So I've been looking forward to LASIK, and it's a very commonly and successfully performed surgery here AND much less expensive than it is in the US. It cost me P63,600 including the P61,600 surgery fee and two P1000 pre-screening appointments. That's a little less than $1400, or $700 per eye. I decided the last time I bought a 6-month supply of contact lenses that I would get LASIK before buying another supply. So a couple of weeks ago when I pulled out the last two months' supply I decided to head into American Eye Center at Shangri-La Plaza Mall in Ortigas, where so many of my friends have had their surgery done with great results. Last Monday they checked me out, and they had a spot the following Monday, which was the last day before the Easter holiday that they were doing surgeries. When I took out my contacts that day, it was the last time I ever wore them - you have to go for a few days without contacts before LASIK as wearing contacts slightly deforms the cornea, and the cornea must be in its natural curvature during the surgery so that the changes made by the laser end up focusing your vision properly on the retina.
Focus it did, I was -3.00 in my left eye and -1.50 in my right eye before the surgery. The best line I could see on the Snellen Chart with my left eye was the 20/100 "F P" line, and the best my right eye could do was the 20/50 "L P E D" line. Now both eyes can read the little text below the red bar, "L E F ..."!
LASIK is not painful. It is, however, very uncomfortable. Absolutely worth it, but I'm glad that a couple of people warned me about this and I wish I'd been warned more. So if you're reading this, consider yourself warned! About an hour before the procedure they use drops to dilate your pupils. All the way - I got a peek of my eyes in the mirror and my normally blue eyes were totally black wide-open pupils with a less than 1mm rim of color around the edges. Focusing is a challenge with your eyes dilated like that - they make sure that you read and sign the consent form before the dilation. Then after waiting around a bit (and in my case having your retinal exam done, it can also be done in advance, but since your pupils have to be dilated for it they'll do it the same day as it's quite rare that the findings would result in calling off the LASIK) you go into the laser waiting room and eventually into the laser room, which is cooled by two huge air-conditioning units for the optimal functioning of the laser - I was grateful when they put a blanket over my legs, I'd brought a nice warm cozy sweater as recommended but worn shorts. By this time I've had drops put into my eyes at least 4 times already - dilators, moisteners, first round of antibiotics - and more drops now, anaesthetic this time. They act fast, within a few seconds Dr. Arroyo is taping my eyelashes back and, Clockwork Orange-style, pinning my eye open with this reverse tweezer thingy that hooks under the lids. Not painful thanks to those anesthetic drops, but I can feel the unrelenting stretching as my eye is pulled waaaay open, ew. The doctor instructs me to focus on the blinking red light above me - even if I can't see it momentarily, keep focusing (yes sir - I realize that my future vision depends on this, focus focus focus)! Now the suction cup/lens flap cutter - an eyeball-sized suction cup - is put over my eyeball, (blinking red light, says the doctor, red light) it sucks up my eyeball with enough pressure to temporarily blind me and cuts a flap out of my cornea (red light, very good, blinking red light). Thankfully the suction cup thing is removed and, as I've been watching the video monitor as patients before me have been operated on, I know that the doctor is irrigating the eye with drops, pulling back the flap of my cornea and making sure the laser is focused properly (red light, blinking red light). The laser's operation is automated - it is programmed to optically determine what it needs to do to my cornea to allow it to properly focus images on my retina. The laser computer says something like "target acquired" (red light, you're doing very well, blinking red light - I am using all my yogic powers of focusing, the most important thing in the world is focusing on that red light, hanging onto it with all my visual and mental might). Now there is an eerie greenish light and a mild burning flesh/ozone smell as parts of my cornea are obliterated, just a few seconds (red light, blinking red light, red light) and more irrigation as the doctor replaces the cornea flap over the recently-ablated interior surface. The tweezer stretcher is removed, the eyelash tape ripped off (yikes) and a patch placed over the eye. Yay - right eye done! In the moment between eyes I ask Dr. Arroyo how many times a day he says the words "red light". "A lot," he laughs. OK, the laser moves over to the left eye, here we go again.
After both eyes are bandaged you're completely blind, they help you off the table and out to the waiting area. I'm glad I have had the foresight to set the mp3 player on my phone to play at the push of one button - I can listen to music for the 15 minutes of bandaged sitting rather than listening to the same non-information about the Moscow subway bombings being repeated over and over on CNN. My eyes itch. I want to fidget. The Beatles, Morphine, U2, and Liz Phair are doing a great job helping me get through this but it sucks. A nurse takes off the bandages, I can barely open my eyes, they're crazy sensitive to light, and they feel like they have sand in them. I can only see a teeny bit out from under my not-wanting-to-lift eyelids and I can't tell if I can see any better without glasses than I could before. I am led over to an examining machine and a doctor looks at each cornea, pulling the lid up and shining a BRIGHT LIGHT (argh!) for the final check and I'm cleared to go. In the anteroom before the waiting room a nurse gives me my first round of antibiotic eyedrops, steroid anti-inflammatory eyedrops, and rewetting eyedrops - I'm to use the first two every four waking hours for a week, the others every four hours or as needed for a month. The nurse tapes some annoying clear plastic shields over my eyes. I put my sunglasses on over them, and she says I can take the plastic things off for now as long as I sleep in them the first night. Thank goodness. I can open my eyes a sliver every few seconds to get my bearings, I can make it home - thank goodness again that I know this city really well and, preferring being able to open my eyes in the sunlight to having good focus, I've been navigating the city half-blind in my non-prescription sunglasses all week and am used to walking around only kind of being able to see where I'm going.
It would not be a bad idea to have someone take you home after this - certainly driving is not a possibility. I had planned to take a taxi but finding taxis and dealing with the annoying ones who try to not use the meter because I look like a gullible tourist is such a drag and the entrance to the MRT is not just in the mall but on the same floor as American Eye Center, so I decide to take the MRT. The MRT is perfect - I take it so much I think I could even take it 100% blind, and it offers just enough easy stuff to concentrate on that I am sufficiently distracted away from my annoying, itchy, don't-you-dare-touch-them eyes. A friend asked that I text him when the surgery was done, but I can't focus to text so, how very un-Manila, I call to say that my eyes itch and I can't scratch them but I am otherwise OK. I am grateful that I don't have anyone fawning over me to ask me how I'm doing (crappy, thanks for asking) and that I don't have to be keeping an eye out to make sure that my taxi driver isn't taking me to Marikina or somewhere else other than Tomas Morato. Four stops to GMA/Kamuning station and a short walk to a tricycle to home where Kinky is waiting to give me sweet sandpaper kisses and be fed. I get myself a glass of water, a glass of wine, and the delicious bangus dinner a student happened to make for me the day before and an hour after leaving the clinic I'm feeling almost human. My eyes are still quite uncomfortable but the dilation seems to have worn off and I can text again - I text my friend to say that I'm doing much better. But it's not until I wake up in the middle of the night - in my sunglasses, those @$#% eye shields were so annoying - and look out the window that I realize that this has worked. I never really looked out my bedroom window with my glasses on, so I was surprised to see details out there! Satellite dishes on the roofs of far-away buildings! Windows and balconies! Leaves on trees! (Manila has plenty of light pollution, even at 1am you can see a lot outside.)
The next day, my eyes were comfortable enough to do yoga first thing in the morning - pretty much like normal, I was very surprised to find. At the one-day checkup later in the morning my vision tested at 20/15 in both eyes. Actually the 20/15 row was pretty easy to see - I might have been able to see a 20/10 row if they'd had one on their chart. Three days later and I'm doing great. Maybe my eyes tend to be a little dry - but wearing contacts I always struggled with eye dryness, if the dryness improves it will be yet another step up from my pre-LASIK experience. I'm not allowed to go swimming for three weeks after the procedure, and then I'll be good to go.
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