how do you see?

[fuhr]

I've been blind since first grade and in need of something to help see since then.  Older I get the less hours I can wear contacts at a time and find my fat head smashing glasses onto my face more and more. 

[brycemus]

I wear my glasses almost all the time now.  I have dreams of getting lasik or lasek or however the hell it's spelled. I wear contacts when I know I'm going to be outside and will need my Oakley's.  My eyes just get too dry and tired wearing contacts, doesn't matter what type I wear.

[DiMaria]

I gotten to the point were now I need glasses  my 20\20 sight is gone!

[mspart]

I need only uses glasses to drive and watch a movie or play or something. 

Vision is a little fuzzy for most things but clear enough not to need glasses.  Is a little embarrassing when I can't recognize anyone by face from 50ft.

mspart

[ViseGrip]

I take my glasses off to read.

[a guest]

classes since I was a little kid.  Contacts when I play sports or when I really need to see clearly. But I wear glasses 99.9% of the time.

20/400

[fuhr]

20/400

Wow.  I don't run into many who are worse than me (of course I don't ask a lot of people either).  I'm 20/200 with astigmatisms' in both eyes.  can't imagine 20/400.   

[AKIN]

I'm perfect.

[Cougar1]

Who had laser surgery and what was your experience with it?

[Ray Brinzer]

Who had laser surgery and what was your experience with it?

I did.  It was great.

I laid down, they put some anesthetic drops in my eyes, and then moved the machinery over my head.  They covered one eye, and told me to stare at the red light with the other.  They lowered a microkeratome, which is sort of like a guillotine for eyes, and cut a flap in my cornea.  The drops worked fine, and there was no real discomfort there.  Then, the cool part:  they lifted the flap.  It was as if you suddenly realized that you were watching the world on a movie screen, because a giant had come up behind the screen, grabbed a corner of it, and yanked it away.  Behind it was a hazy dark-grey hole, with the neat red light in the middle now shining as if through a cloud.

Then, the laser began working, with a pop-pop-pop-pop-pop sound.  One of the neat things they don't tell you beforehand:  I noticed a burning smell from, presumably, my eyeball.  When I mentioned it afterwards, they admitted that every once in awhile a patient would bring that up.  (I'd declined the Valium; I think they give people that so they don't notice or flip out over such things.)  Pretty soon the laser stopped, the world was flipped back into place, and I had a moment of seeing with perfect clarity, as if I had my glasses on.  Then they covered the eye, and did the other one.

After the anesthetic wore off, I spent about a day and a half with my eyes mostly closed, with the feeling that I'd been chopping far too many onions.  And then it was over, and I had 20/20 vision.

[Cougar1]

I take it you had both done at once? What was your previous eye condition? Near, far, etc.?

[Ray Brinzer]

Both at once, and very near-sighted.

[Cougar1]

Thanks for the input. Been thinking about it.

[Rain]

And then it was over, and I had 20/20 vision.

So now you don't need corrective lenses for distance, but what about close up? Do you now need "cheaters" to read your phone or a magazine?

[Ray Brinzer]

And then it was over, and I had 20/20 vision.

So now you don't need corrective lenses for distance, but what about close up? Do you now need "cheaters" to read your phone or a magazine?

I do not. I was told I would need them around the time I turned 40, but I'm two years past, and still reading easily. It's probably inevitable, but there's no sign of it happening soon.

You can, by the way, choose how to have your eyes focused when you have the surgery. As you get older, and lose some of the muscular control over the eye, you can choose to have the focus adjusted with another round of surgery, and get good reading vision at the expense of some clarity at distance.

Some people split the difference, and have one eye tuned better for reading, and the other for distance. This sounds like it would be awful, but it isn't; most people don't see the same with each eye anyway, and your brain works to turn what it gets from the eyes into a single coherent picture.