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LASIK: From a Patient’s Perspective – Part 1

The waiting room is very nice. Trust me, I’ve been in enough bad ones to really appreciate a nice waiting room. Jennifer, the office manager, comes out and tells me that she has a quick video for me to watch. She directs my attention to the large plasma television on the wall touting the greatness of LASIK.

You would have to be in a cave to not have heard about LASIK; on TV, the radio, newspaper, and so on. The video I’m watching has people claiming how they wish they had done it sooner.

Then, at the end of the video, the fear that has kept me from getting LASIK sooner jumps out from the video: “The doctor can’t guarantee any results from the surgery and a small percentage of patients have negative results including the possibility of permanent vision loss.”

Now, of course, the rational side of my mind tells me that the complications are very rare and I have yet to meet anyone who has had a bad experience with LASIK. Then my rational (but much more paranoid) mind tells me that someone had to have had these bad results at some point. And, I really don’t know all THAT many people who had LASIK, so my scientific ‘study’ has a woefully small sample size.

Once again I find myself asking, ‘Why, exactly, am I doing this?’ These are my eyes we’re messing with! If I had to pick any of my senses to lose, my eyesight would be the last one I would pick.

I have toyed with the idea of getting LASIK for years. I always thought it would be cool to get rid of my glasses and contacts and see the way I did when I was a little kid (I’ve worn glasses since I was thirteen).

After looking into the different procedures available, and talking to a couple of the eye centers in the area, I always talked myself out of it. I usually told myself that I was going to wait another year or two to see if they come up with some better technology. But, as you can imagine, this went on for several years because you can ALWAYS wait another year for advancements that will come around.

The cost of the procedure was never really a concern since I’m not one to squabble over something as precious as my sight. What had always held me back was fear.

Okay, so now that I have explained why I haven’t gotten LASIK for the last several years, you may be wondering why I am sitting in a waiting room now? For that, I have to go back a few months.

Back in October of last year, Clark Young, our managing editor, and I were promoting the magazine. Clark had an appointment with the Laser Eye Institute of Troy’s director, Dr. Daniel Haddad. We met with Dr. Haddad and discussed with him our vision for Health & Leisure Magazine. We talked about how our publication could help him grow his business.

Dr. Haddad then proceeded to share with us his vision (pun intended) and how he practiced at his Institute. Sixty minutes later, Dr. Haddad had given us a full tour of his facility and equipment, as well as a detailed education about LASIK eye surgery.

He told us about the research he has performed over the years and what he has learned from performing thousands of procedures. Now I’m not easily impressed, but I quickly picked up that Dr. Haddad was well-versed in his craft.

This was my first experience actually meeting with a physician who would perform my surgery, so I was impressed with the time he took to explain the process and technologies.

Now to further explain why I’m sitting in Dr. Haddad’s waiting room the day before I’m to have a high powered laser etch my eyes to perfection (hopefully); I must go back to shortly before we launched the magazine in early January.

Clark and I were talking about future articles for the magazine. We had the idea of doing an article on LASIK surgery. However, we wanted our article to cover the whole process from the patient’s perspective.

We would follow a patient from the first exam, through the procedure, and the follow-up exam. I couldn’t think of a time when I had seen a first hand account of the surgery, and I’m not even sure how much my friends who had had the surgery told me.

Clark and I decided one of us should get the surgery and write the article. Now the only question was who was going to do it, Clark or me?

I didn’t want to do it because I thought Clark should have the ‘honor’ of doing the article – in other words, I was still scared. After all, he is the managing editor. But, Clark pulled rank (I think he was a bit scared as well – more than a bit!) and it was ‘decided’ that I would do the article.

My appointment was set, I would have my initial exam and final evaluation exam together on the same day and I would go under the laser the next day. I wasn’t easing my way towards perfect vision, I was barreling towards it on a rocket sled.

Oh yeah, did I mention I’m scared out of my wits about getting my eyes lasered? ‘Oh well’, I tell myself, ‘suck it up.’

Now back to the waiting room.

“Jeff.”

I keep looking at the magazine in my hands and telling myself that any of the other four guys in the room could be named Jeff. Anyway, my appointment isn’t for another ten minutes.

“Jeff Lockwood.”

Okay, very little chance that one of the other guys shares my exact name. I look up and wave to the woman who just called my name. ‘That’s me,’ I say. She holds out her hand and tells me “Hello, my name is Ann and I will be doing your testing today.”

Ann leads me to a very nice room with beautiful paintings of brightly colored fish, and a live fish tank in one wall. On a counter shaped like a boomerang, there are three devices that are obviously the first round of tests.

The first test checks my glasses prescription and she notes that my prescription is not too bad (I’m about 2.0 diopters in both eyes; not blind as a bat, but pretty nearsighted). I look in the eyepiece of the next machine, an autorefractor, and after a few seconds it gives a pretty good analysis of the severity of my vision. This is called the refractor error.

The last machine is the glaucoma test. You know, it’s that annoying little machine that puffs air into your eye, makes you flinch, and helps make sure you don’t have glaucoma. Ann makes a notation on my chart and stands up, “If you would follow me, please?”