Hi all,

I had laser eye surgery (one eye only) in March of 2001 and had complications, which led me at that time to seek out the surgicaleyes.com web site, & I've been on the mailing list ever since, which emails I've generally ignored over the last year or so since the bottom line is that my eye turned out OK.

Perhaps I should relate the story briefly for the possible benefit of others who should know that at least sometimes things look darkest before the dawn.

My eyes weren't that bad in the first place, but I succumbed to the hype that the LASIK procedure was routine and could easily correct even low levels of astigmatism. My left eye had 1.75 diopters of astigmatism and 1.25 diopters of myopia. My right eye is pretty much OK without correction. So I opted to have LASIK done on the bad eye only. The doctor I chose was the cut-rate guy advertising heavily in the Columbus, OH area, who had done thousands and thousands of procedures.

It turned out that the LASIK machine was malfunctioning that day and failed to make a proper flap in my case. The doctor (against my written wishes on the consent form, BTW), elected to put the partial flap back and switch to the PRK procedure. Unbelievably, they didn't let on that anything untoward had happened, and sent me home thinking I had had LASIK. All they said was something about a need to put a contact on. So I went home and had a pretty painful day or two, completely against what LASIK had advertised (but consistent with PRK).

And my vision in the treated eye was lousy (20/200+) when I had it checked several days later and the technician informed me that I had had PRK and "it didn't work" but of course they were going to re-operate eventually to make it good, blah, blah. I had no intention of letting this doctor touch my eye again.

This situation (20/200 and a lot of uncorrectible astigmatism) continued for three months. I got a second opinion from a doctor who verified that the surface topography was wrong and I was going to let him operate after the eye had stabilized. He was shocked that the first doctor followed a botched flap with PRK.

But then something weird happened over the space of a few days (at around the three-month mark). The eye cleared up immensely! The vision went to 20/30 (it was 20/50 pre-op). My original doctor (I was still using him for periodic checkups athough planning to sue based on the violated consent form) was greatly relieved. Since then (over a year now) the vision has if anything gotten a little better. Although there is still a little residual astigmatism that I don't even need to correct, it is decidedly better than pre-op.

So I guess the lesson in this case at least is hang in there!

I'm guessing that due to the botched flap and/or my own personal reaction to the PRK, there was inordinate swelling of the cornea which took a long time to resolve. Anyhow, all's well that ends well.