I finally had an enhancment on November 1, 2000. Click here to read about it and for the last chapters in my Lasik saga.

Click here to view a picture I made that depicts my left eye vision of objects. It represents the "smearing" of objects that I began to see following Lasik. I tried to describe this to the last OD I saw at the Laser Vision Institute, who continued to maintain I was seeing well. In fact, in the examination record, he wrote "Reassured patient eye was OK." Well, my refraction numbers look great, and the Orbscan was apparantly good, but my eye is hardly OK. I am fortunate that I do see great in bright light, and this problem is not all that noticeable during my normal daily activities, but it does interfere with night activites (i.e. driving, astronomy, looking across a dimly lit room). To read more about it, go to my post surgery page.

Click here to get some excellent hints about preparing for the day of surgery. It was compliled from responses to a question at Dr. Walman's bulletin board site. A poster who was about to undergo Lasik wanted to know what supplies he needed to purchase and what other steps he should take to be ready for the big day. The outpouring of help and ideas was temendous, and I have mearly compiled them all here for posterity. This is a must read for those about to have the surgery, as it comes from those who have been there and done it.

I did it, and I kind of like it, (though it was undone by my enhancement) but I wonder if I made the correct decision at the time. Lot's of other people wonder about this issue, too, so I wrote up some pro's and con's about it to aid in my decision about whether or not to ultimately get an enhancement to get rid of it. (Though I did have the enhancment after nearly 10 months, it was for other reasons.) If you are wondering if monovision is for you, then reading this might confuse you even more!

I have been keeping a diary of my Lasik-related events. I had been keeping it all here, but the size was getting large, so I decided to split it up into four parts, covering pre-surgery , the surgery itself , events after the surgery up until my eventualy enhancment, and my enhancement surgery . Obviously, I will not be updating the first three pages very often, but I will continue to update the enhancement page every so often as warranted, since it will include everything after the enhancment, as well.

I have put this site together in the hopes of helping others who are either contemplating the surgery and wonder about what to expect, and for those post-Lasik patients who may be having some problems and need some "hand holding" from one who has been there (or who is 'there' now). I have not tried to get too technical and, of course, your proposed surgeon is the best person to turn to for answers.

That said, there is a lot of hype about the Lasik being the so-called 15 minute miracle. Some laser centers even offer money-back guarantees. I think a lot of this is unfortunate, and most Lasik surgeons agree. Lasik is a voluntary surgical procedure that does have a degree of risk. Risk factors not always discussed include your degree of myopia (assuming you are near-sighted), amount of astigmatism, your un-dilated pupil size in dim light, and the steepness of your cornea. If your numbers are large in any of these areas, you may be at a greater risk.

I discuss some of these factors in my Pre-Lasik page, but your best bet is to get assurances from your doctor that you are not at risk from these factors, as well as others factors they check for. Also, once you have your numbers, come visit one of the Lasik bulletin boards. Two that I found helpful are sponsored by Dr. Gerald Horn and by Dr. Gerald Walman. I highly recommend you participate in those discussions. An excellent source of unbiased information can be found at www.usaeyes.org. It is put together by the Quality Assurance Council for Refractive Surgery. Another site designed to scare the living daylights out of you, but which is must-read site regardless, is at www.surgicaleyes.com. This place has some horror stories of what could go wrong. Though the odds are tremendous that you will have few problems (though I think lots of people suffer some degradation in night vision), as with any surgical event, bad things can and do happen. In the unfortunate event that you do have some problems, this site will be a place of refuge, and some who thought they were without hope found the help they needed.

Most patients who are happy with their outcome like to brag about their surgeons. My surgeon was Dr. Nancy Tanchel. I really liked her, though in retrospect I wonder if she adequately took my pupil size into account for the Nidek laser treatment zone. Still, she was very nice, very encouraging, and seemed to be very knowledgeable. I have spoken with four other people who had Lasik by her, and all rave about how fantastic she was. For my enhancement, I saw Dr. Thomas Teather. He was very nice, too, and several of his patients raived about him, as well.

Here is a link that has a sample Snellen chart. A Snellen chart is what the eye doctors have in their office with all the letters that they ask you to read. Using this chart, you can get a rough idea of your vision, both before and after Lasik. I though it was pretty neat.

I hope these pages have help. Though I have not kept up with the latest in lasers, I will try to help in any way I can. You can contact me at symetrics(at)yahoo.com , but you must replace (at) with @. I hate spam!