Better And Better

If you don't draw yours, I won't draw mine. A police officer, working in the small town that he lives in, focusing on family and shooting and coffee, and occasionally putting some people in jail.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

With frickin' laser beams.

Due to a change in my insurance on June 1st, I had some money in my Flex Spend account that was "Use-It-Or-Lose-It." I decided to get LASIK. Sadly, the way the money falls, I can only get one eye done this week, and in two weeks can get the other one.

Yesterday, my dad drove me to Dallas, where, after a cuppa  and an omelet at CafĂ© Brazil, we went to the Cattle Call Eye Center, and they prepped me for eye surgery.

Actually, the prepping involved getting a name tag on the chest (kinda smart, given their volume), paying their marketing person from a Health Savings Account card and from a Flex Spend Account card, and then going into the "Relaxation Room."

In the Relaxation Room, they had a fan for some white noise, and the lights were turned low. There was a decent stereo playing music. An attendant who was not a nurse had me lie down in a leather couch, and put a blanket over me (it was cool in there.). She then gave me two pills and a cup of water. The first pill, I was to swallow. The second pill, I was to let dissolve under my tongue. I knew that they were for anxiety, but because I'm not Anthony Michael Hall, I asked what it was before I took it.

"Oh, it's just Vicodin," she said. I asked her if she was sure about that. (My stomach doesn't much care for Vicodin, and I hadn't read anything about getting scheduled narcotics with the surgery.)  She checked up. "Oh, I mean Valium. To calm you. I knew it was one of those V drugs." Noting that the stereo was now playing Enigma's Chant music with the Gregorian Monks and the heavy thump-thump that makes it a favorite for booty music, I remarked that if she said "Viagra," I was going to have to point out that I am a married man.

They put a silly mesh shower cap thing on me, with gauze over my ears, and walked me into the eye surgery room, where they lay me down, and wedged my head in, and swung a machine over my face. The doctor, an officious guy who had patients to hustle through, was talking to his intern as he struggled to push that machine as close as possible to my eye, cramming it down against my nose and brow: "Note the pronounced brow ridge. It and the significant bridge on the patient's nose cause some difficulty in getting the machine down to the sunken orbital," he said. I informed him that I preferred the term Cro-magnon and that he could commence with the "occulectomy"*.  He laughed, and cranked that mutha down onto my face, asking if I was okay. I admitted that it was uncomfortable, but bade him continue, please.

They used one laser to cut a flap into the cornea, and another to then shape the lens of my right eye so that it was the correct shape to focus light between the lens and the cornea onto the retina, so that I can see without glasses. He then taped a plastic shield onto my face, and sent me on my way.

They had an in-house glasses shop there, where a dude swapped the prescription right lenses in my glasses and sunglasses for zero-correction lenses, for $20, while I waited. Great work at a great price, actually. I gave him cash, and no paperwork was done, so that might have been a side job. Hey, it never hurts to ask. :)

The doc pushed for me to get plugs to hold in extra tears to prevent dry-eye. I just didn't have the cash. I'll probably do it when I go in again in two weeks.

So today, my right eye is good with no correction. I have to put drops of some kind in, every waking hour.

This was what I found, first thing in the morning. My wife assures me that it looks better, now.


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*Forgive me for not having heretofore been conversant with the correct terminology for such a procedure, which I was facetiously suggesting he perform.

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13 Comments:

At Saturday, May 25, 2013 4:51:00 PM, Blogger Comrade Misfit said...

"Plugs"??

 
At Saturday, May 25, 2013 8:18:00 PM, Blogger Christina RN LMT said...

Yay, good for you! Lasik and PRK are awesome, and I have never regretted it.

 
At Sunday, May 26, 2013 9:37:00 AM, Blogger Old NFO said...

What ever you do, DO NOT RUB IT! And you'll be very happy with the results when it's all said and done!

 
At Sunday, May 26, 2013 1:52:00 PM, Blogger jumblerant said...

Feel good! Maybe get some robotics put in in a couple of weeks? Telescoping eye? Google Eyeball?

 
At Sunday, May 26, 2013 2:53:00 PM, Blogger J.R.Shirley said...

"One of those 'V' drugs", indeed.

I was idly thinking about lasik a few days ago, and thought again that having my eye cut on is so terrifying to me that less than perfect vision for the rest of my life is probably preferable.

 
At Sunday, May 26, 2013 4:34:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Having been rejected as a candidate for LASIK, I had to go with PRK. Get the punctal plugs for the other eye- so much better.

 
At Sunday, May 26, 2013 11:53:00 PM, Blogger Robert said...

I know 2 guys who had Lasik; one was overjoyed- the other sued his doc and is all messed up. Good luck.

 
At Monday, May 27, 2013 8:09:00 AM, Blogger Matt G said...

They had the cookie-cutter option, which they said was pretty good, and they had the custom, laser-mapped, indexed-to-the-iris-image option for $300 more an eye. Call me a chicken; I took the more eye-specific version, and shelled out more cash.

Bok-bok.

 
At Monday, May 27, 2013 8:10:00 AM, Blogger Matt G said...

BTW, so far, so good. Right eye is 20/20, now, uncorrected.

It's just ugly as hell.

 
At Monday, May 27, 2013 4:35:00 PM, Anonymous Shrimp said...

Awesome. Had mine done more than a decade ago. Still 20/25 right eye, 20/20 left. No complaints, though, considering I was 20/600 (no, that's not a typo) before I started.

The first few days are the roughest, just because your eyes feel like someone threw a handful of sand in them. I'd do it again, if I had to.

 
At Saturday, June 01, 2013 7:36:00 AM, Blogger Home on the Range said...

I've needed glasses for reading as I got older, still as a pilot I'm hesitant to try it.

Hope it all works out (and I know you won't miss the alternative, I certainly wouldn't).

 
At Saturday, June 01, 2013 8:12:00 AM, Blogger Matt G said...

Brigid, as a pilot, I wonder what you would do if your glasses were lost or disabled in flight? Say, if severe turbulence caused the equivalent of a mid-flight crash? It's not like you can pull over and begin hoofing it. Seems like your own concerns are not too different from my own.

My fears about my eyes were allayed by this thought: If they did mess up my lens, we now have the technology to simply replace it with an artificial one. It's done every day, for cataract surgery. Typically, sight through the replacement lens is without need of correction, or requires but little correction.

So, there is a safety net, to some extent.

 
At Friday, June 07, 2013 6:14:00 PM, Blogger Tam said...

Jumblerant,

"Google Eyeball?"

Given recent headlines, I'm guessing the market's gonna be soft on those for a while. ;)

 

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