OT - A New Vision <<Update>>

[Rob & Helen Goodale]

OT:  A new vision update

Okay here's the latest.  Good news and bad news.

The good news:  the procedure itself is no big deal.  The apprehension is far greater then warranted.  The first thing they did is take me into a room where they put various drops into my eyes to numb them from any sensation.  The second step was they gave me a Valium pill to make me mellow.  Twenty minutes later I was in the operating room feeling fairly relaxed.  They had me lay down in this contraption resembling a cross between a massage table and a dentist chair looking up.  A big bowl shaped thingy was about 8" above my head with various colored lights.  More drops of I don't know what, and lots of calming dialog telling me how great I was doing and to relax.  They gave me this ugly stuffed worm thing to hold who's name they told me was "Skittles".  The purpose of that was to give me something to hold to keep me from reaching up.  Then some sort of suction thingy was placed around my eye for a minute and then the laser.  By this time my vision was so blurry I couldn't tell what was going on anyway.  I was expecting something spectacular... a noise, a flash of light, something.  Instead nothing, I didn't even know it was happening.  It was a little irritating with all the blurryness, (kind of like your eyes open under water), but nothing terrible.  Just a little pressure from the suction.

Now the bad news.  After he made the cut the doctor paused his work for a moment and concurred with his two medical assistance. Then came back to have a brief chat with me.  Apparently the incision did not go all the way around to make a suitable flap.  As a precaution for liability reasons they could not resume.  He apologized and told me that I would have to let the present incision heal completely and then start over.  I would have to come back in a month to resume.  I was given some more drops, they did a couple other minor things, and I walked out as if nothing happened except for being blurry in one eye.  He never got to the other eye.  They want to do both eyes at once or you end up walking around with one lens missing from your glasses because one eye is corrected and the other isn't.

Okay so here is the summary.  It is unfortunate that they were not able to finish and I'll have to come back in a month.  The blurryness disappeared over night, I feel nothing, and I'm wearing my regular glasses now as if nothing happened. The actual process was not as near a big deal as you might think.  It's more like a little kid freaking out about getting an injection and then 12 seconds later it's over and they barely noticed it.  He was already about 3/4 of the way finished.  Another five minutes and I would have probably been walking out of the room completely done.  This particular doctor has performed about 14,000 of these operations, several a day.  Out of all of those he has only had a couple dozen where he had to stop and resume later.

So... for those of you considering it:
1.  Freaking out about it is unnecessary.  Lasik is NOT a big deal.
2.  The chances of having to come back is very rare, (a couple dozen out of 14,000 ain't bad).

I'll have more updates later when things resume.

Rob Goodale, RPT
Las Vegas, NV
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