By A Friend of the CleverShark
The Clevershark mentioned a while back that he had a friend who also underwent laser vision correction, but opted for the PRK rather than the Lasik. Well, I am that friend, and in a nutshell I don’t think that I’d recommend PRK to anyone, not anyone I liked anyway.
The main difference with PRK is that they scratch the surface of your cornea away rather than slicing a flap open. The risk of complications such as infections is a little lower, and you don’t run the tiny risk of a dislodged flap the way you do with Lasik. PRK is for the risk adverse. I went to a very reputable clinic in the Ottawa area and the surgery went very well. In fact, my vision is near 20/20 now. So you’re probably wondering why I wouldn’t recommend the procedure.
I’m glad you asked.
First and foremost, there’s the pain. And when I say ‘pain’ I really mean it. The first three days were so bad it was almost more than I could bear. You know that feeling when you accidentally rub hot sauce into your eye? Well imagine that feeling not going away no matter how much you blinked or how many eye drops you used. Imagine your eyes trembling and tearing in reaction to the pain, all to no avail. You can’t sleep. You can’t watch tv. You can’t do anything except focus on the pain. The Clevershark found it difficult to bear for two or three hours. Imagine seventy-frickin-two. By day 4 the searing pain was replaced by an ebbing pain, kind of like the feeling when you’re cutting a bunch of onions at once. That lasted for about two more days.
Secondly, I was extremely sensitive to light. The first few trips back to the clinic were so bad that even with my sunglasses and a baseball cap on I had to shield my head from the sun. Even then I could hardly stand it. Things calmed down after a few days, but it was over a week before I could even think of looking at a monitor or tv, and then only for a few seconds with the brightness down to like ten. It was two weeks before I could do those things normally again.
Third, there’s the endless regimen of drops. There are the antibacterial drops, the steroidal drops (to prevent scarring by slowing down the healing process), the daytime lubricating drops, the nighttime lubricating drops, etc. Some of them are four times a day for two weeks. Some of them are two times a day for four weeks. Some of them you must take concurrently. Some of them you must not. I found it difficult to remember what to take when, particularly while I was in pain, couldn’t see and was trying to get back to my life. But the fear of what would happen if I didn’t administer the drops exactly as I was told was a surprisingly effective motivator.
Finally, there’s the fear. Your cornea takes weeks to heal, which is not surprising as it is scratched away during the procedure. You can only see very blurry images for the first few days, so forget about reading facial expressions or watching tv. But the fear really kicks in after the first few days — the pain and sensitivity to light go away, but you still can’t see well. And it’s not like I saw a slow but steady improvement. By day 6 I could keep my eyes open, but that doesn’t mean I could see very well. In fact, my vision was extremely poor at that time. By day 7 I was well enough to go to work (yes, I had to take an entire week off), but I wasn’t really functional and I had to wear my sunglasses all the time. It wasn’t until day 17 that I felt comfortable working indoors without my sunglasses on. After that there were week-long stretches when my vision didn’t change at all. After 6 weeks I was seriously worried that I’d never be able to see well again. It took almost 2 months for my vision to become anywhere near acceptable, though still not perfect. That’s a long time for anyone with anything resembling a life. Compare that with the Clevershark’s experience – day 2 did he say?
In short, unless you plan on being the one person in 10,000 who dislodges their corneal flap later in life while hiking in the Serengeti, don’t get PRK – go for Lasik.