My Eyes Have Laser Beams

We all know someone who knows someone who had Lasik surgery. Heck, it may even be you. My eyes never started to go bad until my Senior year of college. Since then, I rocked designer glasses for a couple years then switched to a contact wearer for the past several years. I love those Air Optix you wear 30 days and 30 nights without having to ever take them out. The problem is you start to get annoyed when dust gets in them or weird stuff starts creeping out of your eyes in the morning. It's not conducive to my lifestyle.

October 2009-I woke up and decided it was my time. Enough is enough. I Googled around to research providers in my area, how much my insurance takes off, recovery time…etc.

November 2009- I found out ahead of time my health insurance doesn’t cover it but offers a discount. It’s also a FSA eligible expense and I can allocate enough funds during my Open Benefits Enrollment Period to fund the surgery without paying anything up front. Our company offers a Visa Debit good to use on FSA expenses and over the course of 2010, a portion comes out of each weekly paycheck of mine to pay for it. It's deducted pre-tax and found out that ends up saving me $1400 in taxes. Oh, and did I mention NO UPFRONT costs to me! I set up 3 consultative appointments with local providers.

#1 is fabulous from the start. It’s located in a swanky part of town and that comforted me. They even work closely with my regular eye doctor, so much that they are covering for her while she’s on maternity leave. My gut said, “YES YES” but my mind said, “Let’s be rational and check the other places out to compare.”

#2 is a little further out of my way but I go anyway. It’s not as nice and almost scary, however there are a lot of pictures of Redskin football players smiling with the surgeon on the wall. He must be good or they're just dumb. My eyes are dilated for the first time and no one there bothered to offer me those dark glasses to wear driving home. I didn’t know what was happening so while driving home by myself, I almost broke into tears from the sunlight. It's too much to bear and I couldn't see. I figured if they didn’t care about me then how could they have possibly cared about me when they laser beam my pretty lil eyes? #2 is OUT.

#3 decided they didn’t have me in the computer when I showed up. I called the 800 number and they did’t answer. I was sorta pissed off. They called me 2 weeks later to ask if I wanted to reschedule. I told them I’ve already booked my procedure with #1.

My heart, wallet and eyes belong to #1

December 2009- One pre-operative appointments to keep and ensure my Rx hasn’t changed much since my last exam in April. I can deal with that.

January 2010- Final corneal scan to map out my eyes now that I’ve been without contacts the past month. No mascara for at least a week. My Aetna FSA Visa Debit card arrives and just in the nick of time! Three days until my surgery… Two days until surgery and there's a MINOR change of plan. Apparently, my company’s FSA Debit Cards had to get re-sent out because of a small error of someone DELETING OUR CARD NUMBERS… Yeah, just 60,000 of us affected so it appears I have to wait up to 10 days for a new Aetna FSA Visa Debit Card. FML.

Stay Tuned for the Dramatic Conclusion of: My Eyes Have Laser Beams

(One week and trip to Denver later...)

Two Days Before Surgery- My new Aetna FSA Visa Debit arrives! I take no chances and immediately ran to CVS to purchase a bottle of Aleve. I had to be sure this thing worked and nothing else would stand in my way. After a sigh of relief, I'm ready for my surgical debut!

Surgery Day- Well, I spent the majority of the day doing exactly what I said I wouldn't do. I started out the morning drinking coffee and basically spent the next few hours in a mildly anxious state. The phone kept ringing... my nurse, my office, one of my nursing homes asking me a question... why was my phone going nuts when I'm less than 2 hours away from laser beams shooting into my eyes?

OK, time to relax... yeah right. I arrived at the center and they immediately took me off into the pre-op room. We spentthe next 15 minutes reviewing post-op care and the array of 6 or 7 eye drops that will prove to be my BFF the next few weeks. All the drops seemed a tad overwhelming but they made sure to include a step by step chart with even pretty pictures of each eye drop medication bottle on it. Brilliant. After that, the surgeon himself entered, chatted a bit and handed me two Aleve and a Xanax. He's nice.

Deep breaths...

Within 10 minutes, I'm brought into the surgical room and given a large teddy bear to hold. Cute... yet functional. I choked the bear with my kung-fu grip and prepped my mind for the worst. Well, there really wasn't a worst... I must admit it was a little uncomfortable seeing things shoved around my eyeball to hold it open and the scalpel coming towards your eye knowing that you couldn't close them! The real kicker is you really can't feel a thing while they're doing it so it really was just mind over matter at that point.

Having my Doc talk me through the whole procedure helped. I don't know about you, but I wanted to know the blinking red light was going to turn blurry exactly when he said it will. Yes, and telling me that brief burning smell (I'm assumed that was the laser on my eye) and the wild kaleidoscope of colors was perfectly normal. Btw, that was craziest thing I've EVER witnessed and saying it's a little trippy was an understatement.

The whole actual operation took about 10-15 minutes. They made I sure I was fully equipped with my drops, sleeping goggles, ride home and special sunglasses! Russell took me to KFC (totally my request), through the car wash to clean my pretty lil car and to the store to snag some wine. My surgeon advised me to go home and have a glass to help unwind so I figured I was just being a compliant patient and following his orders. I really didn't experience too much discomfort that evening ((just as the numbing drops wore off) and my surgeon's office even called me a few hours later to check in on my recovery. They prefer you go home and take a 3 hour nap to help the process but I don't do naps so that wasn't going to be in the cards. Eventually, I fell asleep for the night... in my kickass sleeping goggles but whatever. Day 1 is a success!

Day After Surgery- I woke in my goggles and fully complied with the post op variety of drops. Their chart is so handy because I had already forgotten how often to put what drop in on what day. I'll be able to taper as the next few days pass. I went to my post-op appointment and to my surprise my right eye was 20/20 and left eye was 20/25. With both of my eyes together, my doctor said I had 20/20. YAY. Go ME! My eye doc was amazed by the surgeon's work and said my eyes are healing perfectly. She also stated that she's always impressed with his work. Now that IS something you DO want to hear!

Apparently, I won't even be at my fullest prescription potential for a couple of weeks but that's fine since I'm already at 20/20. I'll be a little sensitive to light for 1 week and may have a few halos at night for a couple weeks but that is to be expected while my eyes heal.

A few no no's for the next week: No eye rubbing, no eye makeup, no direct water in my eyes and no DODGEBALL. Yes, I totally asked.

So far, no pain or discomfort to report! I do have 3 random red dots where the blood vessels popped from the suction thingy (technical term) during surgery but that is. I didn't realize I even had a suction thingy on my eyes at any point... prob a good thing I didn't pay attention to him saying that or my BP would have been through the roof.

Moral of the Story: So far, I'm 100% satisfied. Now I can spend my free time challenging Russell to read things really really far away