:smack: Damn, good idea. If I find a zero-percent financing, that would work great. I’m geting excited about this.
Many, if not most, LASIK clinics work with a company called Care Credit, a lender specializing in financing medical procedures. You can go there, apply, and see right away how much you qualify for. If your credit is solid, they can do anything from 18 or 24-month same as cash, to extended (60 month) terms with low payments. If your credit is not so great, they have programs where you can put a certain amount (something like $600) down, then pay the rest with automated monthly debits from your bank account.
FWIW, my practice offers several financing options and most of our patients find their best deal through Care Credit. I think our approval rate with CC is about 95%.
Nothing much to add, except to join the chorus. It was the best $2500 I ever spent. I have to type this quick, or my wife will spot it and start asking about rings and whatnot…
I’d echo Ravenman. I saw better with glasses. Even though I had horrible vision with astigmatism and big pupils and other weirdness, I was one of those people who cold get really, really good corrected vision with contacts and with glasses. LASIK didn’t get me corrected to that point.
The first few hours after surgery were tougher than what I’d read about from other patients. I guess it was partly the amount of material I had to have burned off. If I hadn’t had access to prescription pain medication, I would have been very unhappy.
For all that, though, I am very pleased I had it done. I went to Canada on the advice of my U.S. eye doctor (they’d been doing it longer there, and I had thin corneas, and my doctor knew the specialist would have no problem telling me if I weren’t a good candidate). I ended up being an acceptable candidate (obviously). It cost $3000 smackers, 3 years ago.
I have been nearsighted since I was 12, by the time I was 16 couldn’t see a damn thing without glasses or contacts. Wore hard and then gas permeable contacts until I was 31, which was 3 years ago. Went to see Dr. Stephen Dell (the “other” Dell) here in Austin because he is one of the most experienced in the state.
I had to ditch my contacts and wear glasses for six weeks for my eyes to “undo” whatever hard contacts do to them. Did that. Got shot with the laser and corrected to 20/15 vision. Was lucky and experienced zero side effects. No halos, no dry eyes, nothin’. Cost $4000. Paid for half with one of those pre-tax health savings accounts. Financed the rest at 12 months with no interest. Best thing I ever did. QED 
I hope this isn’t too much of a hijack, but this part made me curious. I went in for an eye examination and they told me that my eye’s lenses were too thin to do the LASIK surgery. (I have very strong myopia (-9 diopters) and slight astigmatism.) However, if the lenses get thicker as I get older, does that mean that I might be able to do the LASIK surgery later in life? (I’m asking for your opinion on this, I will ask my doctor as well next time I see him.)
Btw, just for the record, I am very jealous of almost everyone in this thread, because I would love to get LASIK done on my eyes. 
Here is my thread and my nervousness from when I went in for it. I am going for a Lasik today, in 2 hours in fact.
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.
… few hours later …
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.
… following day…
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.
Post 23 goes into specifics about the laser procedure.
… the quote that sums it all up …
brewha: It is such a great thing to wake up and see, to the see the clock across the room, it has been so long for me. 24 years. I am so glad I finally had the lack of important expenses on the house to do this for myself.
… my month later followup …
I had my follow-up today. I have 20/15 in my left eye (Hooray!) and 20/20 in the right. I have no night vision problems. (Hooray!). I have suffered a small loss of vision as far as reading goes. My eyesight was exceptional in this area and now, especially early in the day, I have to keep a book or magazine a little further from my eyes to focus properly.
I have some minor dry eye irritation, but I will be done with prescription eye drops by Wednesday.
I am **very glad ** I did it.
Jim
Slight confusion in terms, starry. It is your corneas that are “too thin” for LASIK. The cornea is the layer of clear cells on the front of your eyeball, in front of your iris and pupil. This is the area that is reshaped during LASIK, and since the reshaping involves removal of tissue, you need a certain amount to start with or you’ll end up dangerously thin*. Since greater amounts of correction (and yours is definitely pretty high) require more tissue be removed, there’s a sliding scale - literally a graph with diopters on one axis and microns of corneal thickness on the other. The lens, on the other hand, is behind your iris. It works with your cornea like the front and back lenses of a pirate’s spyglass - your eye muscles change the distance between the two (as well as flexing or “accomodating” the lens slightly) to allow you to focus on objects at different distances.
*And by “dangerously” thin, I mean in danger of conditions later in life that are gross as well as sight-threatening. Google or Wiki “keratoconus” for one example.
You were almost certainly told that your corneas were too thin, not your lenses. Mine were borderline as well; that’s why I had PRK instead of LASIK. The cornea is the surface of your eye - the lens is buried inside behind the pupil. The thickening of the lens isn’t going to help you, I’m afraid.
Heh, I thought lens and cornea meant the same thing for some reason, but I stand corrected. Thanks to both of you for the answers!
I just googled PRK and it looks like that still involves manipulation of the cornea, just not as much. The wikipedia entry for PRK says that recovery is slower and can be more painful for PRK. What were your experiences?
Actually, now that I look some more, PRK can only treat -1.0 to -7.0 diopters (LASIK can treat up to -10.0 diopters). Oh well. My eyes suck.
IANAD, and IAcertainlyNYD, but…
…if you were in my clinic, with high myopia and thin corneas, I would be looking into an implantable lens such as Verisyse or Visian with you.
I was considering it last year, but I’ll admit that Kathy Griffin scared me out of it for now. (Well, her and others.)
My brother had it done. He said his eyesight even through shades was infinitely better than before immediately after the surgery (i.e. before he left the office) even though it takes several days to reach optimum.
Thanks for the tip! In case anyone else is interested, I just looked up the clinical studies for both, which say that the percent of people with a correction to 20/40 or better is 98.3% for Visian, but only 92% for Verisyse. Also, Visian only corrects myopia right now, although their myopia+astigmatism corrective lens is undergoing FDA approval. Verisyse corrects both myopia and astigmatism.
This thread has been very useful, thanks!
Golly what Kathy Griffin went through and going to a well recommended expert for a basic Lasik do not appear to have much in common. After he screwed up, she kept going back to him, including for surgery? Why would she trust him after 3 failures? Why would you let this apparently stupid celeb scare you off a procedure that has a great success rate? Why would you spread her stupidity to others by linking to it?
Good Grief Sampiro, non of this makes any sense. Reread her own words and she looks like a moron. That is without the benefit of the other side of the story.
Jim
Plus I’m willing to bet good money that any of the eye doctors I work for would recoil in horror at that “JewelEye” thing that quack is a proponent of.
No, not everyone gets superb results from LASIK. I know of one friend who was rather unhappy until he got a correction, and since then has been quite happy. A coworker has rather dry eyes after the procedure. Everyone else who I personally know who’s had the procedure has been happy after an initial period of adjustment.
I don’t have any idea what could produce the results in the “after” photo of Ms. Griffin, though LASIK isn’t my area.
PRK is actually an older technology than LASIK. They don’t cut a flap - instead they operate directly on the surface of your cornea (after scraping off the layer of cells covering it). The recovery is longer and more painful than with LASIK, but the results are comparable. I had to wear contact lenses that acted like bandages for a few days, and my eyes were pretty painful for a week or so. But it was still well worth it.
I just want to thank everyone for their replies.
I will be going to see my regular eye doc on 11/1. I need to anyway, and now I have a bit better foundation for the questions I want to ask. Or at least, I will understand the answers better.
Lot’s to think about. But if I am a good candidate for LASIK, I am looking forward to it. My god, 42 years of dependence on small fragile glasses and contact lenses is enough.
This interests me. I’ve gotten the idea from somewhere that if you have really bad eyesight, it’s unlikely you’ll be a good candidate for the surgery. My eyes are -7.75 and -9.5. Anyone else with a similar prescription have successful surgery? (I’d LOVE to get it done, since I’m afraid to do some really wild travelling with such bad eyes. If anything happened to my glasses or contacts, I would be fucked.)
I was a -5.5 in my right and a -7 in my left, for what that is worth. The left one was the thin one that was iffiest.
My father had -14.00ish & -12.00ish before his Lasik, with no presbyopia at age 58 or 59. Post-Lasik, he’s -2.25 ish, and needs +2.00 reading glasses/bifocals. He is disappointed, mostly because an enhancement would probably take his distance vision to 20/20, but his cornea isn’t thick enough after the first procedure. He had his in 1999, so he had a fairly primitive version.
He was, for all intents and purposes, blind without his glasses/contacts before lasik, now he has to wear light little lenses to drive or read. His expectations may have been a bit high, or they may have promised a bit more than they could deliver.
On the other hand, I’m still thrilled with my fairly primitive Lasik, even though I have had 2 (2001 & 2004) enhancements, and am in the process of evaluation for #3, which probably won’t happen for various reasons, including remaining cornea thickness, sands-of-sahara, the other type of flap scarring, a possibly cranky retina and potentially insurmountable scheduling issues.
My first was in 1998, and if I had to do it all over again, I’d have had the initial procedure a year or two later, waited a while (worn glasses for a year or two) before the first enhancement if necessary and a little bit longer for the second, just to allow the technology to develop further.
I was -7.5L and -6.0R preLasik, I’m -1.5R & -1.25L distance, with +1.50 and +0.75 near at the moment.
I can find the bathroom without glasses. I can make dinner without glasses. I can work without glasses. Depending on the competence of the DMV Tester, I can legally drive without glasses. I can read menus without glasses. I am happy wearing light little lenses when I need to.
Talk to a pro about it. The good ones won’t do it if they aren’t awfully sure they can do it right.