a teddy bear on my chest in case I didn’t feel silly enough. They taped a bit of light gauze over my left eye, then used more tape to keep the eyelashes on my right eye out of the way as they propped it open. The eye-holding-open widget is quite small, but it felt huge; there wasn’t any pain, but it felt distinctly odd, and my blink reflex got a workout.
Once my eye was clamped open, they slowly lowered the cutter down onto it. There was a moment of crazy-swirly lights you get when you put pressure on your eye, then my vision went dark briefly from the pressure. The laser cut the flap, they retracted the machine, unpropped my eyelid, and repeated the process on my left eye.
At this point, my vision was a big foggy. My eyes didn’t hurt, but I wasn’t inclined to keep them open. They left me to rest for about five minutes as the flaps settled. I’m told the laser causes small bubbles as it’s cutting the flap, and the wait is to allow those to be reabsorbed. I fished my DS out of my pocket and listened to some mp3s while I waited.
After a few minutes of rest, they came to fetch me. I could see well enough to walk to the next table and lie down on it. They pivoted the table to place me under the main laser to check positioning, then swung me back out and had me shift over a bit while they raised the table slightly. Then they repeated the gauze-tape-eyelid clamping rigamarole, with the addition of a little suction hose and an irrigation line on the clamped eye, moved the flap (at which point I could no longer see anything but blurs), and swung me back into place.
There were some minor adjustments, then I was admonished to keep my eye fixed on the flashing orange light. The laser made a loud chattering noise while it was active, and there was a sharp, distinctive odor–I’ve read stories like mine where people said it smelled like anything from roasting meat to burning cat hair, but all I smelled was ozone. In less than a minute, it was done with that eye, and they swung me back out again.
Next, I got to lie there for about 5 minutes while the doctor used a tool like a teeny-tiny squeegee to smooth the flap back into place and let it settle. I commented that it tickled a bit, and they gave me more numbing drops. I could actually see fairly well out the eye at that point, when the doctor’s hand wasn’t in the way–everything was foggy, but my acuity was better than it had ever been without glasses or contacts. The other staff members in attendance were teasing one of the nurses about her plans to get Botox injections, and I tossed in a comment or two.
After the doc was satisfied with the flap, they covered that eye, and I went in for round two. It was a bit different, because my vision in my left eye has always been much, much worse than my right. When they told me to look for the orange light, I had serious trouble finding it–the orange flashes blurred across my whole field of vision. I eventually picked out the center, the laser started up, and I had the most surreal experience of the whole affair–I got to watch my eyesight improving. It hadn’t registered with my right eye, but as the laser worked, I saw the flashing light coming steadily into sharper focus. When it was crystal-clear to me, the laser shut down, and they swung me back out again.
More squeegeeing, more jokes, another round of eyedrops, and then I was back on my feet. We traipsed back into the other room and they ran me through yet another refraction, which indicated that my eyesight was roughly 20/30. They gave me a little care package with antibiotic drops, steroid drops, artificial tears, goggles, a few painkillers (vicodin, I think), and the doc’s cell number. I was done before noon.
I was very, very light-sensitive, and there was still a haze over my vision, but I toddled off to the parking lot and climbed into the car, and my father drove me home. It took about an hour, and the numbing drops wore off about halfway. My eyes were very achy, and I couldn’t keep them open, so I didn’t try. I managed to pry them open to stumble up the stairs to my apartment. I popped some ibuprofen, put on the little goggles from my bag, and flopped down on the couch to nap. Then I got up and found my big, comfy mad scientist goggles because the little ones were irritating as hell. I didn’t touch the vicodin. Most painkillers don’t work right on me–they don’t help the pain, and they make me twitchy and paranoid.
Suitably accoutred, I slept until nearly supper time, at which point I was awakened by dripping water inside my goggles. My eyes had watered heavily and the tears had evaporated and condensed on the lenses, then started dripping. My eyes were sore, but I could hold them open again, and even check my email (although I had to turn the brightness way down on my monitor). I put antibiotic and steroid drops in my eyes, had some supper, put my goggles back on, and went to bed.
When I woke up the next morning, I was still pretty light-sensitive, but otherwise doing well. Dad drove me to my eye doctor for the next-day followup, and my vision had reached 20/25. There was still a faint haze, and everything looked like it was glowing from inside, but I could see better than I ever had without aid. I could have gone to work if I’d had to, but I made a point of scheduling the procedure on a Friday, just in case.
I didn’t have any significant discomfort after that, and my vision was up to 20/20 within a week. I didn’t need the artificial tears at all, but I put the other drops in faithfully. I hated the prednisone (steroid) drops, because they were milky, and they left a white haze on my vision for a long time after I used them. After a week and another followup, my doc said I could taper off the drops, because the flaps had healed. There was a brief scare when he thought he saw a clump of epithelial cells under the flap in my left eye (which would require lifting the flap again to clean them out), but it turned out to be a bit of oil from lachrymal fluid, which didn’t affect my vision and would eventually go away on its own.
Four months on, I’m still at 20/20, don’t have any halo or glare problems (which I had even with contact lenses), and don’t suffer from dry eyes. I’m glad I had it done.
Sorry to all dopers but I’m just going to respond in full to this post instead of a bunch of cut, paste and quotes.
Things have changed. They no longer use a knife to cut the corneal flap. It’s done by laser.
They gave me a valium, and a percoset (I think).
My Wife took care of me. The LASIK clinic is 100 mountain miles away. I made my self cat nap coming home and the rest of the afternoon. Kinda hard for me, but I suspect the valium helped.
I had mine done on a Wednsday. I took Wed, Thurs, and Friday off from work. Had the weekend too. I did my very best to impersonate a bum. I watched a bit of TV and did not read or go on the computer untill the next day. I did watch some TV.
So far, I have no problems with dry eyes. Though it sounds like some do. I’ve never had that problem and I live in a very dry climate. I’m hoping that doesn’t come up but I would gladly trade seeing for eye drops.
It’s still a possibility with the newer equipment, but much less of one. The halos produced are less intense, and there’s a lot more leeway on pupil size and dilation than there used to be. Mine were just big enough for the doctor to be concerned.
Seriously, one of my friends asked me if I was on some kind of painkiller when I came back to work. My eyes had always been somewhat obscured by glasses/contacts, and he’d never had occasion to really look at them before. He thought I looked stoned. 
dry eye doesn’t happen to everybody who has the work done and it tends to develop over a period of years not days or months in some people.
i didn’t mention in my first post that i was in my early 40s at the time with a stable presciption, etc. so i was an excellent candidate for the procedure. the surgeon at the time told me they wouldn’t do younger people because their eyes hadn’t stablized yet. sounds like the technology is catching up with current times.
the goggles mention cracked me up. i had to wear these shield things that were taped over my face. the then-SO said i looked like an extra some bad scifi bug movie. 
To those who have posted since I was last here, sorry I’ve been away a while.
enipla: What you have been told is true to a point. We worry a little about what we term “regression” - drifting back in the direction from which you started. Regression is more common among those who were originally treated for “farsightedness” (hyperopia) as opposed to “nearsightedness” (myopia), which you had. If I (and most surgeons) notice early overcorrection (or overshoot), we will usually stop the anti-inflammatory drops (usually a steroid) sooner, in hopes of inducing some early regression and meeting our target. If you are initially perfect or undercorrected, some will continue steroids longer, to attempt to belay the regression effect. Personally, I am not convinced we can significantly impact the long-term results with shprt-term modulation of therapy, but I try it anyway. In myopic treatments in young patients (early to mid 20’s) I will sometimes be more aggressive, knowing that any induced hyperopia can easily be overcome through accommodation in the eye. As we get older, we lose this ability to accommodate, so I try to protect aginst these overcorrections, instead preferring to see a small undercorrection to help protect against the need for reading glasses.
Many have posted about the potential need for retreatments several years down the road. This is not at all unusual, and does not necessarily mean anything has gone wrong with the LASIK surgery. Just because you have had surgery on your cornea, this does not stop the other changes which can occur in the eye. There are many people out there who have had a stable eyeglass prescription for years, and slowly start to notice a blur developing. If you've never had surgery, you think nothing of changing your glasses or contacts every so often. After surgery, it is unreasonable to expect that similar small changes in the eye won't occur. Because I have a very large practice with thousands of previous LASIK patients, every week I see someone who had surgery more than five years ago, and now requests a "tweak." Often we can safely accomplish this. Other times it is not safe, depending on how "large" your first surgery was, how thin your cornea is, how steep or flat, etc. As you can see, it is not always an easy decision.
I try to tell my patients that approximately 5% will need a second procedure in the short term (3-12 months) because of under- or over-correction, and probably an additional 5% will need another touch-up several years later.Thanks, I’m taking FML a steroid. I’ll mention this to my doc.
I have read that some ,Tiger Woods for example, get enhanced vision. Is that really possible and what would it be like?
I don’t know his case, but I do know of a few people whose vision ended up becoming corrected to, say, 20/16. It merely means that you see a little better than the “average” person - in this case, you’d see clearly at 20 feet what someone with average vision does at 16 feet. Note that some people have vision this good anyway, without any correction or surgery.
I don’t know the exact details of Mr. Woods procedure, but I have heard that he had his original surgery and later needed a second procedure, commonly called an “enhancement.”
There is an entirely different topic regarding “custom” vision correction, which involves measuring aberrations in the eye not accounted for in a typical refraction. A treatment is then computer designed to correct for as many of these aberrations as possible. In some cases this can result in better vision than you may have been used to in glasses or contacts.
I got Lasik done yesterday. I have just come home from my follow-up and I have 20/15 vision. My sister had the same result when she had hers done three years ago. The doctor says this is quite unusual.
Cats have LASIK all the time but it is a do it yourself operation. They advertise the tools as “red laser pointers” in stores. Cats tend to be more reactive than humans and the results are hard to measure but they seem to enjoy it overall.