Horseofadifferentcolor said:
H.E. , I can understand being afraid of not being able to see in a situation where there is not an eye doctor in every strip mall on every other block. I gave this alot of thought last year and almost had the surgery myself. Waking up in the morning and not being able to see is an awful feeling. I think people with good vision have no idea how good they have things. Its to bad all that good vision is wasted on most folks
I freaked out on the thought of not having sight so I went and bought 2 pairs of glasses and about $500 dollars worth of contacts. Even stocked up on eye solution. The doc found it pretty funny because I told her the truth about me wanting all those extras in case the end of the world as we know it!
Horse.. have you checked if those lenses have expiry date...
Horseofadifferentcolor said:
I wanted to share a contact brand that changed my life. It is called Night and Day by Air Optix. These are lens that you can wear up to thirty days without taking them out. I still do take mine out every few days though. With these, my eyes feel great from morning to night without having to always put drops in. I just can't say enough good things about this brand. They are what stopped me from getting sugery. Most days I dont even think about my vision!
I am using Air Optix monthly ones which are bearable, but yes like you most of the days I dont even think of vision. And most of the days I slap the lenses on my eyes at 6AM and wear them until 8PM without any discomfort. On some days there is some slight burning and more blinking but thats all. My eyes are sometimes red but most of the times they look ok.
Today, inquired about daily contacts with torric correction ( I have astigmatism ) and they told me they do exist but they might not be as sharp as my monthly ones. I ordered some samples and will try them and see how good they are.
Not sure about sleeping with lenses, I think its never good idea no matter how they market them. I would be careful if I were you. Its not just the matter of gas permeability but also protein deposit and potential for infection.
I recently ended up with blown up eyelid for a week and only because I forgot to change my monthly lenses ( i wore them 4 instead of usual 3 weeks). In fact it is this episode of conjunctivitis that rekindled my desire to do LASIK.
But I finally decided NOT to do it after all. There are numerous reasons for this...
Firstly, as I said my life is not so bad with lenses and glasses. I will look into daily lenses which will minimize potential for infections and I will also get new glasses possibly with thinner lenses as the ones I have were made 6 or 7 years ago and I am sure nowadays they make much thinner and lighter lenses.
Even if the chance for complications is minimal , there is a chance and I dont want to risk it.
One of LASIK induced chronic dry eye sufferers describes setting the alarm clock every night for 2 h intervals so that he can put in artificial tears. Otherwise he wakes up to excruciating pain because his eyelids get stuck to epithelium and they tear it.
I know perfectly well what kind of pain this is, its the worst pain I ever experienced in my life. It happened two times back in teenage days when I used to wear hard contact lenses and would wear them too much causing corneal erosion. It is definitely the pain that can drive you mad and both times I ended up in emergency room begging for Novocain drops in my eyes.
So no matter how slim the prospects for this to happen again are, I am not risking it.
Secondly after all the research it seems that nobody really knows what the long term effects might be and that is not good enough for me.
The scary thing is also that if you ever develop disturbances in ocular pressure (glaucoma is increase in ocular pressure) later in life they can never measure this correctly after you have reshaped the cornea.
And finally - the cornea is such delicate system with micro-circulation and innervation, once you cut through it it will never be the same. They said that cornea after lasik surgery has only 20 % strength of what it use to be, which means that any blow to the eye can be devastating. This fact is really scary.
There was also some postmortem study on 20 LASIK patients and in every case there were severe pathological changes on all layers of epithelium. In addition there is some evidence LASIK can bring on Cataract and irreversible changes in the eye lens.
I have always wondered- why most of the opticians and optometrists I met still wear glasses or lenses, now I know why.
Anyhow I think this is where my flirting with this idea of doing LASIK has died on the spot.