I Can See Again!

Is there really supposed to be a big E at the top of that chart? Whew, my eyes were bad - very bad. I've been wearing correction on my eyes since the second grade. My parents took pity on me and got me contact lenses when I was 16. As an adult, my vision was 2400 with extreme astigmatism. I had to have custom contact lenses made to correct my eyes. There's no way that I could express the misery of bad vision any better than Stephanie Becker did in her article on this site.
As I "matured" I began having trouble reading the stock tables and then magazines. Considering reading is one of my favorite pastimes, this was really becoming a drag. I had a pair of reading glasses in every room of my house - and several in my office. My presbyopia (the condition that affects the crystalline lens of your eye as we age, causing a progressive loss of the capacity for close sight) got worse, and soon I needed a different strength of reading glasses just to function at the supermarket, I certainly couldn't read menus in restaurants without my reading glasses. This was out of control.

My opthomologist, Dr. Gene Zdenek, at the Zdenek Eye Institute in Reseda, California, suggested Lasik surgery to me several times. I knew my vision was bad, but I was so afraid of loosing what little I had, that I was clearly unresponsive to his pleas. Finally one day, he told me that he could not only correct my massive astigmatism, but correct my close vision problem as well. I didn't believe him.

To prove his point, he fitted me with a pair of contact lenses that would give me "monovision". One eye (my right) would be focused for closed up, and my left would handle my distance vision. I laughed at him. He claimed that my brain would accommodate the difference and that I'd have perfect vision.

After two days in my trial contact lenses, I was sold. Ok, perhaps not sold, but I realized that there was actually a possibility that I would be able to see perfectly, for the first time in my life.

I wasn't going to go into this quickly. Although I knew the doctor, I asked to see his CV (resume) and asked many questions about how many of these surgeries he had performed and how many were successful. I called other patients of his, and asked them all the gruesome details. Everyone I spoke to assured me that it would go smoothly and that I would be ecstatic about the results.

After many weeks without my contact lenses - wearing my coke bottle glasses, Dr. Zdenek measured my eyes. He produced many colorful computerized printouts of the topography of my cornea as it settled down without correction. After over a month, it was time for the surgery.

When I walked into the office on the day of my surgery, I was wound tighter than a watch spring. I was hyper, practically running circles in his office from fear. They gave me 10 mg. of Valium, and - wow- within 20 minutes, I was cruising.

The surgery was performed with the VisxStar S2 Smooth Scan Excimer laser, with the Moria keratome. Not being a techie in this area, I had to trust Dr. Zdenek that this was the latest and the greatest in the lasik field.

It's a year later, and my vision still amazes me each morning when I open my eyes. I can see the leaves outside of my window, the time on my clock radio, and oh yes, the stock tables come in bright and clear. To me the surgery was magic, it really changed my life.

Check with your ophthalmologist to see if it is for you, and be sure to check out the credentials of the doctor who will be performing your surgery.