Saturday, June 26, 2010

THERE'S A LASER IN YOUR EYE!!!

The creative juices just aren't flowing, so I'll just post some pictures with explanations.

Oh and by the way, I just tried pilates, and hated it. Yoga is definitely better. Of course it could have been the annoying instructor too.

Andrew had Lasik surgery on Thursday... which he has talked about pretty much ever since I met him. I am a failure as a wife because I don't have my driver's license yet, so we had to ask people to drive us up there (since technically he's not supposed to drive after the surgery. the whole getting your eyes sliced up doesn't fare too well on the roads...)
So thank you very very much Jen! And Annie for driving him up to the post-op.

He was very excited but as time got closer, he got pretty nervous.


Essentially what they do is suction-cup a flap of the top of your cornea and then push the flap open and scrape off cells from underneath and shoot with lasers until your cornea is the right "curve" to correct your vision. So yes, there's topical anesthesia but that does sound pretty freaky. (By the way, we have a DVD of the procedure... gross eh?)
Here's our patient with his mushroom cap (I'm no doctor but I'm pretty sure a hair falling into your peeled-open eye during surgery would be bad.)

In between the flap-cutting and the actual laser intervention, you have to wait a little... but in style! Notice the vibrating massage chair he's reclining on below. Oh by the way, the place is SUPER nice. They even have a lady whose sole job is to bake cookies and walk around offering them to people... and those were some good cookies too!


I have to tell this part because it's kind of funny. During the laser portion, they have to pry your eye open to keep it open while they operate. Understandable. While Andrew was waiting there was another lady getting it done and I was in the waiting area so I watched a little. The drawing below is what her eye looked like with the greyish circle being the thing that keeps your eyelids open, nice and wide.

I guess Andrew REALLY didn't like getting his eyes touched because they couldn't get the grey circle thing in his eye, so this is how it looked:
The grey things are soft hooks they had to use to pry those eyelids apart... Poor thing!
The operation was a success however. He got sent home with a lot of different eye drops to take. And these funny little discs to wear while sleeping. (So he won't accidentally rub his eyes during the night)


(And no, he doesn't typically look like a dead rat when he's sleeping. Somebody may be a little dramatic on the edges...)

No eye-rubbing for TWO MONTHS now. But here's the best part:

The next day at the post-op checkup, his vision was already 20/15 (which in layman's terms (I didn't know this before either) is better than 20/20 (which is perfect vision)). It's incredible what technological advances have made possible these days.

Speaking of which, here's my plug for the surgeon. They asked Andrew to be an "ambassador" for them and tell people about it. Hoopes vision is where we went and it was incredible-- amazing service, and of course, the results are already incredible two days later. (Not to mention those melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chip cookies... :) Andrew says the worst "pain" he's felt so far was the sensation of having something in his eye, but that's it.
Look them up if you're considering it. Not to mention they were voted among the "10 Most Dependable LASIK Surgeons in the U.S." two years in a row.

Finally, a word from the man himself: "I looked out the window and I could actually see Y mountain AND I can count all the trees on top! This is amazing!"

2 comments:

  1. You forgot the loud laser machine and scent of burning flesh.

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  2. yeah DONT rub your eyes! I got my eyes done at another place without chocolate chip cookies, now i'm jealous. ;) But it's such a wonderful life with corrected vision.

    And yeah...loud popping laser and burning flesh..tried to forget..

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