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Fairfield County Magazine
January 2001
Going Under the Knife
A Patient's - eye view of LASIK
By Laura Williams-Rohr
I'd worn glasses since third grade and was tired of thick, heavy lenses and irritating contacts. I had been considering LASIK for a few months and did a lot of research on the Web before I booked an appointment with the office of Dr. Mark Speaker, who performs the surgery at TLC Laser Eye Center in Manhattan (one of a chain with more than 50 locations, some in Fairfield County) where I live.
 At my first appointment, a doctor (not Dr. Speaker) mapped my cornea and measured the size of my pupil. She told me I was probably a good candidate, but we couldn't proceed because I h ad worn my contact lenses too recently. Soft- contact wearers must leave their lenses out for at least a week, and hard- lens wearers must go contact-free for a month. This allows the cornea to return its natural shape. I had cheated, so I had to return a couple of weeks later to have my prescription tested. I found that my myopia was severe but stable, my eyes were healthy, and all I had to do was bear another week or so of my hated glasses before I could have LASIK done.
I arrived on the day of surgery wearing no makeup, carrying my consent form and having made arrangements for a car service to take me home. A doctor tested my vision again; no change. I put $5,500 on my credit card and received a post-op pack with antibiotic and steroid eye drops, two plastic wraparound sunglasses and a sheet of instructions. I declined, against my better judgment, a Valium. A nurse put numbing drops into my eyes, and a few minutes later I followed the doctor into the operating room and lay down on the table.
Dr. Speaker narrated the procedure as he went along, explaining that my vision would go black as he prepared to make the incision in my cornea. It did. I began to feel nauseous and gripped the sides of the table while the doctor reminded me to breathe. He made the incision and pulled back the flap. There wasn't any pain, but the pressure on my eyeball made me feel faint. Try as I might to think of something more pleasant than the slicing of my corneas - I'm on a quiet beach! I'm running through a field of daffodils! Terrorists are pulling out my fingernails with rusty pliers! - I couldn't distract myself.
The blackness cleared and the red light of the laser shone into my eye. The doctor was right: I couldn't possibly blink, and I couldn't possibly blink, and I couldn't possibly move my eye. This part was not so bad until.what's that smell? It's like burnt hair."You might smell smoke, but it's not your eye," the doctor said. Yeah, sure, I thought. Not to self: Warn prospective patients about the smell of burning eyeball. It turns out, however, that the laser does not, in fact, burn away your corneal like a dried leaf under a magnifying glass. The smell comes from the machine itself.
The actual lasering was over quickly, and Dr. Speaker soon pulled the corneal flap closed. I watched a grayish form pass over my eye like a windshield wiper. He continued to brush my eye with whatever it was. "I'm smoothing the cornea," he said calmly. "Smoothing the cornea." as the shape moved across, up, and down.
"I think I might be faint," I said. "Do people ever, like, go berserk during this procedure and run out of the room?"
"No, I think self-preservation instincts kick in," he said. Right.
The second eye seemed to go much quicker than the first. I held my breath during the cornea-cutting routine and was fine. I opened my eyes and, yes, I could read the clock on the wall. It was smeary, but I hadn't had such clarity without lenses for years. However, I felt very sensitive to light, and those numbing drops were wearing off. The doctor led me into a big armchair in a dark room.
A nurse retrieved me and sat me down to be examined. Opening my eyes took serious discipline - the light made me want to howl and jam my palms into my eyes - but he said everything looked fine. He taped on my clear plastic fly-eye shields with long stretches of tape, then put the big dark safety glasses over the shields. I stumbled behind him out of the office, onto the elevator and into a hired car. Alone in the backseat, I tried to open my eyes behind the tape and glasses to squint out the window and get my bearings. No way. It was about 7 p.m. when I arrived home, where I felt my way into the front door and dug out my little medicine kit.
No way I could read those directions. The nurse had a made a big point about drops with a pink cap and drops with a tan cap, but I hadn't been paying attention. I put in all the drops and found that, unfortunately, none had any painkilling capacity. By now, my eyes hurt. Really hurt. And they were tearing like mad. I lay down in a darkened bedroom and spent an hour or so thinking, "Why? Why? You blinded yourself, you vain and silly creature. Why?"
At 9:00 a friend called. By 9:30 I was up and moving around the darkened kitchen, doing okay until I opened the refrigerator and recoiled from the light like Nosferatu. I kicked myself for not taking the Valium in a to-go cup, but I quickly fell asleep without it.
The next morning I probably could've read the alarm clock had I not been buried beneath all that tape. I removed the shields (lingering red tape marks on my face turned out to be the worst immediate side effect) and, sure enough, I could see. My eyes felt scratchy and dry, but I could read my directions and get the right drops in at the right time. Sporting my stylish safety glasses, I went back to the clinic for the morning-after checkup. I had 20/20 vision and no regrets.
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