Alonna and I just had LASIK Done.  She on January 22, me on January 23.  Basic Points:

• LASIK consists of having a flap cut in your cornea, a laser reshaping the part of your cornea under the flap, and the flap replaced.  Watch this FDA Animation.
• It costs roughly $3000.  Our insurance covered $500.  You can pay a lot more or a lot less.
• We had “Wavefront” LASIK – where your prescription is determined by computer and lasers or something.  Whereas prescriptions are generally measured to 0.25 of a diopter, this measures down to .01.  This effectively means that you’ll probably have better vision than you did with glasses or contacts.
• LASIK can also correct astigmatism.

Reasons why I wanted LASIK

• Inconvenience of glasses and contacts, especially when camping or traveling.
• Discomfort with contacts. Once you’ve worn contacts for 10 years or so, your eyes start to hate them.  After 15 they start to despise them.  My eyes always felt itchy.
• I hate glasses – no peripheral vision, and watch out for volleyballs, basketballs, etc, and they’re always dirty.
• Dependence sucks.  I once forgot to bring my glasses and spare contacts on a wedding trip to California.  Then I lost a contact.   And when you watch a movie like Red Dawn you start asking yourself, what if the commies took over and we had to be freedom fighters in the woods, and then I lost my glasses?  True, the probability seems low, but I like to be prepared.

Observations:

• Both Alonna and I currently have at least 20/20 vision. After 3 months your vision stabilizes and we’ll find out if we have crazy 20/5 eagle vision or something like that.  Both of us believe our vision is noticeably better than it was with corrective lenses before surgery.
• There are a TON of risks, and we read about all of them.  Most of them are within your control – i.e. no rubbing your eyes for a week or two after surgery.
• The 4 hours or so after the initial anesthetic wears off are pretty miserable.
• You basically can’t touch your eyes for a week.  If you do, you risk permanent vision impairment.  It’s kind of scary, because your eye will start to itch, you’ll start to reach up to rub your eye and then stop yourself and think “oh crap, I almost blinded myself!”  I should probably just wear goggles all the time.

Final verdict: totally worth it.  Beforehand I had a hard time justifying it – contacts and glasses are annoying, but not really a big deal, whereas spending $2500 and risking permanent eye damage are kind of a big deal.  But now that I’ve had it done I’m thrilled with it.