My Own Lasik Story

Any surgeon that does a procedure needs to have full confidence in that procedure. This is especially true for elective and optional procedures such as lasik. If you search the internet for lasik, you will find very mixed opinions. I will admit that I myself used to be skeptical of lasik. Part of the reason I was skeptical was that I had never seen or experienced good lasik and how safe and effective it could be.

This all changed when I started my fellowship in refractive surgery. It didn’t take many months at all before I developed a complete confidence behind lasik. All that changed from before was that I saw just how well lasik could be done. And when lasik is done well and managed well, it’s very rare to have any longstanding negative side effects.

But you can only truly understand a procedure by going through the procedure yourself. For almost all surgeries, it is very rare that a surgeon has had that procedure done. If you need heart surgery, most likely the surgeon performing that operation has never personally had heart surgery. Lasik is much different and fortunately I was able to get lasik done on my own eyes.

Prescription Before Lasik

I used to be a glasses and contact lens wearer. I did not have an extreme prescription (I was -0.75 -0.25 x 36 in my right eye and -0.25 -0.75 x 161 in my left eye) but I was bothered by the hassle of wearing contact lenses. Contact lenses can be really annoying sometimes! Given what I knew about how well lasik could be performed, I had no reservations about correcting my low prescription.

My Lasik Recovery

Everyone after lasik will have some dry eyes and everyone will have some halos. My eyes weren’t any exception.

Halos

Halos after lasik are largely influenced by how much prescription is being treated. My prescription was on the lower end of the scale for lasik. The first day everyone will have a nice glow around objects. The second day this glow persisted for me a little bit as well.

Following that, I was kinda surprised how little halos I had (I have since come to be aware that halos aren’t a huge deal for the vast majority of patients). For the first month or two (at least I think it was only for a few months; could be less) I would have a few halos when looking at LED clocks or fluorescent lights but I can’t even remember when I stopped noticing that. I really didn’t have much halos to worry about.

Dry Eye

I did have dryness after my lasik. And I actually had more dryness than most of my patients typically have. But before lasik, I had frequent irritation from my contact lenses and thus probably some degree of dryness. After lasik, I treated my dryness well with frequent artificial tears, omega-3 supplements as well as restasis prescription eye drops. For the first three months I had frequent dryness.

Beyond three months, I noticed continual improvement. Eventually at a year or year and a half, I had no more chronic dryness of my eyes. In fact, my eyes were improved from what they used to be when I was wearing contact lenses. I still will have occasional dryness (such as if I don’t drink enough water or my allergies flare up), but nothing abnormal.

Most people actually recover quicker than what mine was, but some people (like myself) do take a longer time. But, nonetheless, it feels great to have eyes that just work!

And 5 years later, I'm still doing great!

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