EYE Journey

So I am so excited! For the past six months I have had issues with my eyes. I have a -11.25 prescription. Basically have to hold a book to my nose to see it and everything beyond that point is blurry. I have been this way my whole life. It has just progressively got worse. So I never started at that bad. It just ended with that crummy prescription. So my eyes have been steady at that point for about 5 years. Once your eyes are the same for so many years, you can look at having LASIK. Well over the past 6 months I have had itchy burning eyes. I have allergies so I assumed that's all it was. Well I went to Kaiser and got an opthamologist appointment to see whats going on. It just was not getting better. After four appointments, which lovely Kaiser said would be free and then I got a nice bill later (jerks), I am finally on the road to progress. He gave me three different medications. I was diagnosed with Red Eye and two other things that I cant pronounce. I was also told, to NEVER wear contacts again. My eyes were being destroyed from wearing them so much. This made me cry for days! I have what you would call bottle cap glasses. Long story short, I ended up with the approval for eye surgery. So I was referred to a Kaiser surgeon. But after much research I ended up going to Griffin and Reed in Sacramento. I LOVE Dr. Reed! I feel like I'm talking to my dad when I'm there. He is like "If you were my daughter, I wouldn't do LASIK". He recommended PRK surgery. It did take a month for him to actually approve me for the surgery though. My eyes were still in really bad shape and there was a bump on my cornea from contact wear. But a few days ago I finally got the 'All Clear'!!

So LASIK is where the cut a flap back off the surface of your eye and then use there laser to fix it. PRK is a laser, but they don't peel a flap back. PRK will take longer to heal but is safer for someone with my prescription. There is also a ton of other reasons why I would choose it. I feel way better about this decision. I think people choose LASIK because it heals way faster and is a little cheaper. But for the size of my eye surface and prescription I am going the PRK route. So my surgery is on 02/14/12. I will have about five follow-ups after surgery. It will also be painful for a week afterwards. I will be paying $300-500 for prescriptions that are given for after the surgery. The surgery and everything will come to $3600.

This is the most scary thing I have ever done. People ask me why. They want to know why would I risk it for an elective surgery. Meaning it is my choice. But you can't see life through someone else's eyes. So it is hard to explain unless you could see through my eyes. My biggest fear would be to just get worse after surgery. It is always a possibility. So I will update you on everything. Hopefully I won't go blind and if I do then you probably can guess that I haven't updated for that reason. lol. that is a nervous laughter. ;)