Last summer, I had laser surgery to correct my vision, freeing me from the daily habit of switching between three different pairs of glasses. know It’s taken me a really long time to write about this, but I wanted to clear up some doubts before making a final decision. I feel a lot of responsibility when I talk about laser treatments. When I talk about it online, I get hundreds, maybe thousands of messages. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about laser surgery and evaluating the results, so that when people ask me about it, I can answer honestly and with a little bit of experience.
Yes, I have had laser eye surgery, which gives me a slightly exotic appearance, as if I were a bionic being with super-powers of vision. And in a way, I morning Now I’m a bionic life form with visual superpowers: close-range vision so good, so incredible, that I can not only see an ant moving across the stone slabs of my garden patio, but I can also see the ant’s facial expressions.
I don’t really know where to begin when it comes to laser eye surgery, because there’s so much to say and I just don’t know where to begin, plus I have a bad habit of preempting questions and trying to debunk nonsense myths and completely understandable fears. in front This comes up in comments and messages, so when I write about more personal or health-related things, I tend to write longer and more rambling posts.
So while I’m thinking about the various posts I want to write, wondering about the questions people might have, and racking my brain about it all, I’m going to go ahead and do a little summary.
To sum it up, I was tired of glasses, mainly because my eyesight was deteriorating so quickly that I had to wear them all the time. But I didn’t want to wear them while filming, and I couldn’t wear them while exercising, so I needed a different type of glasses for each activity, and it was all getting a bit tedious. So I tried contact lenses, but they didn’t work at all. (You can read about that here.) here and here.) and Discuss contact lenses onlineI received hundreds of direct messages from people enthusiastically and vociferously promoting laser eye surgery as an option. In fact, they recommended it to heaven. Most of the messages I responded to included: oh, Thank you for your concern. But I will never choose that path..
Mainly, it made me wonder: are these people crazy? Why would anyone ever get laser eye surgery? Lasers. Eyes. Surgery. Who would willingly get eye surgery unless it was absolutely necessary to save their vision? Like, if you sneeze with your eyes open and your eyeballs pop out (this is actually a myth).
It would take a really bad situation to have a needle or a knife held close to your eye.A Clockwork Orange About that. And in my opinion, the words “laser” and “eye” should never be used together in a sentence. They should never be seen in the same place. In terms of successfully marketing a medical procedure, it’s the worst possible word combination. In the same way that you probably wouldn’t have testicle surgery with an axe or brain surgery with a chainsaw, “laser eye” conjures up all kinds of terrifying mental images.
It was one of those things I had heard about for years but quickly brushed from my mind. It was irrelevant to me, and laser eye surgery was something I would never do, so there was no point in thinking about it.
I never thought about why it wasn’t something I would do, because it was something I would never have to think about because it was for a large demographic, what I call “the masses.” Other people. The Great Unhinged.
But we all know that I love research – after all, researching and reviewing is what I do for a living. thingInterested in everything from frying pans to hotel rooms, lipstick to wallpaper, I couldn’t ignore the messages and recommendations from hundreds of well-meaning readers and followers. Even if I’m never going to go to the trouble of poking my eyeballs in anything too extreme, I thought it might be worth a little informational research.
So I went looking for an expert in this field, someone with a wealth of experience and great knowledge, and he introduced me to Alon Barsam, surgeon and founding partner of a world-class eye clinic. OCL VisionYou can see Barsam’s extensive list of qualifications here here It’s fair to say he absolutely, 100% understands what he’s talking about.
Instead of just going and asking questions, I agreed to consult and do everything at the clinic in London. It was like I was… That’s ridiculous! – I myself was seriously considering having the surgery. Through all this busy “staring at flashing lights” of scans, tests, consultations and interviews, I was able to mentally narrow down what I was really afraid of regarding laser eye surgery. I realised my main fears were probably the same as everyone else’s – a) that the surgery would fail and I would go blind, or b) that the effects of the surgery would not last.
Highly overstimulated from the numerous flashing light tests and the eye drops that made everything a little psychedelic, I stormed into Aron’s office and began asking questions.
“Is laser eye surgery dangerous?” I asked. “I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”
Aron answered patiently, not showing the slightest sign that he’d been asked this question 5,000 times before. “Laser eye surgery, in the hands of the right doctor, is actually safer than wearing contact lenses,” he said.
I laughed out loud, how can that be true?
“With laser surgery, there is about a 1 in 10,000 risk of serious problems that may require contact lenses or further surgery,” the doctor said. He encouraged me to look up the incidence of serious corneal infections associated with contact lens use, and I did. The statistic I found? Four very serious infections occur per year for every 10,000 contact lens wearers.
This comparison was not intended to scare people about contact lens use, but to emphasize that complications in both cases are extremely rare, and to show that contact lens use, which is generally considered to be completely risk-free, does carry more risk than laser surgery, which many people (including myself up until this point) imagine to be about as dangerous as letting a blindfolded toddler cut their toenails with garden shears.
What about less serious complications?
“Minor, easily fixed issues are more common,” Aron says. “The chance of needing an enhancement (tweak) procedure after laser surgery is about 2 percent, but it depends on the prescription. It can be as high as 1 percent for milder prescriptions or higher for more severe prescriptions.”
It felt pretty good. We discussed a few scenarios. more There are more likely to be accidents than losing my sight to a catastrophic Lasik operation. There have been a few, but most were my own ideas. There was also the plane accidentally altering its landing trajectory onto Harley Street, crashing through the wall of my office and into my face.
I was comforted by the fact that Barsam has performed laser surgery on over 10,000 pairs of eyes without any problems. The risk of something “going wrong” seemed very small, and it wasn’t the kind of “going wrong” situation I imagined it would be — a James Bond villain type situation where a giant laser goes haywire and shoots into your eyeball, causing you to go blind, or where the laser “slips” and slices your head in half.
No. It’s a typical and completely ridiculous myth, created by the wrong type of laser and my overactive imagination. Apparently, complications from laser surgery don’t involve my eyeball popping out or rolling or sudden complete blindness, as I feared. In a good eye clinic, the surgeon should review the lab results and scans, and meet and consult with the patient well before the operation to pre-determine suitability for laser surgery and discuss the likely outcomes, including what to expect from the new vision and how long the effect will last.
If you’re a die-hard cynic like me, you might think: Of course this guy says your vision will improve and the risks are low! He is literally a partner in an eye clinic that offers laser treatments! But as Barsam so delicately and elegantly suggested to me, he doesn’t need customers. He doesn’t need to “sell” laser eye surgery. His operating days could be filled with other kinds of complex eye surgery, lens exchanges, cataract surgeries and other procedures I don’t want to Google. He turns away a significant percentage of the people who come to him to see if they’re a good fit, and he works with the British Ophthalmologists to uphold national standards for laser and lens-based refractive surgery.
But here’s the problem: he He doesn’t have to lure customers or “sell” laser surgery, and his clinic doesn’t have to fill its books with a revolving door of patients, but there are plenty of places that do, and that’s their business model: volume.
As I chatted with Aron, testing his seemingly infinite patience with ludicrous “what if” scenarios I came up with, the idea emerged that there is a huge difference in the level of care and service when it comes to laser eye surgery, and that at lower levels, patients often don’t meet the surgeon until right before surgery, there is a much higher chance of unsuitable candidates being accepted (it’s lucrative, and the more patients the better!), and any problems with the surgery or results will be further highlighted by poor aftercare and indifference when results are disappointing or unexpected.
So my other concern, the one that several people have messaged me about, is honestly a little bit less enthusiastic: How long do the effects of laser surgery last? actually How long would I live? Was there a guarantee that I would have great vision without any issues for a period of time, years?
Well, this was among the questions I asked: “How long should the thread be?” For my own eyes (a moderate farsighted prescription with astigmatism), Barsam said that “you won’t need glasses forever for distance viewing or social reading — restaurant menus, your cell phone, your car dashboard, or even putting on makeup — but once you’re in your late 40s or early 50s, you “may need to start wearing low-index reading glasses when reading only small print.”
That sounded so great to me.
So, armed with the promise of bionic sight (not the word Mr. Barsam used, mind you) and the knowledge that the laser was not a James Bond laser and the procedure was painless, I applied for the first available slot for surgery. I went “just to find out” but quickly realized that laser eye surgery was the long-term, hassle-free solution I was looking for. And since any fears I had were now nonexistent, I felt totally relaxed about the procedure. In fact, just thinking about it made me excited, which was totally against my personality.
Join me next week for the next installment of this eye adventure (I’m getting my eyes back!) Working title: Laser Quest. I’ll share with you what happened, what it felt like, what I didn’t expect, as well as practical information like recovery procedures, eye drops, and all-important costs.
But before we get to that, here’s something a little more information would get everyone excited. Instagram Live with Aron, Monday, June 3rd at 6pmBe sure to join me on my channel (@ruthcrilly) and send your questions in the comments below – I’ll write them down and include them in the chat when I go live.
If you would like to see the clinic I went to or find out more about Alon Barsam and his laser,Get ready to meet Bond, your creator!) Here is their website: OCL Vision.
Disclaimer: I paid full price for the surgery. The consultation is free.
Photo credits:
Top Eye Photos Petri Heiskanen upon Unsplash
Ants Photos Maxim Shtoff upon Unsplash
