OK, I’ve had contact lenses now for… let’s see… maybe 20 years? And I just want to note that even saying that sounds ridiculous. I can’t believe I’ve been doing anything for that long.
Well, there was that stretch of a few months when I was 21 that I decided to stop wearing contacts, and for my 22nd birthday Matt and I went out and I decided that maybe I should celebrate my birthday with “natural vision.”
This was a disaster. At one point, I was driving my car while Matt was navigating (since I couldn’t see). He would’ve driven except he’d had a couple of drinks before me, so the idea was that I would drive us to the Chukker. So he told me when to go faster, slow down, turn… except at one point, he thought I saw a row of parked cars. Having perfect vision, Matt didn’t comprehend just how bad my vision was. At the last second, he yelled and I pulled the wheel to the right, and we decided that this was perhaps the stupidest thing we’d ever done. He was sober in seconds!
So anyway, 20 years of contacts. I believe it is getting to be time to take care of this once and for all. My friend Simon just recently got the LASIK surgery, and I’ve been looking into it. There are a couple of surgeons I’ve looked at — Dr. Mark Schneider of Orange County and Dr. Robert Maloney of Los Angeles — and I’ve been keeping up with some blogs.
From the Eye Surgery USA blog, I learned:
LASIK is an acronym for Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis and is a procedure that permanently changes the shape of the cornea, the clear covering of the front of the eye, using an excimer laser. A knife, called a microkeratome, is used to cut a flap in the cornea. The flap is folded back revealing the stroma or the middle section of the cornea. Pulses from a computer-controlled laser cut a portion of the stroma and the flap of the cornea is replaced. There are other techniques related to LASIK, some that do not involve cutting.
Read the entire post here. Also on the blog are posts about Custom or Wavefront LASIK and links to testimonials and more. The site is really handy, and I say check it out, and let me know if you have any experience because I am looking for advice.