GF was out of the country at the time. You do what you've got to do. She gave me crap when she found out I was wandering around blind.
Anyone do the laser eye thing?
- Thread starter mimico_polak
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Sherbourne and Bloor too..spicy!
Shaman
Well-known member
My first pass didn't take. The second time around is a LOT more painful. They have to peel your half-healed eye flap back again, and man ... like being stabbed in the eyes for day, and got to keep yourself lying on your back for a week.
Point being, when I got the "bandage contacts" out, I was in Toronto at a conference. My eyesight was bad but I thought the bandages were just causing it, because they were "itchy". It got LOTS worse when they came out, and I couldn't even read the street signs downtown without looking at them at an angle. That was "fun".
Thankfully the second time worked, otherwise I'd be half blind right now. You get two, and that's all.
My second shot was the same experience as the first. No big deal for me. Others have a harder ride with more stars and dryer eyes.
Shaman
Well-known member
Yep, that was me. Lots of burning pain the second time around. I listened to Joe Perry's audiobook that he wrote about Aerosmith to get me through it. My eyes stayed dry for a few months and then stopped... sometimes though, I wake up in the morning and they feel "scratchy" even a decade later.
I think i've said it before, but eyeballs are the only thing that gets me queasy. I don't know if I could go through this surgery....thankfully (somehow?) I still have better than perfect vision..but when it goes I excpect I'll go to glasses..which I wear in front of the computer anyways to reduce eyestrain.
The flipside is now I can wear sunglasses almost all the time when outside. I was too cheap to buy prescription sunglasses. Now I have lots of options in various tint levels and if a lens gets scratched, it's not $300 down the drain. The sunglasses should help by keeping UV out of my eyes. Before I would wear contacts when I wanted sunglasses but would often be lazy and not bother to put them in so I would be stuck with just glasses and bright.
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Agree - though honestly a lot of medical things make me queasy lol. Eyes are definitely super scary. Despite the statistics seeming reasonably safe all things considered.
Honestly, if my entire future didn't rest on potentially having to do it - I wouldn't even consider it. But the fact that this may very well make or break everything for me is what is making the calculation really hard to make.
Yeah I think my wife was picking the surgeons brain during consult, if i remember correctly it went something like this;
Wife: What's your personal success rate on surgery?
Surgeon: 100%
Wife: And how many surgeries have your performed?
Surgeon: 20,000
I'd like to speak to her surgeon - LOL!
i can probably get his name if you really want..but like i said they (as i recall) rotate around the locations. but if you`re flexible on timeline/location it could be possible. PM me if you want
The number of surgeries is good but "success" depends on your definition. The bar could be "has some vision left".
I don't know how much of the outcome is based on the doctor and how much is based on the machine. The process is mostly hands off. I don't know what the doctor instructs the machine to do nor how much the machine measures, calculates and programs on its own.
Agreed it's hard to pinpoint. Though from the reading I've done, number of surgeries is generally a good baseline to go off of. I've read mixed things regarding how hands on or off it is - I imagine most of the hard work is in the diagnostics and in actually ensuring the patient is a good candidate in the first place (I've read of cheap places having lower bars for accepting people - which I absolutely need to avoid).
Risk either way - but I'd definitely take someone with 20k customers over 1k. I imagine if you really sucked at your job the market would quickly avoid you, though marketing is a weird thing so I guess that's not a 100% reliable method either.
Relax
Well-known member
I don't know why, but this is starting to remind me of our wedding photographer. We used the company because of word-of-mouth and seeing friends' and family's pictures. On our wedding day, we weren't happy with how the photos came out, and when we complained to the company they said it was probably because we weren't assigned one of their best photographer for only choosing the "basic" photo package. They never mentioned there would be any quality difference based on which package we chose, and if I had known, I absolutely would have paid a little more.
In the context of eye surgery, I assume the doctors that don't have the best record are assigned to those who who don't ask the right questions. Sadly, that's probably a lot of the elderly with cataracts who are officially blind to begin with, so any improvement would be seen (no pun intended) as a success.
In the context of eye surgery, I assume the doctors that don't have the best record are assigned to those who who don't ask the right questions. Sadly, that's probably a lot of the elderly with cataracts who are officially blind to begin with, so any improvement would be seen (no pun intended) as a success.
