Your prescription is very bad! Mine was not that bad. Around the -5 point. I could see my hands four inches in front of my face.

I had “multi-focal” contacts for several years so I could stop wearing reading glasses over my regular contacts. The multi-focal aspect didn’t work for me because my left and right eye had different prescriptions for reading. So I had one multi-focal set up mainly for distance and the other mainly for reading. And I adjusted for that fairly easily, so adjusting to mono vision, aside from my right eye being so dominant that it’s seeing the computer screen sometimes when it wasn’t set up to do so (!), has been a snap. I didn’t go through the two months of adjustment they say is average.

I am happy to report that at the 7 week point, after setting up a humidifier in my office and finding eye drops with different ingredients that seem to moisterize my eyes better, I am FINALLY making an improvement in my distance vision. I hope it continues!

At this point, we have two people remaining in our family who will probably eventually get the surgery and they both have dry eyes to begin with, whereas I didn’t. So I think I’d recommend them to get PRK.

Good luck with your evaluation! And, remember, someone has to be in the small percentiles of things that go wrong. So if I’m there, more reason for you NOT to be.

I’d never consider monovision. I cringe at the very idea of it, and don’t think I could ever adapt. I haven’t had my eval yet, so I don’t even know if I’m a candidate. Because of my age and the extremeness of my prescription (-6.25 and -7.5, I think), I might not be able to expect full correction. But given that I’ve worn glasses since I was 6 and can’t see my hand in front of my face (literally, in full daylight), I’d be happy with whatever.

I’d never heard of SBK, so I looked it up. As far as I can tell, it’s essentially all-laser LASIK with a thinner flap. Ironically, meant to reduce the likelihood of dry eyes! You just HAD to defy the odds, didn’t you, Cindy?!

I hope things continue to get better for you. It sounds like it really sucks!

Some people, it takes a couple of months to adjust to mono vision, because the brain can feel “split” between two eyes. Because I was wearing contacts that kind of simulated mono vision, I’d already gone through that adjustment.

Now, my dh has very dry eyes and only needs to wear glasses for driving or one contact lens when he’s playing sports. He was considering getting only the one eye done. But with the issues I’ve experienced with dryness following the surgery, he’s reconsidering. However, his Rx is peanuts, so maybe the laser wouldn’t be on his eye as long. I don’t know.

This fall, I had had it with my vision issues, and I have been talking with my optometrist for a couple of years to see when I was “ready.” (FWIW, his isn’t the office that does the surgery). So when our extended medical benefits plan was “full up” for my vision element (meaning I had all the money they would ever give me for a two year period to apply to the surgery) I decided to go for it. Otherwise, I needed a new glasses lense for my left eye because its reading had decreased and my vision was bad enough that one lense would cost $200. I figured I might as well put the whole $600 available to me toward the surgery.

I can’t say that I REGRET having the surgery. I am just quite frustrated at this point with the dryness and totally did not expect that if I could read street signs a day after the surgery that it would be a fight one month later. And some days are worse than others. This is why they say to give it six months.

The astigmatism might be the bear holding me back. SBK is supposed to get rid of astigmatism, so maybe I just need an “enhancement.” I just don’t want to go through the discomfort and severe dryness I experienced for the first 5 weeks again, though. I wonder if an enhancement would have the same effect? I have a few months to wait to see where I really am with this thing.

Yesterday, I spent the day away from the house as we were helping move our son into a new apartment in another town. The dryness was not anywhere near as much an issue and the road signs were even better, though not perfect. It’s the street signs I have an issue with. So I’m crossing my fingers that as the dryness gets better, so will the astigmatism. At one week, I was told the astigmatism would likely improve. At one month, I was warned it might not.

It’s too early for me to answer that question. I was really starting to have a rough time with my contacts, which were multi-vision but set up mainly for the left to read and the right to see distance. I was taking them out by 7 p.m., but I have worn contacts since 16 (glasses since 10) and I loved my funky purple glasses but they were bi-focals and also driving me nuts. I like to read lying down, and I was always sticking my nose in the air to see through the right part of the lenses. Plus, I missed peripheral vision in contacts.

My next follow-up isn’t for 2 months, so I’m going to do a lot of experimenting. Like, my left eye (other than the dryness, which is a lot better when I’m not at computer), is perfect for reading!! I didn’t have LASIK, but SBK. A friend had LASIK and says he can read for short periods of time but if he’s reading for a couple of hours he still puts on reading glasses to prevent eye strain. I haven’t felt that need.

At the grocery store, I have great mid-range sight for seeing what’s on the shelves, etc. I can see landscape in the distance very well. It’s the damn driving distance and reading road signs. But laser surgery doesn’t do “multi-focal” so I might have to accept that the range I have with my right eye is the range I have. Example, if they correct for driving, then I might not be able to see the cans on shelves on grocery stores. That was my mother’s experience. She wound up having her left eye (near eye) redone because she said she’d rather wear reading glasses around the house than have to get an RX pair just to go grocery shopping.

I would take the consultation. They are usually free. But they give you a boatload of side effects that you MIGHT wind up, and here I am one of the (un)lucky ones so far.

Good luck!