Lasik Gone Bad

April 2, 2007

For 20 years I've heard from many of my myopic friends and cousins and about how they had this wonderful 15-minute laser eye surgery that had them seeing 20/20 by the time they walked out the door of the doctor's office. End of story.

Well, guess what? It doesn't always work that way. Granted, for most people it does. But this is me we're talking about.

On February 2nd I took advantage of a new insurance benefit I have through my pricey COBRA policy. It allowed me to have the newer "intra-lase" Lasik procedure done on both eyes for the reasonable cost of $2700. The retail value of this type of computerized Lasik procedure typically runs around five grand, so I decided to take advantage of this deal before my COBRA runs out later this year.

First of all, this isn't exactly just a quick outpatient procedure. In December I had to go without contact lenses for two weeks in order to get the exam done that determines whether I'm eligible for Lasik. That was the first step. It consisted of all these "wave scans" and other assorted eye tests done by an assistant with fancy machines, in addition to a regular doctor's exam.

I was amazed at how friendly and smiley the staff was. I just couldn't believe I was in a doctor's office. Employees were asking me if I wanted any snacks and "Can I get you some water to drink?" They bubbled over with enthusiasm. It was eerie--not your typical drab doctor's office where the overweight scrub-adorned nurse wanna-be behind the glass window tells you sullenly to sign in and be seated while you wait for an hour and a half past your appointment time.

It was much later when I realized why hospitality is so rampant at TLC – it's elective surgery. People pay a lot of money for it. They want to sell it to you. Of course they treated me like a Platinum member of their club.

It's all about the money.

In January, I had to endure yet another two-week period of living with glasses. Then I had to go back to see the doc on yet another workday on the day before the procedure for more scans and a dilation. (Have you ever tried driving at night with dilated eyes? I'm lucky I made it home alive and without killing anyone else on the road.)

On the day of the procedure, my friend Rashmi at the FBI was kind enough to sacrifice her Friday morning off to drive me to the clinic in Annapolis (about 30 miles) and wait while I had the surgery. My appointment was for 10am, but the whole thing took 2.5 hours, over two hours of which we spent sitting in the waiting room. Upon arrival, the bubbly receptionist slaps a name tag and instructions on each patient and lines us up for surgery, one after another. (Later on, when I mentioned to my sister-in-law Judy that I thought it was like an assembly line, she called it (not-so-affectionately) a "Lasik mill." That was exactly what it was, I swear.)

Think about the numbers. Say that on "surgery day" this doctor does 30 surgeries at an average of (let's say) $3500 each. That is in $105,000 in procedures. In one day. Schwing! I wonder what kind of car this doctor drives? And why didn't I think of becoming a Lasik surgeon? It's really not that hard because machines do all the work.

Anyway, they gave me a Valium and surgical head and shoe covers to wear about 20 minutes ahead of time. For the procedure I laid down on a table while each eye was operated on separately and quickly. They use a clamp to prop the eye open and they put lots of anesthetic drops in each eye. The doctor moves a machine over the eye, you focus on a light, and within a couple minutes it's over. It really wasn't bad. I had a fear of seeing this knife-like instrument coming at my eye and me screaming in panic. It's nothing like that because your vision goes gray just before they start cutting. At the end, after maybe 10 minutes, I was given a pair of sunglasses to put on immediately, and Rashmi drove me home.

We hadn't even gotten to the car when my eyes started to water terribly. Each eye was its own little faucet. Then in the car my eyes started to burn. One more than the other, I recall. The 45-minute drive home was misery. I felt like someone had poured sand in my eyes and was rubbing it in with a hot anvil. I couldn't see because I couldn't keep my eyes open.

You know how your eyes feel when you have a foreign object in them, and the lids automatically close on you? That's what the next couple of hours was like for me until I finally fell asleep for my requisite post-surgery nap.

When I woke up four hours later, I could read the time on my alarm clock, which was something I couldn't do before. But when I got out of bed everything was hazy. My vision wasn't as great as I expected. It, in fact, got worse over the next eight weeks (which brings us to last Friday). I can read books, but my distance vision is blurry and halo-y. My left eye has a central blur that follows my eye movement. I can't read those big green highway signs until I'm right under them. Street signs are impossible. I went to a play at the National Theatre with my sister-in-law Jacqui several days ago, and all the actors' faces were blurry. (Don't even get me going about how hard it is to drive at night--but that is supposed to improve with time.)

After several visits to the my nonchalant (albeit friendly) surgeon at his office in Gambrills, Maryland, on Saturdays for follow-up, and two more visits to the Annapolis office during working hours (more pay lost), I finally got an answer as to what is wrong with my vision. Prior to that, the surgeon had pretty much blown me off with each visit, saying that it would take time to heal and that I should be seeing fine in a few weeks. He claimed I was seeing 20/50, and to this day I seriously doubt I have seen that well since the surgery. Worst part is, I have no way of correcting this problem without glasses.

So I finally insisted on seeing the other doctor last Friday afternoon (the one who did the original exam), and she actually took scans of my corneas and figured out what was wrong: My right eye was under-corrected, and my left eye was off-center during the surgery.

Whoa. That is two different surgical errors, one in each eye. And they told me that the odds of either happening is 5 in 100. It's especially rare with the more modern intra-lase surgery because nothing is done by hand. And yet, somehow this doctor at TLC managed to screw up both eyes in unique ways. I am really having a hard time seeing my computer at work--and I'm a technical writer by trade, so that makes working pretty tough. It’s been two months of this. After I saw the doctor on Friday, I had to go to Costco with my old frames to order lenses. That's because TLC won't do what they euphemistically call an "enhancement" surgery to correct the problems until at least three months after the first surgery.

So I'm facing at least another month with bad vision (it'll take two weeks for the glasses to come in), and then I have to miss another full day of work and pay to have the surgery done again, followed by the horrible sand-rubbing pain and then several Saturday follow-up appointments just at the peak of the good weather.

If I added up the cost of the surgery, the new glasses, and all the hours of work missed--this Lasik carries a price tag of $4900.

I really can't believe my rotten luck. Optimists (like my friends Ed and Mark at work) like to tell me things like, "It's not what happens to you, it's how you handle it." You know, when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Blah, blah, blah. It is what happens to you when it keeps happening over and over and over. I speak from experience.

Anyway, Ed did make me laugh. He sent me an email with a subject line of "I found a picture of your eye doctor." The body of the message contained only this link:

http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Ss/0072608/4632_16_2.jpg