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See what happens when you go a week between reading and posting?

first time i actually thought about something like lasik is when you go
swimming when you cant wear your contacts or glasses. then you cant
enjoy looking at all the super fine sezy girls prancing around in their
skimpy 2-piece bathing suits...

and and btw:

UberGerbil wrote:

Here's an article from the FAA that covers many of the considerations when weighing the surgery.

^ that link is invalid, do you have another perhaps for reference?

I usually swim with my contacts in. Same with the ocean. *shrug*

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

I usually swim with my contacts in. Same with the ocean. *shrug*

OH! i wasnt aware ppl do that! i mean in all honesty i cant afford lasik nor
would i think of getting it done... but i am thinking about getting contacts
again and i'm gunna go with the new acuvue oasys ones...

Real men do it themselves: http://www.lasikathome.com/howitworks.htm

In four easy steps, NOW how much would you pay? http://www.lasikathome.com/foureasysteps.htm "Don't blink!"

Just chiming in on my lasik expirience-

First of all I went to a reputable clinic and got quoted $3600 for top of the line wavefront lasik including all follow ups and correction procedures. My prescription was 5.0 and 5.5, but prices go up for higher prescriptions.

The surgery wasn't painful, just a little weird having things in your eyes and so was the smell of burning eye tissue from the laser. They do each eye at a time and give you a valium or something to relax.

Immediately after surgery my eyes were super dry and needed drops every half hour or so. Vision was a little blurry but good got good enough to drive the next day. For the next 6 months my vision and dryness progressively improved. I reached 20/15 about 2 months after the procedure and stopped using moisturizing drop around 2 months after that. You can't rub your eyes for awhile but once they heal somewhat only a strong rotating trauma can dislodge the flap and that can be fixed anyways. Halo's around bright lights at night are there but minor, getting wavefront lasik supposedly reduces these the most

Best of all the doctor saw I was a poor college student and potentially going to Iraq since I'm in the guard so gave me the procedure totally FREE! (I also didn't hurt that I flirted with her a bit since she was a total MILF ) Alot of doc's do pro-bono work or give reduced rates, it's not like they need the money (She told me she made over $500k last year)

Overall I'd highly recommend it if you qualify and don't have any predisposing risk factors. Be upfront with your doctor, tell them everything. You never know how other health problems or lifestyle issues could affect the procedure. Being free from glasses and contacts is a great thing. There are risks just like with anything but overall it's no more dangerous most other minor surgries.

Well, I had it done about 7 years ago... and couldn't be happier. The procedure changed my life drastically. I started using contacts when I was 8 and kept using them for almost 15 years (I'm about to be 29), so getting rid of them was a blessing.

After I did it, both my dad and mom and two brothers went for it (all with various conditions) and so far, so good (it was specially great for my dad, who had been using glasses for almost 45 years).

Things to note. My vision was extremely bad, the surgeon I went to did it in one operation. Most others would have done it in 2. He wanted to do my eyes because it presented a challenge. As far as problems go I saw halo's everywhere for a couple of years. I had a hard time watching movies in theaters for those first two years. Now my eyes have healed up I have no problems. The halo effect is a due to the iris expanding beyond the region of treatment and seeing with light coming thru both treated/untread areas of your cornea. Over time this problem/edge/halo effect has gone away, originally I had 20/20 after the treatment. Before that I could see clearly about 2-3 inches in front of my face without correction. Now my left eye sees distant objects more clearly and my right nearer objects, result from my last eye checkup 2 months ago. Some people delibrately ask for this, I did not. My eyes just healed up that way after the surgery. I have heard of people with disasterous results but rarely.

Stripe7, would you mind telling us what your subscription was before. Around here anything beyind -7,5 are considered unsafe with the normal thickness of cornea. As for the procedure and a regredation on one eye, its perfectly normal due to the fact that the healing process is extremely individual between any two people. They cant really hit a target perfectly, which is why most doctors aim for the full amount with say half a point to a point short so they arent risking to overshoot, as its much easier doing an extra correction lifting the flap, then going back from any extra farsightedness. Most people doesnt really need the extra round, but i needed it on one eye. I had a -6.75/-7 myopia and a couple of dioptres of astigmatism. Normally i wouldnt have been allowed to have zyoptics/lasik, but they also found out my cornea was more then 50% thicker than normal, so its was more then enough cornea left to exclude problems for that reason.

Everything worked fine for me except a tiny amount of haloes, but my pupil dilation is actually very large. The doctor actually asked me if i had gotten the pupil dilation drops before i had when i was doing the wavefront measuring. Now i have 30/20 or how you express it. We take it in another scale. Normal is 1.0, and my eyes are now 1.0+ and 1.3 individually, and around 1.5 together. That is, much better than normal.

I was walking into the procedure room in my booties and cap when my surgeon pulled me aside and had me sit down. He told me that my cornea's were thick enough to do a full correction on both eyes; however, he said "this is your only shot. If you pull the trigger, you're cutting yourself out of the running for anything better in the future."

He went on further to say that there are quite a few people who had the procedure done 10+ years ago who have to come back in for another zapping... most can handle another procedure just fine, but my left eye wouldn't.

The surgeon who was first scheduled to do my procedure was gung-ho on doing it, but by the grace of God, a friend of the family (eye surgeon) told me to go to the guy who talked me out of it. I don't know about anyone else, but the prospect of having good sight for 10 or so years and taking myself out of the running for the next "big thing" didn't seem to appealing.

I guess my advice is make absolutely sure that you know what kind of position you'll be in if your sight worsens in the future.

-R

I don't consider the state of laser eye surgery in the early 21st century to be advanced enough. Glasses and contacts are pretty much perfect lenses now, giving perfect vision without any artifacts. If they get scratched, you replace them etc. Now the transparent tissues of the eyes are one of the slowest healing tissues, and some kinds of damage done to it does not heal at all.

All that cutting and ablating with lasers will NOT give you a vision that's as perfect as you can get with glasses/contacts, just something more convenient. I wouldn't get it done because I just don't want to stare out one night and see halos/artifacts around bright lights where there were none when I wore glasses.

http://www.rebuildyourvision.com/

Could this be something to check out.. Or read this. I for one will try this.

FubbHead wrote:

http://www.rebuildyourvision.com/

Could this be something to check out.. Or read this. I for one will try this.

Does anyone know if this kind of stuff works? I would rather have to do something like that lazer surgery. But my eyes are about -6 in both with a stigmatism so I would have a heck of a long way to go.

cy_a253 wrote:

All that cutting and ablating with lasers will NOT give you a vision that's as perfect as you can get with glasses/contacts, just something more convenient. I wouldn't get it done because I just don't want to stare out one night and see halos/artifacts around bright lights where there were none when I wore glasses.

No, what it gives you if you continue to have stable vision is 10-20 years without glasses or contacts, when you had bottle-bottoms before that. As for actually being able too see something as the clock on the nightstand without having to fumble with glasses first is just that a great in itself, not to mention being able to swim without special glasses or contacts that will dry in if the water ever get inside your goggles.

These things and all the other things is what made me get the surgury. I had glasses since i was 4 years old, and when i was 22 or so i got contacts, thats when i started looking at lasik. Also, there are 5 other types of operation besides ablation that will work in different ways. Many of those will be available efter after a lasik surgury. Not to mention they are doing alot of research on doing a synthetic cornea as there is a lack of transplanation material usually. Lasik as it stands today, or probably even better, Lasek, is proven as long as you dont go beyond a certain point and doing any crazy amounts of correction.

Also, haloes and such things vary quite abit accourding to healing process, pupil dilation, ablation zone, etc. I had some problems from the start, but it almost disappeared totally and i dont even think about it anymore. And i also have better vision now then i used to have with glasses.

What it comes down to is if somebody is willing to get the extra living quality of not having glasses now against waiting for another 10 years on something better, that might still get invalidated by the normal aging process or not being better at all. Personally, i opted for having something like the next 10-20 years with bottle-bottoms infront of my eyes and getting the most out of the active years. I probably wont be as interrested in the same things and going around when i'm starting to get over 40 so then a couple of glasses wont be a big deal. With my current results in hand after 5 years i can only say it was totally worth every single penny and i would probably have paid alot more.

But each to his own, what one has to do is do ALOT of research of both the good effects, and the eventual negative effects and the risks involved, then take the decision themselves.

Well, did i mention im an information junkie that loves to research stuff just for the sake of it, and also very interrested in neurologics, especially related to vision and memory. I also have friends that have done studies in both of them.

Its since long been know that depending on your problems, training in different forms can help. Also, if you are farsighted, you can correct quite abit without any problems, up to 10 dioptres at younger ages, although the strain will give you a headache if you do it for an extended period of time, the problem comes with myopia as the eye cant correct for that. That was actually quite funny, after i had my lasik, i came home and a few days after i put on my old glasses with a correction for about -7 on them, at first it was all blurry as expected, but then the vision accomodated for that correction and gave me a normal view. Thats easily how much a normal eye can accomodate farsightedness.

One other is learning to see stereoscopic visions, not the common ones with different colors or holograms, but the stereograms thats just a mish-mash of image content where the difference is show by a process inside your brain. One of the hard things with amblyopia is that that depth perception is worse, as i generally have one eye taking over in some situatons, so it was a hazzle trying to train myself to see stereograms, but a few hard hours was all it took. Normally you just look through the object and slowly back away until the image unfolds. The basis for me was the same, except that i had to actually consiously shift my brain so the focus so it took would be equally from both eyes, which for me must be done with a consious effort. Normally the left eye is the major, and the right eye fills in the gaps so to speak, its abit more to it than that, but it will suffice as an explanation.

Here is a few links to good stereograms.
http://www.vision3d.com/sghidden.html
http://www.magiceye.com/3dfun/stwkdisp.shtml

I personally have been doing several excercises during my life. The first was when i at a very young age was find to be hazardously left-dominant, that is, my left eye took control over the whole vision so to speak. The condition is called amblyopia and is commonly known as lazy eye, which is actually a great description of it. The main effect is that i had to go with a patch over my left eye for several months when in kindergarden to give the brain a chance to accomodate the images from the right eye. Else its entirely possible i would have been next to blind on the right side. Not optically, but neurologically.

tfp wrote:

FubbHead wrote:

http://www.rebuildyourvision.com/

Could this be something to check out.. Or read this. I for one will try this.

Does anyone know if this kind of stuff works? I would rather have to do something like that lazer surgery. But my eyes are about -6 in both with a stigmatism so I would have a heck of a long way to go.

Well, from the small amount of clinical trials it seems it cant do that well. Its been looked at and no really proven ways exists or they would have already been used. Even worsen your vision in some ways.

Look at the wikipedia entry of the Bates method for a decently balanced article, and also take a look at the links below. Personally, i would say its mostly a bunch of quackery that has happened to tie in with some real effects.

Here are a few links to PubMed that gives the abstract on a few of the studies done.
Effects of a Qi-Quon ocular exercise
A systematic review of the applicability and efficacy of eye exercises

Also, heres a few other links about the whole Bates method.
Fallacies of the Bates System
The Bates Method of Vision Improvement.
Bates Method in a Nutshell
Theory about the Bates method
Bates Method

Xylker wrote:

St. Babu wrote:

Our practice participated in the study to get the Verisyse implantable lens approved in the U.S. It's an alternative to LASIK or PRK. We've had really good results with it, but it's significantly more expensive then LASIK or PRK.

Our practice? That sounds like you work in the field, or are an optometrist/ophthalmologist. Is that correct, or am I reading too much into the statement that you just made?

Yeah, I am the systems admin for an ophthalmologist in Indianapolis. I had my LASIK done here, and I've had awesome results.

http://www.pricevisiongroup.com

If I remember correctly before the procedure my vision was 8.4 or 8.5 my sisters was 9 when she had hers done. Our family has thick cornea's, about 2x normal, which was why the surgery was possible.

for me it was not just a question of quality of life, I made the decision to have the surgery the day I broke my glasses at an airport. Luckilly my luggage was close by with my spare pair. It was more of a question of safety and independence. I would have been dependant on someone helping move around without glasses at that time. I could see enough to avoid bumping into people and things but I could not read anything nor could I drive.

Holy thread revial

Welcome to the forums..are you thinking of having the surgery?

LicketySplit wrote:

Holy thread revial

urm.. revival?

And x2 on the thread revival part

what's most amusing (to me) is that the revival isn't even on topic.

Let's see if our new poster actually posits a question about peoples' LASIK experiences before we all pull the necro lever.

Thanks for listening.

man, all my friend who wear glasses laughed so hard at that handheld lazer thingy lol

Well, get contacts. Get a wild color like blue.
Gackt wears blue contacts. However he does it for cosmetic reasons, his perfect genes prevent him from getting bad vision.

Although I wish I could afford lasik (sp?), I just got my first set of contacts and am thrilled.

They gave me the new Focus Day & Night lenses....You can wear them for 30days (and nights) without taking them out or cleaning them! I'm going to take them out every few days to clean them and shower...but a lot more convenient than most lenses!

Lasik is getting so popular and so many new clinics are opening all the time..its as cheap as contact lens were just a few years ago. One place near Seattle(Tukwilla) offers it for 300 bucks for both eyes..exam included

not a chance anyone touches my eyes with a laser. I'll wear glasses, TYVM

well, i cant say about man, but sometimes, some women wearing glass can look hot in a way they couldnt without em lol
well, im sure u all get what im referring to

project51bh wrote:

They gave me the new Focus Day & Night lenses....You can wear them for 30days (and nights) without taking them out or cleaning them! I'm going to take them out every few days to clean them and shower...but a lot more convenient than most lenses!

Please tell me you shower more often than once every few days!

Boxster-S wrote:

I had it done over 5 years ago and still have 20/20 afterward. No problems and would have it again. It all depends on if you are a good candidate for it!

Thanks for the advice. I am considering lasik eye surgery soon. I have been researching lasik information for some time as well and have read great reviews. I will probably set up my consultation next week. Any suggestions?

**EDIT BY MOD: Removed link since it looks like spam. -Kevin**