The End of Myopia
January 14th, 2007 | Published in general | 26 Comments
Fifteen minutes and three thousand dollars.
So that was all which was standing between me and the reclamation of a life without glasses and without contact lenses â a life I thought I’d bid farewell to, twelve years ago, when I couldn’t read past the first row of letters in a reading test as a nine year old. Like many of my classmates of that time, and in time to come, I had succumbed to the affliction affecting so many of my country’s children. Its name was ‘myopia’, but I knew it as “ugly spectacles”. (Note: I don’t have a problem with spectacles, in fact I like people wearing spectacles, I just don’t like them on myself..)
I lay flat in the operating theatre, too afraid to move. The surgeon held my upper and lower eyelids down with masking tape, then stuck an eye clamp firmly in place; I was instructed to stare at the ‘green light’ (whose position, they helpfully mentioned, might… um, disappear, when I lose vision later for half a minute, but to please remember where it’s located) all throughout the procedure.
It was slated to be relatively easy, and completely painless. It was. But you can’t expect anyone who was going to have flaps created and unhinged in their corneas, then having a laser vaporize the molecular bonds of cornea tissue beneath, then having that previously created ‘hinge’/flap of cornea put back into place, to remain cool and calm about it, no matter how painless it’s supposed to be.
I bit my lips, and stared into the green light. It was a good thing it was like Grey’s Anatomy minus the cute girls, all the better to concentrate on staring into the green light with. The surgeon called out for various measurements and dimensions of my cornea. I counted at least six different numbers. I had no idea there could be so many different ways of measuring my eyes, but there it was; 11 point somethings and 10 point somethings across. I bit my lips some more and stared harder at the green light.
When you’re lying down flat and looking up, already highly myopic (-0.55 in both eyes, with relatively high astigmatism to boot), everything looks strange and oddly shaped or elongated. First came a roundish looking object. Reading about the procedure a hundred times over on Wikipedia makes you think you’d be prepared for the day a round disc comes along to mark out the circular shape the surgeon will cut around using a blade â it doesn’t. He quickly and neatly incised that flap on my left eye, the moment it came off (or.. unhinged), it was as if someone had turned off the lights in my head. He asked for a suction, and instantly a suction was affixed to my eye while one of the minions counted “suction on, one, two, three… ten”. At this point I could see nothing. It was completely dark in there (in my eyes..). A burning smell came over my eye, and went, while all I saw was the occasional bright, undefined colours passing by and leaving, and the smell left me with the sickening thought: if you could ever smell your eyeballs burning, this was it. The suction came off, but it was still dark; and as he put the flap of my cornea back, scraping it back into place with what looked like a spatula, my vision came back, and I could see. We repeated that for the other eye, and as I sat up after that, after what you might call “three thousand dollars gone in a flash”, I began to see, and it was all good.
While the other patients who’d gone in right before I did came out with red eyes and seemingly unstoppable tearing, I came out with no side effects whatsoever. Except for how, for a month, I’m not allowed to rub my eyes, and each time I look at lights I see haloes around them â sort of like what might happen if you applied “Feather 25 pixels” in Photoshop to an object. In fifteen minutes I got to undo the errors of my youth (my nose perpetually stuck inside a book, in transportation and in toilets).
My mother gave me sight when she gave birth to me; 21 years on, for my coming of age gift, she’s given me the gift of sight once again. Can someone say full circle?
It’s awesome.
January 14th, 2007 at 11:18 pm (#)
Hey, congratulations on the successful procedure! I’m thinking about doing the same thing this spring and your story nudged me closer to actually letting someone cut my cornea…
January 15th, 2007 at 1:44 am (#)
congratulations! :)
January 15th, 2007 at 1:48 am (#)
Hi! I had LASIK done on my eyes (my degree was 350/750) about 4.5 years ago now and I think it’s one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. I’d worn glasses for nearly 13 years, and like you I’d despaired of ever being able to see without optical aids. Thankfully modern science and technology came to the rescue, and though for several months afterward I was still trying to remove my nonexistent glasses before showering and going to bed, I still remember how amazingly liberating it felt to be able to wake up each morning and see my ceiling clearly.
Welcome to the real world :)
January 15th, 2007 at 1:49 am (#)
Wow.. sounds like an wonderful experience. Congratulations!
January 15th, 2007 at 5:49 am (#)
That’s a great price. I think I should have taken a holiday in Singapore and had it done there. Mine cost $5200 AUD ($6,293 SGD). That includes free ajustments (if needed) for life. Still worth every single cent though.
January 15th, 2007 at 9:29 am (#)
Congrats!
January 15th, 2007 at 9:55 am (#)
hey, where did u do your surgery?
January 15th, 2007 at 10:07 am (#)
Ouch, Popsies! I had tears in my eyes the whole time I was reading that post, and quite a bit of teeth clenching and breath holding at Para 5. I can’t even have eyedrops in my eyes without being bound hand and foot and screaming the whole time.
You are an amazingly brave woman, in my books.
January 15th, 2007 at 1:46 pm (#)
congrats on having perfect eyesight once again, the marvels of technology.
January 15th, 2007 at 4:55 pm (#)
the ’round disc’ was to leave markings on your cornea for e flap to be replaced in e exact same postion after the ablation.the suction was applied to your eyeball to have a blade in a rotating motor slice the flap cleanly.suction is then released.
and flap flipped over for laser correction on your cornea bed.
January 15th, 2007 at 6:08 pm (#)
I’ve been thinking about getting surgery done for my eyes as well. Where did you get yours done? :)
January 15th, 2007 at 7:02 pm (#)
At tan tock seng hospital, with dr lee hung ming (who is at NUH some days, but more slots and more technology at tan tock seng) ââ¬â one of the best surgeons. great guy.
January 15th, 2007 at 9:09 pm (#)
damn… must be nice being able to see without glasses or contacts. awesome gift your mum gave you mate!
January 15th, 2007 at 9:35 pm (#)
Congrats! Happy times ahead! :)
January 15th, 2007 at 10:36 pm (#)
congrats! no smoking for 1 week ah…
January 15th, 2007 at 11:30 pm (#)
wow
January 16th, 2007 at 1:05 am (#)
Congratulations! … and she strode into the world of 20/20 vision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_acuity
January 16th, 2007 at 4:22 am (#)
I read about Lee Hung Ming. Was he using IntraLASIK? Congrats girl, now my eyes itchy for Lasik too!
January 16th, 2007 at 9:09 am (#)
Spunky: Nope, I opted not to use intralasik. It costs about an extra $500 per eye. I just went with the regular one ;)
January 16th, 2007 at 12:42 pm (#)
what is the diff bet regular lasik and intralasik?
January 17th, 2007 at 6:54 am (#)
Keratome creates the flap with a surgical instrument while the other method creates the flap with a laser.
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IntraLASIK is a form of refractive eye surgery similar to LASIK that creates a corneal flap with a femtosecond laser microkeratome rather than with a mechanical microkeratome, which uses a steel blade. The only difference between LASIK and IntraLASIK (also called ‘All Laser Lasik’) is the method by which the LASIK flap is created.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntraLASIK
January 17th, 2007 at 10:06 pm (#)
I had no idea you were wearing contacts. :/
I’ve been wanting to go for lasik since forever, but i’m still not able to overcome the fear. But since you like people with specs, I guess I should stick with specs for the time being. :D
January 29th, 2007 at 1:58 pm (#)
I think it’ll be less ‘dangerous’ to do such a procedure than to use contact lenses and having to battle with cleaning solutions from dubious batches and subsequently, sending in your unopened bottles under the recall program and being scared shitless that your eye infection could make you blind…
I traded a possible Lasik procedure, or a driving license for a Macbook Pro. So say we all.
February 3rd, 2007 at 6:49 pm (#)
Good on ya with goin through with it. Ive been thinking about it, but I’m too chicken. The thought of someone cutting something open on my eyeball freaks me out. And I’ve always wondered, don’t you ever need to blink during the procedure?
February 4th, 2007 at 9:36 am (#)
Nope. You can’t blink even if you wanted to - your eyelids are clamped ;) otherwise it’s a painless and fairly straightforward procedure.
April 24th, 2007 at 1:42 pm (#)
Am tryin to contact ttsh for lasik, it seems like the phone just keep ringing non-stop. can u share with me, what is the tel? if it is inconvenient, u can email me.
why did u choose ttsh over jerry tan and Mt E?