I know this is supposed to be a travel blog, but I figure this is interesting enough that I can still post it here.
I finally got fed up with my glasses/contacts situation and opted for lasik. I went with
Dr Scott Hyver. If you end up doing it, try to figure it out before your companies' FSA (flex spending account) enrollment period ends. FSA allows you to pay for various medical expenses and is pulled from your paycheck but is tax free. So you end up saving 20-30% or so.
I went in for the consultation in November to see if I would be a good candidate. They went through a battery of tests taking about 2 hours before I finally got to speak with Dr Hyver. He is personable and answered my questions. For anyone considering lasik, check out this
question list. I asked almost all of these questions and he had satisfactory answers for them. A couple questions that I don't think are listed there that I wanted to know were: how good a candidate am I/what kind of side effects do people with my prescription/shape of eye typically have.
One thing about Dr Hyver is that he is really busy especially in december/january for FSAs. As a result I would not recommend doing it then. That is why I waited until mid february to get it done so they didn't rush through my procedure.
I decided I was going to go ahead and boost it and put the money into my FSA. Lasik is not cheap. They quoted me around 5500 total, but if you have VSP (eye insurance through work) he'll knock it down to 2300 per eye. I also paid a little extra for the type of procedure he recommended for my eye. All in all it came to $4995. You pay that on the day of or can arrange a payment plan. They give you a prescription for antibiotic drops that you will put in your eyes 4 times a day starting the day before the surgery.
Fast forward to a week before the surgery. At this point you should stop wearing contacts and putting on lotions/creams on your face. They also point out for all the dudes thinking about this that you have to not use makeup around the surgery either. The day before the surgery you start putting the drops in 4 times a day.
On the day of I had Megan drive me over to his Santa Clara facility. They took a final check of my terrible vision to figure out exactly what correction I required. Then they offered me a valium to calm down. I definitely recommend taking it just so you are more chill in the operating room. After that, they sent me back to the lobby where I waited another 30 minutes.
Finally they pulled me back into the surgery room and had me lie down on the operating bed. They offer you something to hold if you want which I also recommend. They gave me two beanie babies that are probably spilling bean guts all over after how hard I was squeezing them. It is good to focus on something that doesn't involve a laser, burning, blurry vision and your eyes. All that being said the procedure actually goes pretty quickly.
They put drops in my eyes to numb your eyes and then wait for them to start working. Then they covered up one of my eyes and tape your other eye open and put a little device to prop my other eye open. They remind you to blink with your covered eye so it doesn't get dried out. It is tougher than you'd think to blink when you are numbed up and with the laser doing its magic on the other eye. I actually only blinked when they weren't doing any laser stuff to the other eye. I just didn't trust myself making a slight twitch and affecting the trajectory of where the laser was cutting.
Anyway the actual surgery then starts once they had my one eye covered. They put a device over your eye and you feel a pressure on your eye. They ask you to follow a green light which is blurry and slowly goes out of your vision. Then after about 20 seconds the pressure goes away. Then they fold the flap of your eye up and ask you to look at the laser. You follow the green light again while it goes. This takes about 5-20 seconds depending on how blind you are. Afterwards, he folds the flap back and you are all set for one eye. They remove all the tape and the device so that eye can blink like normal and you don't even have to think about it when they are doing the second eye. The second eye is more of the same, although on that one I started to smell the burning of my eye as the laser did its magic. Finally you are all set and they take you back to the prep room.
They checked my eyes and then give me sunglasses and another eye drop to use in conjunction with the antibiotics. The big thing is don't touch your eyes. I was an idiot and I held my eyelid open like when i put in contacts when i was putting a drop in my eyes, and it caused us a little scare, but I had it checked out and it seems okay. Anyway the big thing is go home and take something to knock you out for a couple hours. I was out but I hear it burns and it pretty painful for the few hours after surgery. I had my eyes closed for 4/5 hours or so with a couple brief periods of eating and putting drops in my eyes. Luckily we had Ken Burns' Civil War on that I could listen to easily without watching.
I had my followup the next day and they checked my vision which is 20/15 in both eyes. I still have slight halos at night which they say will go away with time (in a month or so). So far so good. I have another followup in a month for them to check again. Consider my eyes boosted.
Also I bought a pair of these glasses so that I don't accidentally rub my eye at work without thinking. I just like having something there to remind me to not be an idiot. I actually do like reading computer screens with them as it softens the light a little.
