it's been 4 years for me and i'm blind

Ahh, explains the continued use of your avatar.

It depends on whether or not your prescription is stable. No way any reputable doctor would do the surgery after getting your first script for glasses. You need to demonstrate no change in your eyesight for a year to be a candidate.

Otherwise nothing you've said suggests you wouldn't be a candidate. Just because your vision isn't hideous doesn't mean you can't get the surgery. My vision wasn't all that bad (-1.25 IIRC).

I got the surgery in April of '04, and TBH I think I've noticed my far range vision has worsened slightly, but not consistently - sometimes it fogs up a bit, but goes back to normal after a while. My eyes have probably changed some over the intervening 7+ years.

wait, the dry eyes goes away at some point right? id hate to be replacing one annoyance (glasses/contacts) with another. Also, is it OK to get lasik eye surgery if you fly a lot and will likely be on a plane within a week after surgery? A doctor mentioned something to me about the pressure from being on a plane being problematic?

No idea about the plane question.

The dry eyes went away completely for me. I've heard others say they still have very minor issues with it.

i got bad dry eye from PRK, but taking fish oil + flaxseed oil + eating tuna each day keeps it at bay.

um, prior to seeing a video of lasik performed I had really no worries or concerns over how the procedure would feel. I thought you'd just sit there staring at a light as a lazer that you can't feel does all the work. This looks a far cry different than I imagined:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PJ391MDtpo

Uhh, how's that suction feel? How's smelling burning flesh? This looks pretty terrible.

smelling the burning eye is gross

lol Tyler are you serious about changing your whole diet?

more like 10% of my diet. also, my eyesight degraded back to where it was before the PRK! apparently it happens to ~3% of PRK patients.

Yeah, the burning eyes thing is disconcerting. Particularly in my case, since they forgot to mention it to my group in the pre-op meeting.

But there's zero pain during the operation, they absolutely drown your eyes in numbing drops. You can't feel a thing - they write on your eye too (at least they did on mine) and I felt nada.

I thought getting it done was cool/neat, the whole time i just thought about how it was awesome what they were doing

you don't feel the suction? I've read people describing it as feeling like your eyes are being sucked out your skull. Also, even though you can't feel anything, what about seeing them with a blade doing stuff to your eye? That's not uncomfortable? Did you feel any urge to blink while you had those metal things prying your eyes open?

I had PRK in 2006. The procedure itself is a little stressful. The recovery afterwards sucks balls.

Things are great until the numbing drops wear off. Then your eyes will itch pretty bad for 2-3 days, and will itch a little for about two weeks. And no, you can't rub them. Yes, you can put in numbing drops...but that delays the healing and thus prolongs the itching.

That said, still the best money I've ever spent.

I don't remember any suction. I certainly never felt like my eyeballs were being sucked out of my skull.

I had PRK, so no blade. Instead I saw this little toothbrush looking thing approaching. Weird, but I didn't feel a thing.

Sure I wanted to blink when they were clamping my eyes open, but that takes like 10 seconds for each eye.

You're making this scarier than it needs to be. Unless you freak out when you see something approaching your eye (some people do), the actual procedure has zero pain and what I found be a small freak out factor. The aftermath was 100X worse (with the itching, burning eyes) but that's the price I was willing to pay to not wear glasses anymore.

I'm completely satisfied with how the procedure went. Of course, since I got it for free that may skew my results a little, but nothing I've said about what I actually experienced or the long term effects is in any way exaggerated.

anyone who said it felt like their eyes were being sucked out of their skull is a little bitch.

Well as I mentioned, prior to looking at that vid I didn't even think about it one bit since I've always been comfortable touching my own eye ball and worn contacts for a long time now.
Can you clarify this part? You're saying that the part where they are putting the instruments in your eye takes 10 seconds per eye? I was more so asking about during the procedure do you feel yourself trying to blink but being unable to because your eyes are pried open? That seems that it would feel highly uncomfortable being unable to blink for 15mins during the procedure.

Here to share my experience:

I got PRK done this past Friday on both eyes (so its been like 5 days) at Liva Eye Center in NJ. I'm 22 and have worn glasses since I was like 8 (pretty bad vision farsighted). They've been a major inconvenience for me and I've always ****ing hated them so I had to get this done. Contacts were also never an option...I tried them but my eyes are overly sensitive and I just couldn't do it.

Anyway the doc recommended PRK over Lasik because I had a thinner cornea and believed it be much safer. He also expected me to heal faster than normal but I forget exactly why (the shape of structures in my eye I guess). The surgery went fine...I'm usually one to get paranoid and anxious from things like this but believe me when I say you won't feel a thing. And to the blinking talk - yea you would think that you'd wanna blink but the combination of the clamps holding your eyes (which are VERY strong btw) and your concentration on a blinking dotted light almost eliminates that notion during the procedure. I tried to squint maybe a couple times but the doctors reminder to concentrate on the light and just my paranoia for something going wrong during the surgery made me tense up and try to focus on that light. I actually found the experience to be pretty cool.

After the surgery, the rest of the day was CAKE. My vision was pretty good and I took a pretty long nap. I thought the healing process was going to be a breeze but I must have severely underestimated the pain that would come and didn't research it enough, because starting the next morning and lasting for about 3 days I went through HELL. The next day was sporadic but the following 2 days were just constant irritation/burning/tearing. Couldn't sleep for too long or comfortably and I didn't know what to do with myself...I was like in a trance state. The doctor gave me 3 different eyedrops (2 at 4x and 1 at 1x per day) and I HIGHLY recommend you have a companion with you to put them in because I sure as hell couldn't do it myself.

From the 4 to 5 day mark (today) its been pretty calm...my vision is at like 20/40, maybe better, and I could almost comfortably drive and read/watch tv. I have an appointment tonight and I'll see how that goes..hopefully they take the lenses out? I also have a couple questions just cause I'm really cautious:

-Is it bad (will it affect the healing process or anything) if I read/watch alot in the coming days? The past day I spent maybe 10-12 hrs doing them and don't want to slow down the healing or anything like that cause my vision still isn't perfect.

-How much of an effect would you think eye rubbing has at this point and when will I be able to rub them without worry? I made sure to avoid it until now but waking up this morning, I accidentally was rubbing them before realizing what I was doing.

-Will alcohol have any effect at this point? I'm not going to go crazy but I wanted to get a few beers and just wondering if it's safe to do so.

Thanks

I only wanted to blink while they were trying to keep my eyes open to set up the clamps. Once the clamps were on, I don't recall fighting or having an overwhelming urge to blink. They keep your eyes moistened.

This is almost almost 8 year old memory now, though. I don't remember trying to blink during the procedure or when the little toothbrush was approaching me. I have a much clearer memory of the smell of the eyeball and there being no pain (and being able to sit up and actually read the clock on the wall) and the pain over the next few days, but not of wanting to blink.

reading/tv is fine

DO NOT RUB YOUR EYES. You can start rubbing them once your doctor tells you that you can start rubbing them. You should be wearing goggles of some kind to protect your eyes when you sleep unless your doctor has told you that you didn't need to wear them anymore.

If your doctor hasn't told you that you can rub your eyes and you do, 98% of patients go completely blind. And they have to have a foot amputated too. Also children in Africa die from it.

So don't do it.

As long as you aren't on any pain medications I don't remember my doctor saying anything about alcohol at all...IDK though.

I know I didn't. There was some pressure, but there was nothing that felt really out of the ordinary. My doctors told me that the numbing drops keep you from needing to blink, and that was certainly the case with me. I found the whole experience interesting rather than uncomfortable -- you really can't feel anything they're doing.

welp, I had an appointment to get it done literally tomorrow morning. out of curiosity I start reading around online some more and find a forum with a bunch of other people who have gotten it done: http://www.lasereyeforum.com/ - Nothing but a bunch of problem threads. Yes I know, small sample size, selection bias/people who have success and no problems unlikely to seek out forum to post about it/etc. But either way, it made me want to re-schedule if anything and read into it some more. All I read on that forum was about peoples vision regressing 5months to a few years later, sometimes peoples vision reverting back to pre-surgery over night, terrible permanent halos and blurred vision, dry eyes, post-op pain, etc. Will read more over time and just re-schedule I guess.

Wait, what? The actual procedure is like 3-4 mins/eye tops. I'm fairly sure that I was in and out in under 10 minutes.

Just get it done. The vast majority of people experience no problems. Of those that do experience problems, the majority still end up with better vision than they had prior to the procedure. You're building this up to be a much bigger deal than it really is.

I had my LASIK procedure last Tuesday. I went from nearly blind to seeing 20/20 in both eyes. It's pretty awesome so far. I had some major glare, especially when looking at computer screens, up until yesterday. I also have the halos at night and some light sensitivity during the day, and of course dryness. I use eyedrops every 90-120 minutes for the dryness.

The actual "eyes pinned open" part of the procedure was 30 seconds tops for each eye. The procedure itself was a complete breeze, surprisingly short and absolutely no pain. Smelling the lasers burning off my cornea was pretty weird.

The only tough part was trying to sleep for 3 hours afterwards.

So I just had an appointment with http://www.durrievision.com/ this guy. He said I would be a great candidate. He has excellent credentials as well as the best reputation in kc. However no one said anything about a warranty or guarantee and is that something I should be looking for? The cost of the surgery includes post op visits for two years, is that sort of standard? I would be getting sbk, which is relatively new I guess.