Do you recommend having laser eye surgery?

I wore glasses for 20 years. Eye surgery was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

The benefits you reap from it will depend on how blind you are but I couldn’t recommend it enough. I was so blind, I could not go in to work without my glasses. I had to grab the alarm clock and hold it’s oversize numbers right up to my face in order to see what time it was. Being able to see has seriously changed my life.

The cost of purchasing contacts/glasses over your lifetime should more then offset the cost of the surgery.

My boyfriend said he would rather die than go back to glasses or contacts…..

Why not try eye contacts? And don’t say you’re afraid of touching your eyeballs. When I think of laser eye correction, I can’t help but think that in 20 more years one would need another procedure. There is no long term data yet, because its still newfangled.

I have the same question, but mine is tailored more towards my young age (in my 20s). I have been wearing glasses for more than 10 years, tried contacts as well but use glasses now. I know that the LASIK process involves cutting off portions of the cornea to essentially adjust the focus of the lens in the eye. So there’s a finite amount that can be taken off, and if one’s eyesight worsens after however many years, there may or may not be enough cornea to shave off to refocus, thus requiring glasses/contacts. I would be interested to find out information on people who had the procedure done at a young age, but since LASIK is a new procedure there wouldn’t be much long term data. The lack of long term data is the only thing holding me (and probably other eye doctors) back from getting my eyes done.

@steveprutz: i have tried contacts but they have to be rigids due to the suckiness amount in my left eye and trust me, i’m not afraid to touch my eyeball but being a web designer i have to spend 14 hours a day in front of a computer screen and they are not so benevolent with my eyeballs. redness, completely sore and even one day i wore them like 4 hours and left me a “blood stain” (whatever that is called) in my eye for a week! contacts suck! (imho)

Slightly slightly off-topic, I had cataracts taken off both eyes this summer/fall, and suddenly I became a safe driver and can now read in sunlight. The procedures were similar to lasik vision correction surgery and were over in minutes. I had to have a friend come with me because my vision was blurry from drops after the surgery (ten minutes), and I had to put drops in for a couple of weeks, and that was it. Amazing difference, otherwise very low impact.

@dynamicduo: i am too in my 20’s (late 20’s that is) and your concern is the same as mine. still i think it might be worth the shot of not having to wear glasses for n amount of years. imagine going out in the rain and seeing perfectly without having to clean those damn glasses every 2 minutes… working out, running, in a sauna, taking a shower! hahaha

rainsmoker, go for it. If you get a TLC doctor to actually do the surgery (and you go for your annual checkup every year), then you have a lifetime warentee. This means that when your eyes do start to go bad (sometime in your 40s or 50s normally), you’ll get a tune up surgery for free.

You shouldn’t really have the surgery until your eyes stop changing (so rapidly). Anytime after 25 should be fine. (dynamic and rainsmoker) You guys both sound like prime candidates assuming your eyes are actually bad enough.

Just so you know, I had a terrible astigmatism and everything went fine. I went from -9 and -11 to about 20/10 (most people think -4 is really bad and I was over twice that) .

I am actually a tiny bit farsighted now (I use reading glasses at the computer) because they have to over-correct a little and have the eye heal back into proper vision. Sometimes they hit it right on the dot. Sometimes they don’t. Even if they could only get my vision 50% better (instead of 97% better), I’d still recommend the surgery. It sucks being blind.

not to mention, I saw (not felt) a naked body for the first time after my surgery

Edit: If you guys have any specific questions about LASIK surgery, I would be glad to answer them. It worked out great for me (about 2ish years ago) and the way it is done today is very different from how it was done 5 years ago. Today the laser reshapes the cornea and (years ago) it use to be a doctor with a hand-held scalpel (eek).

It does make sense to have the best eyes while you are theoretically in the best health, rather than wear glasses for 20 years followed by LASIK and have great eyes when the rest of the body starts breaking down… I think I’ll look into it a bit more here, talk to some of the local practitioners and see if they have any data to throw in.

My vision is not too bad, not nearly as bad as yours was bodyhead. I’m nearsighted, my prescription strength is about 2.25, + I believe, and both eyes are the same which made buying and using contacts easier. One thing I would miss with fixed eyes is my “macro-vision”, being able to focus on things one inch from my face… at least photography can help with that :)

Thanks for sharing your info bodyhead. How was your recovery? My mum had LASIK done a few years back and loves it, as many people do, and her recovery wasn’t bad luckily.

I actually did wear glasses for 20 years and then get the surgery. I think I was 25–26 when I actually got the surgery but I’ve been wearing glasses my whole life. Even my optical degeneration slowed once I hit about 23.

My recovery was pretty easy. I did have to tape big plastic shields (see-through) to my face so I wouldn’t accidentally scratch my eyes. You can accidentally scratch off the tips of your eyes if you aren’t careful. I think I only had to do this for 3 weeks or so.

In the first month, your vision tends to fluctuate a bit so I didn’t go get my readers until about month 3 (I think, maybe it was later). I can read without them but if I read for 8 hours at a time (like I tend to do), it just reduces eyestrain for me.

One funny story, my girlfriend was in from out of town on the second week after this surgery. She was staying over and I was getting ready for bed. It turns out I had run out of the proper bandage tape to attach the eye shields to my face so I taped them on with black electrical tape and looked like some kind of weird Frankenstein monster. She just said, “Oooh, sexy” and rolled over and went to sleep.

My mom had the surgery and she loves it.

Best $2000 I ever spent. Even if I do have to wear glasses again in 20 years, 2 decades of seeing is so worth it.

I got laser eye surgery and I am very, very happy I did.

No only that but your glasses probably won’t need to be as strong in 20 years. (as they would have been had you not had the surgery)

I feel the same way jholler, fieryspoon.

I was legally blind and it was like being reborn. 8 years later and my eyes have definitely deteriorated some, but the ease and comfort it brought to my life made all the difference.

seems like everybody that has had the surgery is pretty happy with it… and now we have an 8 year old proof/testimony that gives us pros and cons and still looks like a good deal. plus, the whole recovery thing seems no biggie.
how long does the procedure last?? what do you see/feel??

Procedure itself is literally 5 minutes. They gave me a valium to relax, I went into a pure oxygen room, they taped down one eye and clamped the other, the laser doesn’t hurt at all (although I distinctly remember smelling burning hair), they do the other side and whammo! you’re done. My eyes just started tearing so bad I couldn’t keep them open, and were very sensitive, and I went home and passed out. But I’ll tell you, the next day when I rolled over and looked at my crystal-clear alarm clock digits….and then ran outside in my pajamas to look at all the leaves on the trees…or the first time I went swimming and could open my eyes underwater or swim in the ocean and actually see….simply incredible.

I declined the valium just cause I don’t like my clarity fucked with, but I’m kinda masochistic. The only uncomfortable part was the suction cup pulling the lens of my eyeball up so it could be sliced off. The actual slicing was no problem, thanks to numbing, but that suction was weird feeling.

Heh! They didn’t offer me a Valium. Not fair.

Anyway, mine kinda when like yous guys. The burning hair smell is the flesh of your eye burning away under the laser. I freaked when I smelled it but they assured me it was normal.

I would never consider it since wearing glasses is not a big deal to me. I have known several people who had the surgery and it left them worse off than before and they are basically screwed for the rest of their lives.