Friday, July 14, 2006

Laser Vision [At the request of numerous readers...] Last year, I became one of the over two million people in the U.S. to undergo corneal reshaping surgery, commonly called Lasik, uncommonly called Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis, after having worn glasses most of my life. I can't remember when my vision first started to go blurry. I can't remember when I got my first pair of glasses. And I don't recall masturbating excessively too close to the television set in the first place. But I do remember the segment on That's Incredible showing the first rudimentary style of corneal correction being done at some Russian hospital. Except it wasn't called Lasik then, because they weren't using lasers. They had about a dozen people on a big rotating operating table and at each station a doctor would make a little scalpel slice in the nervous looking person's eyeball. I was fascinated and horrified. "Good Lord! Can you believe we're on television?" Fortunately, the process has come a long way since the days when John Davidson could get a TV show. Plus, several friends have had it done and are still happy with the results years later. It's not a vanity thing like the Treasanus treatment. I just get annoyed with having to pack extra glasses and sunglasses whenever I travel. Not to mention being unable to see when fending off a robotic narwhal while snorkeling or having them fog up during a Siberian yeti hunt. Or the endless taunts of "four-eyes" from my evil nemisii in M.A.Y.H.E.M.. So I decided to go in and see if I was a candidate to have my eyes sliced open. On the advice of several friends, I went to Lasik Plus in Edina. They had performed over 608,000 lasik-ings and were reassuringly expensive. I'm all for deals, but this was no time to be clipping coupons. The pre-screening was pretty simple. You just look at lots of stuff in various machines and tell them what you see. "Better like this? Or this?" The thickness of my cornea was measured and mapped out in something that looked like eyeball Doppler. Then I watched a short video describing the process in full detail. There was a minor freakout factor that poked me in the kidneys whenever the smiling doctor in the video mentioned words like "slight risk" or "in rare cases". In the end, I was declared a good candidate for the procedure. In fact, everyone was loudly proclaimed as a good candidate as they were escorted back into the waiting room. I'm sure they did this for the benefit of the people still waiting. But it would have been nice to have one person told they weren't a good candidate and they wouldn't risk it. That would have made me feel better. I left the office convinced I was going to do it......but there was still that ellipsis of doubt lingering there. Perhaps if I just...Gaahhhhhhh! Never walk into full sunlight right after your pupils have been dilated. I think I've seen the face of God. Great, I've blinded myself before I can get the procedure done. I called later that day and made an appointment for several weeks out. There. It was decided. When the day of my procedure arrived, Ms. Goodtush drove me to the clinic. I was taken to a back waiting room before being ushered into a smaller room with two assistants who gave my peepers one final look over and asked if I'd like a Valium. Sensing my macho hesitation, the woman said, "90% of people take the valium. The other 10% wish they had." Sounds good to me. Down the hatch. I was then taken to another room where I met Dr. Paul Whiting; the man who'd be doing all the cutting and lasering. He checked me over again and asked if I had any questions. I didn't, but mentioned I knew his brother-in-law; a photographer I've used for work. I brought this up hoping it would create a bond between us, so he'd taken extra special care. But then I mentally kicked myself. "Doh! What if he thinks his brother-in-law is a total ass?" Too late now. I was given a hairnet and walked into the procedure room. Even though the Valium had kicked in, my heart rate was increasing and my hands gripped the edges of the table I was told to lie down on a little tighter than normal. They dropped something in my eyes that numbed them up right away and I felt something metallic hold open my eye. Then a kind of vacuum cup was placed over my pupil and gently suctioned up my eyeball. It was weird, but didn't hurt. Next I felt my cornea being cut. A circular slicing sensation on the outermost part of my eye. Again, not an everyday occurance, but it didn't hurt. I was just really glad I took the Valium. "I wish I wouldn't have drank all that cough syrup this morning." Then the vacuum was released and I could vaguely make out something being done to my eye. I wasn't sure what exactly, it was all a blurry mass. But there wasn't any screaming from the staff, so I figured it was going according to plan. "Now stare at those three lights above." The calm voice of Dr. Whiting instructed me. "Stay focused on them and relax. The laser is kind of loud and you may smell something burning. It's totally normal." TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK!!!!!!!! Holy shit, it was loud. It wasn't even a cool Star Wars laser sound, it was more like a medieval siege engine. How could they develop all this cool technology and not add a silencer to the laser? The scent of burning hair reached my nostrils. Oh, wait, it's not my hair, it's just my retina. Whew. They moved on to the next eye and repeated the process, reminding me that things would go dark for a little while. This, again, being normal. As the laser fired into my other eye, I thought this could be it. That blinking light could be the last thing I see. They should at least project an image of Angelina Jolie giving Jessica Alba a sponge bath for you to stare at, so you could go happy into that long black dark. But light crept back into the blackness and when they folded my cornea back over my eye, I was told to get up and walk out of the room. What? Are you high? But, I could see! It looked like I was walking through lemon Jell-O, but I could make my way to the recovery room. That's it? How come it takes about an hour to make a pair of glasses, but only ten minutes to precisely reshape my cornea by cutting it with lasers? How is that possible? I've had to wait longer for a Snickers Blizzard to be made. The doctor checked me over, proclaimed the procedure a success and sent me on my way with a goodie bag full of eye drops, some MC Hammer-looking sunglasses and a Phil Lambier eyemask to wear at night. I was also instructed to come in tomorrow for a check-up. On the way home, I could already tell I was seeing better. I slouched in the carseat in my valium-induced haze reading street signs and giggling. I mumbled something about Tom Hanks and a singing porcupine and drifted off for awhile. By evening, I was able to see even more clearly. It was amazing. They still burned, but I was taking delight in reading book titles from across the room. But I was told not to read, watch TV or look at a computer for a day or two. Well, that really cuts down on the entertainment options. Thankfully, I still had that Braille issue of Playboy lying around. The next day, I went for my check-up and saw a procedure being performed live for the first time. They had it projected on a TV in the waiting room with the patient's eyeball filling the entire screen. I saw the rotating knife cut the cornea, the doctor slip a little silver spatula underneath and flip it back like a gelatinous pancake. The device that held your eye open was straight out of A Clockwork Orange. Sweet Poseidon's cape of crabs!! They did that to me? That's what they were doing?! Watching it was much worse than actually having it done. But I was declared fit to drive and told my vision was near 20/20. All in under 24 hours of going under the knife, er, the laser. I'm not sure how those Russian patients fared after their surgery, but I bet they're squinting at the TV now, listening to a program about Lasik and swearing up a storm. 10:32:52 AM    Say it don't spray it... []

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