June
I love the outdoors. I live in the Northeast where the winters are long and as the saying goes, "if you don't like the weather, wait a minute".

Over the past couple of years I had read the usual assortment of glowing articles about lasik surgery. My passions in life are hunting, fishing, snowshoing, snowmobiling, boating, rowing, bicycling, hiking, traveling, and just anything outdoors. After years of fogged up glasses under snowmobile helmets, cold air fogging up my glasses just as a big buck walked by, winter hiking without my glasses because I got sick of wiping the frost off and the usual assortment of glasses hassles, I decided that it was time to look into this modern miracle. It all started when my glasses broke.

My friend just happens to be an OD who had lasik done earlier this year. I started to ask him about the procedure. He had a very good result and was very happy with it. (He had monovision done). Believe it or not, lasik was offered free to area optometrists, so he had it done locally, for free. He did my pre exam and faxed the results to Canada for me. In NH the cost is generally $2500 per eye, so my OD friend and I searched the internet and found a clinic in Montreal that looked good and was running a "special" for $2000 for both eyes. What a deal!

During my pre exam by my OD friend, he found some black spots on my retina, so he sent me to a retina specialist (opthamologist), who told me that these were normal and by the way "you are an excellent candidate for lasik!". Everything was a go, so I asked a friend at work if she was interested in a little vacation in Canada and she decided to have the surgery done also. I called the clinic and booked our surgery and asked them to send out some pre op info for us to look over. I had already read several articles about the wonderful results of the surgery and felt quite well informed.

I actually even looked at the"eye know why refractive surgeons wear glasses" website! I thought it was just a few crackpots overreacting to minor "rare" problems. I did not find Surgical Eyes until after I developed problems post op.

Well, I made several calls to the clinic and they never sent out any kind of information to me at all. Finally, they told me it was "too late" to send anything out (3 week before the surgery). But, believe it or not I still had faith! They told me on the phone that it was all really no big deal. It takes 15 minutes, it doesn't hurt, you can even go out and see the sights in Montreal that same night, so just stop worrying. "We do this all the time and our patients do just fine."

I am a Registered Nurse. I work with acute heart attack patients. I am an educated, informed, cautious person. But I believed. "The complication rate is 1%, people with your level of myopia never have problems, we do this all the time, it's safe!".

So, on June 18, 1999, I arrived at the clinic in Montreal, 11 days before my 40th birthday to do something for me......the ultimate birthday present: perfect vision, without glasses! My friend and I arrived at the clinic, nervous, but excited. We sat in a waiting area. Our names were called. Off we went into separate exam rooms. They did the usual eye exam and topography. We were given consent forms and Valium 5 mg.

Then we were sent to a waiting area. No one explained the consent forms, the procedure, the risks, the post op care. No one even collected the consent forms! I had to ask, "would you like me to sign this?" I can't believe I was so stupid!!

We were called into a room where someone put large amounts of anesthetic drops into our eyes. After the Valium and the anesthetic eye drops took effect, it was then that we met the surgeons and were escorted into the operating rooms. It's true, the surgery is painless, due to huge amounts of anesthetic agents instilled in the eye. About 10 minutes post op the pain began.

We took a cab back to our room and were shocked by the discomfort we were experiencing, but still were excited and so hopeful. We were given virtually no post op instructions, except for a brief sheet outlining possible temporary side effects, such as halos and glare that may last for a couple weeks. The next morning we were scheduled for our follow up exams.

I noticed the next morning that my right eye was very bloodshot and blurry. I met briefly with the surgeon who had me read one line on an eye chart, looked at my eyes very briefly and said everything was great. I asked him about the bloodshot area and the blurriness and he said that my eyes were "very dry" and this was the reason for the bloodshot eye and blurriness, which should go away.

He told me that I should follow up with my OD in one month, then every year after that. He literally said to me "we do this all the time, it's no big deal". Since then I have been seeing my OD (remember, he is a friend of mine), every week, most fortunately for me, at no charge.

Two weeks after my surgery, my fiancé and I had planned a vacation in Nova Scotia. Thank God he loves me, because I was an emotional wreck. My vision was constantly blurry, I had to use natural tear drops literally every 10 minutes (without relief, I might add), and during beautiful July weather, I insisted that we keep the windows of the van shut at all times.

I love to drive and have always been the official driver on our trips. It was impossible. I will never forget trying to drive into Halifax at night. The glare, halos, starbursts and diminished clarity were absolutely terrifying.

Remember, I had no teaching of any kind regarding the occurrence of these problems! I remember reading somewhere that 1% of patients may experience "halos, starbursts, and glare", but I had no idea what that meant. I kept saying over and over " I can't believe that I paid someone to do this to me!".

We returned home and I went to see my OD friend. He was not happy with how my eyes were healing at all. The feeling was that perhaps I sleep with my right eye open. I had corrective surgery for ptosis when I was 7 yrs old. He also felt that perhaps my right eye lid was not smooth, related to the ptosis surgery, and was hampering healing of the cornea. The only problem is, the issues are not with just my right eye, but with both. I have spent hundreds of dollars on drops, ointments, eye patches, and most recently, glasses, since the surgery.

You may be wondering why I didn't call the clinic for some answers. Well, I did. The first time I called, the person who answered the phone said (you are not going to believe this!), "alot of out patients don't go out much at night, so night vision isn't a problem"). I called another time and spoke to someone who told me that everything will be better in a couple of months and that it was perfectly normal to use eye drops from 20-30 times per day.

Almost 4 months have gone by. My right eye is still blurry in spite of a punctil plug and a kings ransom in eye drops and ointment and glasses. I still see intense halos, starburst and have blurry vision in low light. I am dependent on eye drops to feel even close to normal. My eyes feel tired most of the time.

I love to deer hunt and have always been an excellent shot. I am currently unable to bow hunt at all and can gun hunt only with a scope and my accuracy has declined. Wing shooting of any kind is out of the question. I feel guilty even mentioning these relatively trivial issues, after seeing the truly devastating problems many people have experienced post refractive surgery. I have cried reading some of the stories posted here.

I am a medical professional. I am responsible for teaching patients on a daily basis and I take my job very seriously. I only wish that someone, somewhere along the line in my journey had taken the time to be straight with me.

I will discourage anyone who cares to listen from having this surgery. mun@mediaone.net
web page: http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Rapids/8095/