Issue 17

Eric

To See

On Friday, January 15, I went under the knife in hopes of freeing myself from corrective lens bondage. My eyesight required a correction of something like -7 or -8 diopters before surgery. If you’re not up on your optometry, that means that I had such keen visual acuity as to be able to accurately tell, during an eye exam, which wall the eye chart was on. With both eyes uncovered, I could frequently tell that the chart was whitish with an irregular black splotch in the middle.

I had always thought that surgery to correct my vision would be cool. One of the first procedures was radial keratotomy (RK), but it doesn’t work with eyes as bad as mine. They’re also finding that it can have some bad long-term side effects in some cases. LASIK (laser assisted in-situ keratomileusis), on the other hand, is several generations better than RK, and has the distinct advantage that it hasn’t been around long enough for lots of bad side effects to be discovered!

Well that’s not actually true. In fact, if you want to talk yourself out of any kind of refractive surgery, take a look at I Know Why Refractive Surgeons Wear Glasses. As you might suppose by the site’s title, it has a somewhat pessimistic view of things, and can make you aware of the worst case scenarios. That can be a good thing. If you can make it through that page with some desire for surgery remaining, then you’re probably a good candidate.

Surgeons

To my doctor’s credit, he doesn’t wear glasses. In fact, he had LASIK himself and now has 20/20 vision. Another interesting point about my doctor is that he looks like he just graduated from high school last year. In reality, he might be a couple of years older than me. Maybe. I think that’s some kind of life milestone when you’re the same age as your doctor.

W. Scott Lohner, MD

I actually had a choice between the young Dr. Lohner and the highly experienced Dr. Jay Clark. Having met them both, I made a careful scientific decision to go with Dr. Lohner based on the fact that Dr. Clark is a dweeb.

OK, I’m being harsh. He just didn’t seem to care much whether I would be one of the 18 or so patients whisked across the operating table in a day. So as to lessen any offense to Dr. Clark, I should say that I know several people personally who are extremely happy with the results of Dr. Clark’s surgery. I just liked Dr. Lohner better, and he defended himself well when I politely asked him why in the heck I would choose him over someone with as much experience as Dr. Clark.

So I got to be eyes number 26 and 27 that Dr. Lohner has done.

The Big Day

My surgery was scheduled for 9:00 AM. I showered and dressed using no other hygiene product than Ivory soap. They say the laser is sensitive to smell. Isn’t that odd?

Shannon had the neighbor give me a blessing before we went because she was so nervous. I wasn’t nervous at all. At the doctor’s office they gave me a Valium, so I don’t know if I was nervous after that. I don’t think so.

They poked at my eyes a little to get a measurement of corneal thickness, then it was off to get a stylish surgical hat and booties, and wait for eyes 24 and 25 to be done.

At this point, Shannon was out in the waiting room, where they piped a video of the surgery to a TV. She could see that whole thing — even the gory parts.

Flap and Zap

When it was my turn, they set me on a contoured table, and gave me a BYU Nerf football should I feel the need to relieve any tension.

Now I’ll describe the surgery itself. Try not to get lost in the technical language.

They put anesthetic drops in my eyes, and swiveled me under the laser. Then they put a patch on my left eye, and a thingy to prop my right eye open. Then they put another doohickey over that that felt like it was going to suck my eye out of its socket. The pressure actually makes you go blind for a moment, but since they had warned me about that in advance, the only finger marks in the football were from discomfort instead of panic.

Then the microkeratome slid over my eye to create a little round flap in the cornea. Dr. Lohner rolled back the flap, and I could tell that that part of the eye is kind of important for being able to see. You are supposed to keep concentrating on a fixating red light throughout the procedure, which seems easy enough until they start taking your eye apart, squirting liquids in it, and changing its refractive properties.

Once the flap is rolled back, they start firing the laser. The manufacturer of the laser, in order to make it seem more impressive, designed the laser to make a loud clicking noise when it is operating. Other than the noise, I couldn’t even tell that anything was happening.

The time that the laser fires determines how much correction is done — a little less than a minute in my case � and when it was finished, Dr. Lohner smoothed the flap back in place and started over with my left eye.

The whole procedure took just a few minutes, and after Dr. Lohner had a look at my eyes through a slit lamp, I was on my way. I would like to say that it was miraculous, and that I instantly had perfect vision. Unfortunately, at that point I could hardly keep my eyes open, and they felt pretty lousy. They were watering so much I couldn’t see much of anything.

Post-Op

Happily, after a nap and a couple of hours, the pain was gone. I was still disturbed that I couldn’t see very well, though. It was definitely better than before, but wasn’t anywhere near what I wanted. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I had to wear these silly, clear plastic eye shields taped to my face when I went to bed. They made me want to sing the Junior Birdman song.

By morning, I was convinced that I was going to have to get an enhancement (where they do the procedure again to sharpen things up). I just couldn’t see that well. We went in to see Dr. Lohner for my first post-op visit that morning, and he didn’t seem concerned. I was seeing about 20/45 in each eye, and in one lucid moment after he put some drops in my eyes, I could read the 20/25 line with my left eye. He said it would take three months before my eyes were completely healed, though my vision should improve over the next week or two.

So here I am, 12 hours shy of one week post-op. I still feel like I’m wearing dirty contact lenses, but frequent use of eye drops shows me some promise. Sometimes, when my eyes are nice and moist, I can actually see pretty well. I’ve been able to function OK through the week, though I tend to prefer larger fonts on my computers these days. It was also pretty hairy driving home from Salt Lake at night in the rain the day after my surgery, but I’m still alive.

At this point, I’m still a little wary. And impatient. I want to see clearly NOW!!! Everyone tells me this is all normal though, so I’ll stay optimistic and give an update later.

Copyright � Eric Smith, 1989-1999, All rights reserved.