Pre-Op
I have been considering LASIK surgery for a number of years now, keeping an eye on my prescription to see if it was changing, asking various doctors if they thought I was a candidate and talking to friends that have had the procedure. Cost was always an obstacle, as was the fact that I only have two eyeballs. They tend to not heal themselves if you lose your vision.
I’ve worn glasses since forever and for the most part don’t mind them. They got in the way of playing catcher in Little League baseball but so did contacts due to the sand the catchers mask tends to pick up. My vision was such that I couldn’t get prescription Oakleys or other wraparound sunglasses for wearing while riding my bike and I made due with a pair of “old guy” prescription inserts for the Bolle sunglasses I wore.
For kayaking though, glasses are a PITA for that hobby. If I don’t wear them, I’m blind and can’t see where I’m going. If I do wear them, I had to strap them on to make sure I didn’t lose them when I get hit by a wave or have to roll. Then, once you do get hit by a wave, the glasses fog up due to the cold water. So now I’m back to not being able to see.
That said, there isn’t a good way to rationalize an expensive elective surgery except based on “quality of life” and even that tends to be a movable mushy target. You can’t rationalize it based on money since it would take at many years to break even with the cost of vision insurance, lenses/frames and check-ups.
That said, of the dozen or so people I talked to that have had the surgery, the only regret any of them espoused was that they wished they had pulled the trigger years earlier.
So after leveraging two years of “cafeteria plan” money, I’m scheduled to have the surgery on tomorrow. My pre-op tests said I was a good candidate for the surgery and was basically average in all respects… which is good. No one wants to be the outlier/extreme case. I’m worried, but who wouldn’t be. I’m trusting one laser to slice a flap in my cornea and another to alter the shape of the underlying tissue in order to correct my vision. We’re talking microns. All while awake. Will I get to see my wifes lovely face again?
I hope so.