Quote:
Originally Posted by GoFlamesGo
Can you share what exactly happens in the 6 minutes procedure?
I've been thinking about getting it done, but the procedure scares me to death. Is it true you can smell smoke coming from your eyes during the procedude?
I'm a big baby when it comes to my eyes. My eyes aren't that bad, but I wear glasses on a regular basis. Whenever I need to wear contacts (Ie. play sports, wear sunglasses or 3D glasses), I need to get my wife to help put them in for me. I can't for the life of me put my own contacts in. I can take them out to problem though.  |
The beauty of eye surgery is that even if you're awake you can't see what's happening. From our point of view, you get into the surgery room after awhile of being in the office doing other stuff, they ask you to lay down on a reclined chair (close to a dentist one) with a head rest that prevents some head movement. They do one eye at a time and the other one is covered. The worst part, at least for me and from the sounds of it you as well, will be having the instrument that is put in to prevent blinking and moving as it has to go under the eyelids. They'll tell you to not blink and stare at a red light/dot or something, during that time they're putting other things around your eye but I'm not entirely sure what was going on (I'm assuming it was for the corneal flap) and then they warn you your vision will get blurry and for a bit you will lose vision. During that very short time it was a weird feeling, they ask you to keep looking at the dot but it's hard to tell at this point if you're eye is open (obviously is, but with no vision it's just a weird feeling and you really want to blink). There is a smell but they reassure us that it's from the laser, not the burning flesh...I guess take their word for it?
Then they remove everything and go to the next eye.
It has been awhile now for me, but if I recall correctly, that's the gist of it. They can give you medication to help relieve the stress prior to the surgery and you will have anesthetic eyedrops, as well as a whole host of them afterwords. The actual Lasik surgery was painless, at least as I remember, other than some "discomfort" with things being under the eyelids which is probably more psychological than painful. Afterwords there is some discomfort, putting in all the eyedrops at first was a nuisance and one of them has a bad after taste (yep, you read that correctly) and a bit of a sting putting it in. I'm guessing if you're not good with contacts, eyedrops might be a bit of a problem as well like it was for me, they also don't want you keeping your eye open the normal way when putting in the drops but the good news is by the end of it you're a pro at taking eyedrops. So you'll have some dry eye and gunk (like super eye boogers) but can't rub them or wipe it off right away, you can't watch TV/use computer etc. for the first 24 hours and have to wear sunglasses provided. You're given a calender of what you can or can't do but I think in a month or so you're in the clear and can do everything normal, they do got follow up procedures (I think the next day, a week later, and then a month after that before going into an annual check up). I was warned, and it seems like it's the most common problem with Lasik (along with Halos), is that the dry eyes can become a more than temporary thing, I didn't notice it after maybe 2 weeks but for some (not sure the percent, something like 1%) it seems to be a lasting condition.
EDIT: Oh yeah, another thing is since they are reshaping your cornea I believe you will lose some of your near vision. For me, prior to the surgery I could put a book right up to my eye and still read, now I need to be a couple centimeters away before it's not blury (not that you should be reading a book or whatever only a couple centimeters anyways) but for older people getting the surgery, I believe, they can experience a big enough change that they will recquire reading glasses. The doctors pre-op or during the free consultation will let you know everything like that though. So I'm going to guess, maybe completely wrong and misinformed here but I'll probably need reading glasses a couple years earlier compared to if I didn't have this surgery, but reading glasses are inevitable really with old age while having good far vision for hopefully the rest of my life it was an easy trade off there.
EDIT2: And yeah there's tons of stuff on the internet if you don't have time for the free consultation, but try searching CP. Fortunately we do have some optometrist who are users and threads like this pop up periodically so might want to go and try and find/read those.