My Lasik Experience

[Phillips55]

I was a happy contact user for 15+ years until the vision in my right eye got blurry. I was told it was an astigmatism so I tried astigmatic contacts but they caused headaches. Glasses had always caused headaches too, so I looked into Lasik. I grew up trusting doctors, so when the very prominent Lasik Doctor I sought out told me all the side effects were temporary, I took him at his word. I made the biggest mistake of my life. How could I be so naive? It has been almost two years since the procedure and I have chronic dry eyes, vision that deteriorates in lower light, glare, starbursts, ghosting, light sensitivity, and unbearable persistent eye pain. I have seen 4 specialists and spent thousands of dollars on drops, plugs, restasis, Lipiflow, and other supplements. I had to find all these treatments on my own, as my Lasik Doctor gave me absolutely no answers or direction. He sat there and watched me suffer under his care for a year and his only advice was Fish Oil. Once my free year of care was up he had the audacity to offer me an enhancement at a reduced rate and reiterated that any dryness from the enhancement would be temporary! I have lost complete faith in the medical industry and am amazed at people like this doctor who treat other folks like cattle for their own enrichment...

[Guest]

Hi Phillip,

I can totally relate to so much of your post.

But don't lose all faith... there are good doctors out there... like anything else, there are good and bad apples in every profession... eventually, you'll find a good dr. who will do their best to help you... you'll find a dr. whose opinion you trust (although thanks to our LASIK experience, it'll be more of a "trust, but verify" kind of trust, which probably isn't a bad thing anyhow...) They may or may not be able to "fix" your eyes, but sometimes even getting some improvements is enough, and having a good dr. in your corner to write your rx's, refer you to others if required, and keep tabs on your eyes is comforting... so keep searching until you find a good one!!!

[Phillips55]

Thanks so much for the encouragement!

[LauraK]

Fellow Lasik Patient

I also had Lasik surgery and had a terrible outcome. I had surgery a year ago this week. I was so excited and went into the procedure without any fear. If I only knew what the next 6 to 8 months would mean to me, I would never have had surgery.

I was put on numerous drops from Lotemax, Restatsis, OTC drops, serum drops, plugs, etc. I only started feeling better after seeing Dr Latkany in NY back in May. He diagnosed me with ocular rosacea and took me off of everything. No drops, no plugs, not even OTC drops. The following few weeks were tough, but I started to make a turn around after stopping everything.

It is about finding the right doctor and the right solution. I went to an OD for the first six months and he had on all sorts of drops. His intentions were good, but he had diagnosed my problem incorrectly.

I wish you luck. I still am amazed how some of my family and friends still do not understand how this affects your life. Please PM if you ever need to chat.

[Rebecca Petris]

I am sorry I didn't see this sooner. And I am so sorry for what you've been through.

I was a happy contact user for 15+ years until the vision in my right eye got blurry. I was told it was an astigmatism so I tried astigmatic contacts but they caused headaches. Glasses had always caused headaches too, so I looked into Lasik.

This is one of the types of LASIK story I really dread: Where people are driven into surgery (in some degree, directly or indirectly) by vision issues that are not satisfactorily explained and therefore which LASIK cannot be expected to fix. What LASIK is "good" at is pretty reliably correcting moderate amounts of common refractive errors. The further the goal extends beyond that territory, the poorer the results. So a cardinal common sense rule of laser surgery is... or rather ought to be IMHO, as the industry at large certainly doesn't seem to live by it... is that if you cannot get satisfactory correction with glasses & contacts, you're very unlikely to improve on it with laser surgery - despite all the hype about wavefront.

Reading your story I am wondering if you had mixed astigmatism. The very lowest end of the LASIK success statistics range is always mixed astigmatism.

With your constellation of symptoms... if it were me I'd be pursuing sclerals. (That's where I ended up, and I have quite a lot of symptom overlap with you.)

Just realized I posted in another thread that you wrote in and you replied to some questions but I forgot to check back... I'll head there now....