In 1989 I explored the idea of RK surgery. I was -5.75 and -6.50. I saw very well with contact lenses and glasses. After talking with two different ophthalmologists who tried to dissuade me from RK, I finally found a refractive surgeon who would recommend it. He performed so many successful operations that I felt confident this was the way to go. I also made sure to do my own research...I talked with some of his ex-patients and others who had surgery by someone else. Never, did I encounter anyone who had a bad experience. In retrospect, I realize that the reason was that the procedure was still too new and if you did have a bad result, it would not likely be acknowledged in the medical community; nor did people have a language or terminology to express it.

After my surgery, I noticed that everything I saw was quite small (like looking in the opposite end of a telescope). It took me about a year to convince the doctor who did the surgery that something wasn't right. After that, I was subjected to various types of hard contact lenses to try and reshape the cornea. Then he decided to try "corneal compression suturing" where the scar tissue is scraped away from the incision sites and sutured back together. I was told that I should leave the sutures in as long as I could stand them and perhaps indefinitely. My eyes were so tightly sutured that they became sunken in my head and the suture material caused me to be extremely sensitive to light. In essence, I was in constant pain--after 6 months of torture, I asked to have the sutures removed. Once removed, the pain was gone, but my corneas reverted back to where they were (I could see better when they were sutured).

I attempted to sue, but couldn't find any doctors to say the surgeon did anything wrong. Technically, he did nothing wrong. He performed the surgery correctly. He seemed utterly amazed and as disappointed as me at the result. He acted as though he had never had a bad result before.

Now, 10 years later I have learned a lot. I didn't spend a lot of money trying to "fix" the problem--my research lead me to believe that the technology did not yet exist. I did get specialized gas perms and glasses from the doc who did the surgery and basically resigned myself to living in a world of muted shapes. I tried natural vision training, bilberry and vitamin A supplements and basically just tried to learn to accept and live with my visual limitations (I don't know what my current prescription is exactly because I have avoided all eye docs for years--I can tell you that I'm almost as far sighted as I was nearsighted with a great deal of astigmatism). To add to the problem, in 1994 I had a corneal ulcer in one eye caused by a mild

surface scratch from a piece of fuzz. It was not treated properly by the physician and I ended up in the hospital for week. I was awakened every half hour for 3 days to instill drops in my eye. I almost lost it. The result is more distortion in that eye (which was my good eye), but a full recovery.

I have a blind friend who refers to me as "a partial" - the blind community's term for someone with partial sight. In my job as a vocational rehabilitation counselor I've been trained to look for ways to "accommodate" disabilities. I have accommodated my vision loss for 10 years now and it wasn't until I stumbled onto AmericanEye's BB that I started thinking again about the possibility of improving my vision. Reading posts by Ron and other refractive surgery mishaps helped me find a way to express own visual problems in a way that made sense. Before, I couldn't explain it well enough to get anyone to take me seriously.

At this stage, I'm not looking for a surgical solution but rather a safe and comfortable way of improving my vision through glasses or contacts. I have never been able to see out of glasses since the surgery and have a fear of contacts since the ulcer. I'm not sure if there is a solution for me or others like me, but I feel more confident knowing that there are others like me who can share their experiences and successes--maybe someone else's success could be mine as well.

I wish us all the best of luck and am especially thankful to Ron for his inner vision and helping me "open my eyes" to new possibilities.

Victoria Bryce
Portland, OR