If you’ve talked to me in the last five years I no doubt mentioned that I’ve always meant to bite the bullet and get LASIK. First bespeckled during the fifth grade, I’ve never managed a single day without glasses since. So with that in mind I booked my appointment to go under the laser.
Aside from the obvious drawbacksI wearing prescription glasses is just no fun at all, and anybody who tells you different is lying. The list of annoyances is endless; eternal cleaning on rainy days, instant fogging up every time you move into different temperatures, nose-slide, blind-spots, night-blindness, light flaring; all key features of the package deal that is my myopia.
The LASIK eye exam typically costs $80, but for some reason when you book it online they waive the fee. The first time around I listed my Ballina phone number, and got a call the next day from the Parramatta office. After first mistaking Ballina for a (northern?) suburb in Sydney, she asked, “so would it be possible to drop down to our Parramatta office next month?”. After I mentioned the slim possibility due to the 1800km round-trip journey she assured me she’d pass along my details to Queensland.
A week later I figured she’d decided not to, so again I filled the form in but with my regular phone number, and magically the Gold Coast office called. After giving me a date a month and a half away, she said somebody just cancelled their appointment next week. Quicker than I could say “yes, I’ll take it” she added, “oh, just missed that one, sorry. If another one opens up I’ll just grab it for you.” Not even a minute later another date cleared, so I got locked in for a fortnight’s time.
The Gold Coast office is basically attached to the Gold Coast Hospital, so I expected parking to naturally be a horrific experience. To my surprise, not only was parking a breezeII I was also pleasantly surprised not to be greeted by hundreds of sick, injured and zombified people lining the streets. It was also only a few days since the arrest of the alleged terrorist-assisting doctor Mohamed Haneef, and for some reason it was odd to think I was in such close proximity to where he worked. Considering how the GC and most of Australia has been untouchedIII as far as terrorism is concerned, it was disquieting to be in such proximity.
I arrived at the somewhat small office expecting again to be surrounded by people, but the friendly receptionist and somebody booked ahead of me were the only people in reception. I was taken to the ‘viewing room’, which is no bigger than a toilet. There I was told to watch a twenty minute video featuring the benefits and risks of LASIK. This is probably the first time they tell you the real no-frills story of the surgery, and exactly how the operation occurs.IV After the video is over you’re instructed to (a) turn the DVD player off, and (b) exit the room and sit down again until they want you.
Another door opened and another equally friendly lady ushered me into a room that resembled an optometrist office. Immediately your eye catches the array of five strange eye machines, which you instantly think are the very ones ready to shoot lasers at you if you look at them the wrong way. Turns out they’re all for analysing your eyes, and the eye test basically consists of sticking your head inside each one while they do their thing.
I’m asked the typical questions (prescription medications? epilepsy? necropsy?) before I look into the first machine. From a layman’s point of view they all seem to do the same thing; you have to blink and keep you eye open in a set pattern, while light scans across your eyes from various angles. About half way through the tests the lady stopped, frowned, and said she’d take a minute to calculate something.
After spending a couple minutes with a $2 calculator she told me that my cornea is 459 microns thick, and the bare minimum needed for LASIK to slice into was 500, so I instantly disqualified myself. If they tried to operate they’d likely cut too deep and blind me, so they discourage operations on skinny-eyed folk such as myself. The instant feeling was equal to entering a competition only to find at the final stage that only US citizens are eligible.
Undaunted she said that PRKV might just still be an option (but only if the doctor agreed) and with that we continued the rest of the tests. At the end of the test she ruffled past a bunch of glossy catalogues about LASIK and handed me an old photocopied and stapled leaflet on PRK.
So with a smile and a promise to call me regarding what the doctor thinks about my eyes and PRK, I was sent on my way.
I had a natural reluctance of PRK beforehand, her mentioning the term ‘open wound’ certainly didn’t convince me, and the look on everyone’s face when I explained PRK pretty much sealed the lid on the procedure.
A week later I’ve had a new eye test (the first in six years, incidentally) and I’ve raised my prescription by three steps to just under 5 for each eye. Until another procedure like FLEX comes along I’m stuck with good ole’ spectacles – I’m undecided about contact lenses so far, since I subsequently found out (through the LASIK video no less) that extended use creates blood vessels in your eyes.
And I never did get that call-back from LASIK, either. 
- I’ve been told by at least a few people I’d look better without them, so now I vainly believe it [↩]
- the cheap, credit-card metered parking mind you [↩]
- As much as the powers that be let us know, in any case. [↩]
- with real surgery video, which was far less gruesome than it sounds [↩]
- a shudder ran up my spine when she said this, as I’d read about it previously [↩]
