Thanks for starting to read my story. I hope you make it to the end before nodding off - you see, it's a bit different than most of the others out there. In some ways, I got off lucky with my LASIK results, much luckier than many of the other folks on this site, and I really empathize with them. But mine is a story that has its own form of tragedy and maybe, if I explain it just right, it can spare you from a similar fate.
But let's start at the beginning...
It all started long ago in a suburb far, far away... unless you lived in Frederick, MD, then you were right next door. I grew up in a neighborhood that was a stone's throw from a U.S. Army medical research center (I won't name names but it's featured in the movie "Outbreak"). But both my mother and father wore glasses long before they moved there so I don't know who to blame for my lousy vision, genetics or genetic researchers. In any case, I've been "functionally blind" since about the first grade. I don't know if functionally blind is a real medical term, but to me it means that if I didn't have my glasses, and really thick ones at that, I wasn't going anywhere. I mean, not out of bed, not to the end of the hallway, nowhere.

All through elementary school I wore my specs, and around the time I entered high school I started wearing soft contact lenses most of the time instead of glasses. That worked well for many years. At age 18, I entered the "Information Technology" industry. That is to say, I sat staring (sometimes blankly) at a computer screen 8 to 12 hours a day, 5 to 7 days a week, for 12 years in a row. Of course, that's not a recipe for optimum optical health but hey, it's a living.

In my late twenties, my eyes seemed to take a turn for the worse. They had always been kind of dry (I guess I just didn't have enough stuff to cry about). But then I developed floaters (paramecium-looking things that ruin your vision the way those squiggly lines used to ruin the picture at the movie theater). And my eyes began to "reject" my contact lenses, so I switched back to glasses. But my glasses were so thick that if they weren't sitting juuuuuust right on my nose, they weren't much good at all. So, I was just really very bummed out about my quality of vision. So bummed that I would let them cut into my eyeballs and zap them with lasers if that would help...

...Enter LASIK. Through a series of referrals and unrelated opthalmic incidents, I came to be under the care of a very respectable corneal surgeon. This guy is one of the the nicest professional people I have ever met (heck, he's one of the nicest people I've ever met, period). He had all the credentials, all the right answers to my questions, did all the right tests, showed me all the right videos, had access to all the latest equipment, etc. - or so I thought.

I asked a lot of questions:

What happens if my eye moves during the surgery?

If you re-sculpt my cornea to remove all that tissue, won't there be "too much" flap left over to fit down smoothly again?

and so on...

He gave me the most reasonable answers he could, but the basic message was "It just works..."

I actually expected his tests to show that my eyes weren't made of stern-enough stuff to handle LASIK, but he said I was an excellent candidate.

So, I went under the microkeratomic knife...
February 24, 1999. That was the date I had my left eye operated on. It went great. No pain, no problem, 20/30 by the next day. I bought the eye patch, expecting to cover my LASIK eye and use my old eye and glasses for the 2-3 weeks between surgeries. My results were so good that instead I put the patch over my old eye and used my new LASIK eye right away. I was so excited that I requested the second surgery be done the very next week, on March 3, 1999. The right eye didn't go quite as well. First off, the "eye vacuum" that holds your eye in place for the flap incision really hurt, but my right eye always was a little more irritated in general, so I didn't think much of it. Then the doctor had a little more trouble repositioning the flap, but he eventually got it down, so I didn't think much of it.

Until the next day when things just didn't quite look right. And the next day, and the next day. And the 720th day after that. You see, I had double vision. Ghosts. Like the ghosts that sometimes accompany people walking across the screen on an old black-and-white TV. Sometimes, you can also see this on a news channel that is broadcasting a live feed via satellite. But when it's a TV signal you can turn off the set and look at the real world instead. I don't have that option. This is how I see EVERYTHING that reflects light or is a source of light! To be fair, about 80% of my eye sees a nice sharp image, but the other 20% ruins it by superimposing a ghost that is slightly offset from the good image. If it's shiny, I see two of it!! Mind you, it's not so bad that I can't function, just bad enough to take all the fun out of seeing, and that's pretty bad.

When they tell you about the LASIK risks, they tell you about glare, because glare isn't scary. Everybody who's ever worn glasses puts up with glare all the time. They also tell you about halos, because halos aren't scary. Angels have halos, right? Who wouldn't want to see some extra halos? But they say almost NOTHING about double vision or ghosting. I had to go back and read the fine print in all the pre-op scary stuff I signed. Yes, it was in there, preceded by the word "rare" or something dismissive like that. I know it wasn't mentioned in the video I watched or the seminar I sat through. They're too smart to draw attention to the possibility of ghosting because the thought of seeing two images, one slightly offset, OUT OF A SINGLE EYEBALL, would scare the bejeebers out of anybody.

To make things worse, my perfect left eye developed the dreaded "side effects" about 3 weeks after the surgery, so now it too was complicating my vision. The fact that I had 3 weeks of practically perfect 20/20 vision with my left eye makes it somewhat easier to "psychologically" accept the side effects - in other words, I can only assume the operation wasn't botched since my vision was great for 3 weeks - the side effects must just be my eye's particular way of healing. And, I was still 20/20 in that eye, even though I had glare and some minor ghosting.

But my right eye was never quite "right", and I could tell this the day after my operation. I waited 6 weeks for things to get better and when they didn't the doctor tried repositioning the flap. I don't think I'll ever know for sure whether that made things worse - it didn't make them too much worse, I suppose, but it certainly didn't help.

Then I sought out "the experts". I went to the New York experts. They wanted me to be a guinea pig for their corneal stitches, which would have the wonderful benefit of causing astigmatism which would then require even more operations to correct the astigmatism. I said "Forget it". The Boston experts were nice, but they suggested I just live with it to see whether it would get better.
Ditto the Canadian expert - he gave me about 50/50 odds of making it better or worse, and I didn't like those odds. At least I had a nice visit to Toronto for a few days.

My own surgeon had all sorts of explanations. First it was just leftover astigmatism. You see, he had fixed 99% of my visual problems and now I was seeing for the first time the 1% of my problem which was my own natural astigmatism. The main problem with that explanation is that during the pre-op examination he said that my astigmatism was so slight it was inoperable, i.e. not to be factored into the LASIK.
I guarantee you if he had any idea I would be seeing double, he would have factored it in.

Then he thought it might be the flap. As mentioned, I went through a painful flap repositioning which didn't help in the least but, hey, at least he's trying.

Then he thought it was this mysterious island that was showing up in the upper quadrant of my topographical cornea map. This explanation made (and makes) perfect sense. What doesn't make sense is the fact that, as the weeks turned into months and the island didn't really shrink much and my eye didn't really get any better, the island seemed to become more and more "normal" to my doctor. It's like going to a mechanic with a flat tire, and he says, "Well, I can't figure out what your problem is, but it's definitely not this nail, because I've seen tons of tires with nails in them..."

In any case, like I said, my surgeon's a nice man and I know he didn't mean for this to happen. I don't know enough about corneal surgery to know whether he did anything wrong or could have done anything better, but I know this: If I had it to do over again, I would NEVER be double carded. Double carding means that he had to run two programs on the laser, which resulted in a several second "pit stop" during my surgery. I will always wonder whether either the doctor or I, or both of us, "aimed" just a little differently for the second go-round and that's why I have the double vision.

And that's the one thing that truly bothers me. My surgeon absolutely convinced me that double carding was my only option. It went something like this:

1) The FDA has only approved the laser for use with PRK, not LASIK

2) Your prescription is too high for PRK, so you must have LASIK

3) The laser can only be used with FDA-approved parameters (i.e. in doses that could be used with PRK), therefore you must get double carded.

After being sold on double carding, I later found some web postings indicating that, at the time of my surgery, a VISX laser was FDA-approved for fixing prescriptions of my strength in a single shot (my surgeon used a Summit laser). I know for a fact that if I had been given a choice of a laser programmed for my exact prescription vs. a double carding, I would have taken the all-at-once method without hesitation.

Sure, I thought about suing. I thought about it a lot. But I also thought about all those waivers I signed regarding "elective surgery". I also played the following courtroom scene over and over in my head:

Defending Attorney: Mr. S., isn't it true that you drove your car to the courthouse this morning without the aid of corrective lenses?

Me: Yes it is.

Judge: Case dismissed!

The fact of the matter is, I'm really not sure whether my surgeon did anything wrong, other than perhaps not give me all the information that, in retrospect, I would like to have had. To me, that could have made all the difference, but it is certainly not lawsuit material - I'm sure he honestly thought I had as good a chance of getting a great result with him as with anybody else. In fact, after my first eye was done, I volunteered to be put on his patient testimonial/referral list. Within two or three weeks I had to tell him to take me off the list or he would be getting a lot more cancellations.

But all of that is water under the bridge. If you've read this far, I salute you - and as I near the end of my story I'll wax philosophical...

What makes my story so tragic is the crushed hopes that it represents. You see, all my life, I was limited by my vision. I would have loved to be a helicopter pilot, but I just knew my eyes weren't good enough, even with my specs or contacts. So, it was my hope and dream that LASIK would give me good enough vision that I could consider taking flying lessons. Actually, I had much more meager dreams too, which were every bit as important. I hoped of being able to read more easily. Pre-operatively, I was so nearsighted that I could not read without my glasses, because I had to put the page so close to my face that I couldn't see enough of the page for reading to be practical. And my glasses just never really gave me good vision. I think that people with really high prescriptions will understand what I'm talking about. By the way, I never knew exactly what my prescription was (and now it doesn't matter anymore), I only knew what I used for contacts and that I saw OK but not great (-8.0 left eye, -7.5 right).
So, I had hoped that LASIK might make it easier for me to read. I can read now without glasses, but I still have to ignore the ghost shadows of each letter, so I can't say it's any more pleasant than the old way. And I sure won't be taking flying lessons anytime in the future. There are already too many gauges to look at without having to deal with copies of each one of them.

Now that I have had LASIK, I must admit, I am "objectively" 20/20 in my left eye and 20/30 in my right. Sounds great, doesn't it? I haven't worn glasses or contacts in 2 years, I am functional, I see great in bright light such as for outdoors and daytime driving, etc. But, even under ideal lighting conditions, everything I look at is tainted by a ghost copy. I end up squinting and switching from one eye to another, constantly hoping that the world will look better through one eye than the other. It never does.

Effectively, I have traded my God-given lousy vision, which I had for 30 years, for man-made lousy vision that I will probably have for the rest of my life (sure the doctor says a gas permeable lens would fix me right up but he seems to forget that I got the surgery in the first place because my eye was getting irritated by soft lenses, much less gas permeables...)

LASIK hasn't improved my life in the least. Having a bad LASIK result is like paying $5000 for a ticket in a lottery where 90% of the people win one of the best prizes imaginable (excellent vision) and the losers are stuck with crummy vision for the rest of their lives. That is psychologically very devastating. Even though I don't let the LASIK results get me depressed any more, the ghosts are always there as a mental and emotional drain. After two years, I have reached the point where I can sometimes go as much as five minutes without being distracted by my LASIK vision.

On the other hand, I got a much better result than many other people on this forum, and I do not intend to minimize their very real pain and suffering in the least. I absolutely understand what they are going through. People who have not had LASIK, even (especially?) those who have very bad prescriptions, find it difficult to understand how a result can be bad if you don't have to wear glasses anymore. I always draw them a big "E", then another "E" superimposed upon it but a little offset. When they read it, I say "There, you're 20/20, how would you like to see everything like that for the rest of your life?" So, I can absolutely understand any and every LASIK side effect I have ever heard about.

In fact, the reason I'm writing this is to try to explain what I think may be a less publicized type of LASIK result: A result bad enough that it ruins your life, and yet good enough that you can (and have to) function and get on with your life. A result bad enough that you waste much of your day thinking about trying to fix it and yet good enough that you are scared to death at the thought of risking it in the hopes of making it better.

The funny part is, I'd probably do it again. My results are such that I know LASIK could work - if only. If only I'd waited for the laser that tracks eye movement or until they had perfected pinpoint mapping of the corneal surface. If only I'd insisted that my surgeon not make me his last patient of the day (both times). If only I'd researched it on the internet instead of trusting my surgeon implicitly - ah, but there's the rub - I specifically avoided the internet before my surgery because I knew I could find ten thousand opinions, many of them sure to recommend against it and I didn't want to see those, and I wasn't about to trust them over a man whose credentials I could see, a man with whom I could actually sit down and talk.

And I know that if I had found this site and read some of these horror stories I might never have had LASIK in the first place. Most of the people on this site know for a fact that they would not get LASIK again if they had the chance to undo it. I don't think I'll ever know for sure whether I'd do it again. I used to think about that a lot. I hardly ever do now, because I feel I have entered the second phase of my "visual" life and the way I used to see is utterly irrelevant now. I know that I hate my ghosts enough that I would probably go back to my "glasses vision" given the chance. On the other hand, I also know from the "good" part of my vision that LASIK can work and I have heard more than a few total success stories from others at work, for whom I am genuinely happy (I must admit it surprised me to find that I really wouldn't love any company for my misery, though if I had a worst enemy LASIK double-vision certainly would be appropriate for them). Still, it always makes me just a bit sad when I hear of others who won the LASIK lottery. I think I would rather be back at a time when I hadn't taken the one big step toward my dream of good vision, so that I still had a choice. Now that I have taken the step, and it turned out to be a misstep, I'm not sure if I can ever get back on that road again, and that's the tragic part.

If you started reading this post wondering what my recommendation would be for those considering LASIK, it might not be clear yet. I wouldn't tell anyone NOT to do it,
because I don't want to be responsible for anyone passing up a winning "Vision Lottery" ticket. I know it could change their life for the better, even though it didn't change mine in any appreciable way - I hated my vision before LASIK and I hate it now. But, I would definitely tell them to wait for improved eye mapping and tracking technology and to get the absolute best surgeon they can find even if they have to go across the country or outside the country. I would also tell them to only get LASIK if they have tried glasses and contacts and absolutely can't stand the vision they get from either.

As I always tell those who ask me about LASIK, I feel somewhat like a Titanic survivor asked whether he would recommend a luxury sea cruise. We both know that our situations are rare indeed, that many before and after us will make similar journeys with far less trouble, and that we got off quite lucky compared to others in our same "boat". Yet still, it would be quite unnatural if we didn't base our opinions, at least a little bit if not in whole, on our particular experiences.

Thanks for reading.

Greg S.
Southbury, CT USA