Zap! Zap! I Got LASIK!

I once was blind but now I can see. It’s quite cliche, I know, yet it’s also apropos. LASIK does have a kind of miracle quality to it. I’ve worn glasses or contacts for most of my life. My vision was a respectable -5.50 in my right eye and -6.0 in my left eye which left me dependent on my eyewear for basic day-to-day functioning. My eyesight was restored in a matter of minutes with the Lasik procedure.

Day of Surgery: I vomited twice before arriving at the eye clinic. It was not anxiety-induced. My wife had the same thing two days before and being the chivalrous man that I am, I had told her to suck it up and stop being a wuss about it. Well, karma’s a bitch. I think my guts hitched a ride on a merry-go-round. On top of that, when I arrived at the clinic, the waiting room was the stereotypical 40-degrees Fahrenheit and I was shaking like a leaf thinking to myself, “Why the hell am I here?”

I think my stubbornness to reschedule was in part due to the fact that I’m currently on my acting internship month at the hospital and I’m only allowed a small number of days off. I let the nurses and doctor know about my current state but I insisted that I still wanted to proceed with the surgery unless they felt that it would increase the risk of post-op complications. They took me through the final eye exam and I popped two tabs of Tylenol and waited for the eye surgeon to arrive. Thankfully, while I waited to be called, my nausea and chills rapidly dissipated and by the time they walked me back to the surgery suite I was feeling almost normal.

The surgery suite was freezing (big surprise). The techs gave me a scrub cap and booties to put on, then they pummeled my eyes with a dozen different types of eye drops including a numbing medication. There were two machines. One was the laser that would cut the flap on my eye and the other was the one that would actually buzz off layers of my cornea and correct my vision. The nurse offered me 10mg of Vicodin and I gladly accepted.

The eye surgeon came in and they laid me down at the first machine. Your head is surrounded by an elaborate array of doohickeys and lights, as if a small spaceship is hovering right over your head. Then came the part of the procedure that was the most uncomfortable. The surgeon put in a device that pried open my eye and kept me from blinking, and then he used another ring-like device that comes straight down and presses down on the eyeball to secure it. See A Clockwork Orange more details. These two parts of the procedure were NOT painful. Nothing about the procedure was. But they were the most uncomfortable parts for sure.

I was so distracted by the blinding psychedelic lights that I actually did not feel the laser cutting the flap. He did one eye and then the other, and they stood me up and walked me over to the second machine. It was much like the first machine in regards to the groovy disco lights, but this time there was a new type of light. It was actually very similar to that red, barcode-reading light that you see at the checkout counter in Walmart. After a few seconds of a buzzing painless sensation, the procedure was over.

They stood me up. Everything was foggy, but I could already tell that I could look across the room and see the smallest details of an eye chart. It was a very exciting moment. I breathed a sigh of relief and was escorted out of the surgery suite. The surgeon debriefed me and setup a follow-up appointment for the next day.

Now, the most annoying part of the whole process: the post-op eye care. I was given three types of eye drops. An antibiotic, a steroid, and some saline drops. I have to take each of them four times a day for the first week and then the steroid twice a day for another week. Additionally, I have to tape some plastic eye covers over my eyes when I sleep for the first five days. Quite annoying for sure, but small potatoes compared to the excitement of a successful procedure.

I’m home now. It’s evening and I’m about 7-hours out from having the surgery. The fogginess is nearly gone and I’m looking out of my 3rd-story apartment window at Reliant Stadium, which is about a mile away. Lasik really does have a miracle quality to it–a lifetime of poor debilitating eyesight restored to crystal clear vision in a matter of minutes. The technology is humbling.

I can’t help but think of the story of Jesus putting mud on a beggar’s eyes. He was performing LASIK with just his hands and mud. And this best part of all? It was dirt cheap. *budump-cshh* (OK, that was horrible)