For some reason, I thought I might come away from this appointment nervous about Monday. Instead, I came away psyched and anxious for the procedure. They spent most of the time discussing the risks of the various procedures but mostly comparing and contrasting PRK and LASIK. Since I’d already done some research and accepted that PRK is better for ME than LASIK, it served to reinforce the conclusion I’d already reached. However, it’s nice to hear it from the guy whose clinic has done 10,000 of these procedures with less than one half of one percent who were not correctable to their optimal vision.

My uncorrected vision is 20/700. My vision is correctable to 20/15, and that will be the goal for the surgery. They may not be able to achieve that; however, they’re supremely confident they can better my vision to 20/40 (what is needed to drive without corrective lenses) and quite confident they can achieve 20/20. He cannot guarantee me the 20/15, but he will strive to achieve it. The only negative, if there is one, is I stand a 1 in 20 chance of needing a “tweaking” to improve the correction. That’s because my eyes are so bad to begin with. However, I stand to benefit supremely from the procedure. I suspect, if the tweak is needed, I will need to return to Portsmouth in about a year and a half to two years to have that procedure performed. I hope that won’t be needed.

PRK has a longer initial recovery period that LASIK (about a week vice a couple hours); however, they do not cut the cornea. Since I’m concerned about long-term health and stability for my eyes, I’m more comfortable with PRK, which reshapes the exterior of the cornea after scraping away the exterior epithelial cells (which take about a week to heal, resulting in greater discomfort). For the discomfort, they place a bandage contact over the eyes and send us home with plenty of pain management drugs (yes, more of the ‘good’ stuff).

After my knee surgery, it didn’t take me long to figure out that my unnaturally good outlook on life was probably related to a combination of the morphine they injected in my knee and the Percocet tablets they sent me home with.