Eyes, interrupted...

I visited my eye doctor last week, because both of my eyeballs were behaving like spoiled brats who were absolutely refusing the lovely contact lens gifts I was presenting to them. I mean, when your cornea is misshapen (through no fault of its own) and can’t focus images onto its neighbor, Mr. Retina, properly, you would THINK a contact lens would be happily accepted. All I expect is a simple, “why, thank you, Lisa – I was unable to correct this vision on my own, but your gracious inclusion of a contact lens has made my job so much easier.” Is that too much to ask of an eyeball?

Instead, every time I attempted to wear my contacts, it would feel like little bitty eyelashes were trapped under the lenses. So I’d take them out, rinse them off, put them back in – same result. Eventually I gave up and resigned myself to wearing my nerdy librarian glasses – which everyone else seems to really like, but personally, I prefer the contacts. And since I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to actually wear the annoying little things again, I made an appointment with my eye doctor to ask about LASIK surgery.

Rick and my dad have both had LASIK, and they’ve both had really good results. But I tend to be rather cautious when it comes to the idea of allowing lasers near my eyes. Lasers. Like Luke-Skywalker-Star-Wars lasers… Don’t look directly at the sun! But you can look at that laser if you like…

After chatting with the doctor about LASIK, he led me to a room with a TV and asked me to watch a DVD detailing the procedure. Which didn’t seem too strange – until the narrator of the DVD introduced himself as So-and-So who plays Somebody on General Hospital. Wait a second – they couldn’t find a REAL doctor to narrate? They had to take the “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV” route? Is that kind of thing supposed to appeal more to the masses? As if we would lose all interest in the ramblings of an actual doctor… but oh, if that dreamy guy from General Hospital tells me to laser my eyes, I am SO there!

Slightly less disturbing was the description of the actual procedure. The laser cuts away a flap of cornea, which is peeled away like the skin of a grape. The underlying tissue is then burned away until the proper shape has been formed, at which point the grape-skin corneal flap is replaced. It’s smoothed into place like wallpaper, and voila! 20/20 vision. That’s the hope, at least – Dr. General Hospital was legally-bound to explain that there are no guarantees, and side-effects can include double-vision, light halos, and silly little things like blindness.

At my appointment, I found out that my eye irritation had been caused by too much Benadryl – I’d been taking one a day for several weeks, and apparently the antihistamine had dried out my eyes to the point that my contacts felt like tiny little blocks of cement. As soon as I stopped taking the Benadryl, my eyes felt progressively better until my contacts worked just fine again. So with my frustration over my contact lenses abated, I’m back to feeling more wishy-washy about the LASIK surgery.

Maybe I’d be more certain if Derek Jeter had narrated that informational DVD…




I always feel like I have huge eyes in pictures... hmmm... should I get my big, giant eyes lasered?