I had LASIK back in November with pretty good results considering how bad my eyes were to start with, about 9 diopters of correction in each eye. Now, I’m about 20/30 and only need glasses to drive, primarily at night.
With the package that I purchased, I was guaranteed 20/20 vision or my money back. Any touch up procedures were included at no additional cost. I was told that my corneas were somewhat thin and that if I needed a touch up, there was a good chance that it would have to be PRK. Today, I got the official news that a followup LASIK procedure won’t be possible and that I’ll have to do PRK.
If you’ve had PRK, I’d like to hear about your experience. I understand that it is quite a bit more painful and the recovery time is longer. I’m kind of a pansy when it comes to pain but I assume that numbing drops will help. (hope hope hope)
Any information would be helpful. Thanks.
I had PRK a decade or so back because my corneas were too thin to handle a flap. The procedure itself was painless - the worst part was when they were clamping my eyelids open because the numbing drops hadn’t fully kicked in yet. When they did, I felt nothing. The main difference is that they make the laser correction directly on the surface of your cornea. To do this, they have to remove a thin layer of epithelial cells that are growing on top of it. So the doctor puts a little ring on your eyeball and drops in some alcohol to kill the cells. He then uses a scraper to scrape them all up and get them off. It sounds horriffic, but it was totally painless. IMHO, it was less scary than having him carve a flap into my eyeball.
The downside of all this is that instead of having a flap to act as a bandage, you’re left with an exposed surface, so they leave a special contact lens in place that stays there for several weeks. 95% of the time, I didn’t even notice it was there, but occasionally, when I woke up or something, one would shift a little bit and cause some momentary discomfort. It wasn’t a big deal getting it back in place - just some heavy blinking. IIRC, the healing process is longer than with LASIK as well.