Before the surgery

Before the surgery, my friend told me about this clinical study going on at the Stanford Laser Eye Center. I set up an appointment to see the doctor, Dr. Manche, a well-known laser eye surgeon. After meeting with him, I was extremely pleased but I wanted to do some research on my own since I only have two eyeballs.

I went online and began to freak myself out by finding websites such as lasikcomplications.com, laserproblems.com, and lasereyesurgeryproblems.com. If you want to go through with the procedure do not check out these websites. They will only scare you!

So, since I had freaked myself out, I set up another appointment at the Laser Eye Center (they must love me) to talk to Dr. Manche about my list. I went in last Wednesday, July 25th. Dr. Manche clearly explained the procedure again and what it would be like and went through all of my questions:

1. How many people out of how many and what percentage had the following problems:
- dry eye(s)
- permanent dry eye
- glares
- halos
- double vision
- problems with night vision
- blindness
- not corrected best vision.

He was not able to give me exact numbers but he made it clear it is about 1 in 500 that get dry eye and 1 in 1000 that have night problems. And if I was that 1 person that would be 100% for me.

After that I went into the waiting room to think about it. Dr. Manche came out and told me that another patient was coming out in 2 minutes who had the PRK procedure done 4 weeks ago. I jumped at the opportunity to speak with her!

As soon as she came out I jumped up and said, "tell me everything." She began to tell me about the procedure and everything. My biggest concern was more about the pain that comes on day 2 after the surgery not so much the procedure itself. I also was very interested in when she could read, go online, drive, see at night, etc. since I will be moving into my new classroom quite soon and will need to be able to see the bulletin boards.

She told me that it felt like she had been punched in the eye as far as pain and as far as clarity it looked like she could see clearly with a layer of windex on top of that. She was able to go out with friends three days later and just kept her sunglasses on due to the brightness.

I knew then, even with all of the horror stories and blogs online I had to do this even though I do my love my glasses, it would be nice to not have to worry about contacts in the future.

I set up the appointment for today, Monday July 30th, 6 days letter. He prescribed a few eye drop prescriptions (vigamox: antibiotic, predaforte: sterioids, and bromday) along with some motrin 800mg.)

I got those filled right away since I had to start a day before on Sunday, July 29th.