So what was LASIK like?
I am not sure what my 20/20 ratio was but my contact prescription was -2.5 and -2.75. (I was nearsighted. I could see things near but not far away.)
So far it has been nice to wake up and not have to worry about glasses but it is a little irritating still. The laser procedure lasts about 15 seconds for each eye. You sit down on the chair blind, they put a suction cup on your eye that keeps it from moving and about a minute later you sit up with 20/20 vision.
Then an hour later the Valium wears off and it feels like you have sand in your eyes you can not wash out. They tell you to keep your eyes closed for two hours after the surgery. My eyes were so irritated afterwards that I kept blinking them trying got get them teared up to relieve the pain. Finally after a two hour ride home I could finally lay down and sleep. When I woke up two hours later my eyes didn't hurt anymore.
Right now I have 20/20 vision and can drive fine but it is now four days later and everything is still slightly blurry. I am told this will clear up in the next week or so. The fuzziness isn't bad and is equally fuzzy no matter at what distance I am looking at something. Where it is annoying is looking at the small print on my computer screen. Working on PCs all the time at work is giving me a headache every day. But I just get up every 30 minutes or so and rest my eyes and it is not to bad.
And yeah I have a number of friends who have had it done. My boss, 10 years ago. My receptionist, 10 years ago. A best friend, 7 years ago. Another friend 3 years ago. And everyone I have talked to says that it is great.
As for the risks that I remember I think it was a 1 in 5,000 chance of halos at night, 1 in 10,000 of infection, 1 in 5,000 chance that they really mess up your eye where you need a cornea transplant. As the doctor told me, even if something in those rare cases did go wrong, the chance that it would be something we couldn't fix it is very, very slim.
As for price, I had mine done by the LASIK institute in Denver. They are a chain all over the place. I got a 5% discount from my health insurance and had a $100 off coupon they sent me with the original documentation. My total bill was $2938 for the procedure and a $75 dollar eye drop drug that was dropped to $55 due to my health insurance.
I also got every bell and whistle I could to. In that price is a $400 per eye for a life-time guarantee that I will have 20/20 vision or they will re-cut them for free (this does not cover farsightedness or reading glasses which they can not fix), and I got a custom procedure which means that it reduces the chance of seeing halos at night.
If I would have done it all as cheap as I could it would have been about $1500 to $2000 I think. The worse your eyesight the more expensive it is.
I had LASIK the other three guys in the sitting room with me had LASEK. The difference: In my procedure they cut the cornea and flip it back to reshape the lens. Then they flip the cornea back and it takes a month to heal. LASEK or EK for short, this is how they referred to it, cuts the cornea out. Then you get a hard contact lens to replace your cornea while it grows back. This takes about a week.
And yeah, one of the guys getting EK was doing it so he could apply to be a Navy pilot and the military will fund EK but not LASIK. I guess they are worried that the cut cornea could be split at high g's due to its weakened state on a re-heal or something.
EK is a fast heal time but is a lot more painful. It was all four of us sitting down listening to the doctor explain the surgery and differences. We all got a Valium from the surgery but the EK patients got a third pain killer eye drop and a prescription for Vicadin after they were done that I didn't get.
As for funding, I have an HSA. Health Savings Account. It is only available to those with a High Deductible Health Insurance. HDHI. And HDHI is defined by a plan that has a greater then $1,000 deductible. The HSA is just like a flex spending account except that it carries over year to year and can be used to cover any deductible costs I need to pay along with anything that a normal FSA would cover. And as long as I started the HSA before my LASIK (which I did) I can pay myself for it at any time. Since I can only take out money that I put in I have to wait 2 years for that plan to reach the $3000. Then when it does I just pull it out and put it in my bank account to be spent however I want all pre-taxed. Also my company promotes an HSA by putting in $28 dollars a month into it so my company is helping to pay for my LASIK procedure so I am not even paying the full $3,000. All-in-all, I got a pretty good deal on it.