LASIK Eye Surgery – What It’s Really Like.

Laser Beam To The Eye.

by Alyssa Ramos

Being the super cool little kid that I was, I started wearing contacts instead of glasses in fifth grade. Seventeen years later, it occurred to me that I had spent $25,000 on contacts and I projected that I’d spend, oh, about $$100,000 more if I planned on wearing them for the rest of my life. I voted no.

Although at first I thought I found an amazing deal when I saw the Groupon for Lasik, my mother thought otherwise. And so did I when I realized that “traditional Lasik” for $2k, meant the kind where they still sliced your eyeball open with a blade. No thank you.

After showing my mother my past expenditures on contacts and future projections, it wasn’t long before I was sitting in the office of the best Lasik surgery center in Palm Beach. The consultation went well…so did the pre-op…and all was fine and dandy on surgery day until OH WAIT, the third doctor to look at my eyes before the surgery found the freaking scar on my freaking cornea from when I burned my eyeball in college. Don’t let your mind wander. This was literally a freak accident that you would only read about on Buzzfeed or something.

It happened when I was sitting by the pool of my house in Tallahassee, reading my (bright white-paged) Biology text book like a good student, wearing my (thick prescription) glasses like a normal blind human, on an extremely sunny Florida day. Ever heard of frying an ant with a magnifying glass? Yeah, that happened to my eyeball. The sun reflected off of the white pages of the book, back through my thick lenses and fried a freaking hole in my eyeball.  It sucked…a lot…however I did get out of a lot of sorority rush activities, which was well worth it.

However it was not worth it ten minutes before my scheduled Lasik surgery when that third doctor saw the scar (on my eyeball) and said, “Oh no, we can’t cut open her eyeball with a laser, that would be a disaster–” …………..um, WHAT?!

So as I’m sitting there, in that stupid annoying optometrist chair, pouting and about to cry because I’ve been counting down the days to be able to see, my mom is questioning the shit out of these two eyeball surgeons. They were trying to explain that the laser beam wouldn’t be able to chop open my eye with such a deep abrasion on the surface, and that I would have to have a different type of surgery called PRK on it, which, essentially, shaves the surface of your eyeball down to the correct shape so that you can see. So that was fun. Always fun finding out moments before surgery that you actually have to get a different surgery. The surgeon that found it was cool though…upon learning that I live in West Hollywood, he went on and on about the Beverly Hills surgeons he knows there and gave me the option to get it done there……..meanwhile….NO…shoot the laser in my damn eyes and fix this shit!

If you’ve ever asked someone who’s had Lasik how it was and they said, “Oh it’s amazing, you hardly feel a thing!” ….No. Screw you. Not only did I almost vomit, but I was so terrified that I didn’t even move at all the entire time because I was so focused on convincing myself not to puke on the laser or pass out. At least my surgeon thought I was one of the best patients ever…

So let’s go in depth about the actual surgical process, shall we? They explained it all before hand, of course, however lucky me and my over-thinking brain, I thought about, and imagined, what my eyeball looked like the ENTIRE time. And it’s not just like zip-zap, Ok you can see, bye! No, no.

FIRST, they lay you down on the creepy leather medical bed, inside of the freezing cold room with massive robot machines everywhere and people in scrubs and medical masks. As much as I didn’t want to admit that I wanted a blankey, I accepted when one of the techs offered. One that I hadn’t met prior to letting participate in my eyeball surgery…I felt like an alien test subject.

NEXT, is the insertion of the spectrum. As one of the surgeons explained in my pre-op, “Just like your lady doctor tells you you’ll feel pressure when they inert the spectrum, you’ll feel the same pressure on your eye.” First of all, what the fuck?! Second of all, that is a major difference! The eyeball spectrum made my eye feel like it was popping out of its socket, and that’s exactly what it was doing. No joke, I have photo evidence because I made my mother film the whole thing. Such a nice mom I have.

THEN, they numbed my eyeball with drops and made my vision go away, so while most people would be relaxing and thinking, “Oh ya Ok, it’ll be over soon”, I’m thinking…”Holy shit! I can’t feel my eyeball! And it’s popping out of my face! And now a laser beam is going to cut it open!” This is around the time that I almost threw up. Like I was literally convincing myself to breath, and singing “I can see clearly now the rain is gone” in my head.

“Keep looking at the red light, good job, you’re doing great.” The surgeon kept sayin, while all I could freaking see is red lights — oh, and the inside of the lens of my eye. As in, imagine seeing the color and swirls of your eye…from behind it. Yup. That happened.  But it wasn’t over after they popped my eyeball out and zapped it. Oh no. That was just the first step of the laser beam slicing my cornea open. Then I had to wait another hour (probably a total of 10 seconds in real time) for the next massive laser beam to come down and start laser-chopping the shit out of the inside of my eyeball. As in, under the flap of my eye. Yeah. Think about that one.

After the second laser finished, the doctor proceeded to squirt cold liquid in my eyeball while gently smoothing the lens of my eye back down with a little spatula. This was around the time where my vision started coming back, so I got to watch the little spatula rub my freshly sliced eyeball, and almost passed out.

The second eye with the PRK surgery was a lot less bad. Although my mom told me it took longer than the first eye, it felt a lot shorter, used a less painful spectrum, and only used one laser instead of two. I did, however, have to wear a protective “bandage” lens over that eye for about a week, and didn’t have fully clear vision for a month, but now both are perfect and I couldn’t be happier.

Aside from my dramatic interpretation of LASIK and PRK, I would highly recommend it to anyone suffering from bad vision. I was -4.00 in both eyes with astigmatism (aka blind) and now I wake up every morning with perfect vision.

Oh, and one last thing…yes, you can smell your eyeball burning during the surgery. 😉