Some of you are probably wondering what getting LASIK might be like. A lot of YouTube videos show the actual procedure, but all focus on the eyeball and never on what happens before or after surgery, so I'm going to describe my experiences to show you what to expect and what you get for your money at Kremer Eye Center. There are three pricing packages, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, and the way they've designed their pricing scheme, you're forced to pay for the highest price package because it makes the most sense. The lowest cost Silver package is $1,990 for both eyes. You get traditional LASIK using the excimer laser and your corneal flaps are cut using a microkeratome, which is just a fancy word for an X-Acto blade. Sounds barbaric, doesn't it? It is. You also get 3 months of follow-up visits, which amounts to three visits (1 to 3 days after surgery, 1 week after surgery, and 3 months after surgery). This is the cheapest way to get LASIK done.

The Gold package for $3,990 replaces the traditional LASIK using the excimer laser with the new WAVEfront custom LASIK machine. Your flaps are still cut using a microkeratome and the follow-up visits are for 1 year instead of 3 months. I believe this amounts to just two more visits (6 months and 1 year after surgery). You also get the Standard Enhancement Policy, which entitles you to free surgeries for one year if redos are needed. Well, close to free. You have to pay for a $100 post-op visit. There is also an add-on upgrade to get a Lifetime Commitment Policy for $200 per eye. The Lifetime Commitment Policy is cool because if you ever need to redo LASIK surgery ever in your lifetime, it's free. Well, close to free. You have to pay for a $100 post-op visit.

The Platinum package for $5,300 replaces the microkeratome with the IntraLase Bladeless technology. Instead of using a knife, a laser creates the flap in a process that involves creating bubbles underneath the top layers of the cornea. The flap is customized to any odd contours of your eye. It's like getting a custom-made shirt that fits your body exactly. Kremer is not cheap because they have seven optometrists, twelve medical doctors, and a team of technicians, technologists, and nurses on staff. To help defray the costs of your surgery, you could use your vision plan and get a measly 5% off, which amounts to $5,035 for the top plan or take advantage of their "special price until <fill-in-phony-date-here> for $1,000 off." The $1,000 off is only offered for the top plan, so you can see how Kremer tries to price things so you're forced to go with the top plan. AllAboutVision.com shows that Kremer's prices fall within the range of the average price that everyone else is charging.

Is the Silver package fine for most people? Sure. In fact, Kremer has been doing thousands of microkeratome flap surgeries prior to getting their WAVEfront machine. However, if you have odd-shaped corneas, astigmatism, or some other eyeball weirdness like I do, you owe it to your eyes to get the Platinum package. You can cheap out on your house, your car, and even your food, but you shouldn't cheap out on your body. You will have a much better success rate of achieving 20/20 vision with the WAVEfront machine. Comparing microkeratome to IntraLase is like comparing a hacksaw to a samurai blade. Both can get the job done, but one is much more precise and leads to fewer complications.

You are given a battery of tests to see if you are a candidate for LASIK surgery. My guess is that unless you're one of the unlucky few, you'll pass the tests with no problems. Your first appointment is a simple eye exam with an optometrist, much like the one you'd get for contact lenses. This will require about an hour, much of it spent in the waiting room. The next appointment involves a more extensive eye exam with the opthamologist who will perform your eye surgery. This will also require about an hour. The prerequisite for this second appointment is that you not wear contact lenses for about two weeks. Contact lenses reshape your corneas and can mess up the results of certain eye tests. My first two appointments were at a Kremer office downtown. The third appointment is the grand poobah of all eye exams. It takes about an hour and a half to complete and is done at the Kremer surgical center in King of Prussia. An ophthalmic technologist takes you to different exam rooms and your eyes are subjected to a number of tests. The first tests your stereoscopic vision. Wearing a pair of polarised glasses, you are presented with a series of ten sets of four rings that form a diamond. You are asked to point out which ring appears to pop out at you.

The second test takes a picture of your optic nerve. You are asked to look at a red box in front of you, but focus on a green blip off to the side. The camera then scans the inner part of your eyeball and you can see all of the gangly nerves inside your eye on the computer screen. The next test, the Wavescan test, asks you to stare at a red tunnel made of red vector lines. It utilizes radio waves to capture the unique imperfections in your vision.

The next test tests your peripheral vision. You are asked to stare at a black box in the center of a white screen. If you see any fuzzy squiggles anywhere on the screen while staring at the black box, you press a clicker. I failed that test and had to take a more extensive test that involved placing my head in a half-dome, staring at a yellow light in front of me, and pressing a clicker whenever I saw white spots, however faint, anywhere in the dome. The white spot test was five minutes and I failed it the first time and had to redo it. I passed it the second time, but then I had to do it a third time without my glasses on! Placing your head in a half-dome sensing for white spots for fifteen minutes is a surreal experience. I felt kind of nauseous afterwards. After completing that test, you will sincerely question why you wanted LASIK in the first place. The next test is a standard glaucoma test like the kind you'd get at any optometrist's office. The next test measures the size of your pupils. The last test asks you to look at a red ring while a long blue bar spins. Many of these tests seem to be geared towards how well you can focus on a single spot in front of you.

After the tests, I was led into a second waiting area in the basement of the surgical center and waited for my name to be called. The eye surgeon looked over all of my test results and said I'm good to go, as expected. The nurse gave me little shoe covers, a hat to cover my hair, and a gown to put on. She gave me two pills, one to calm me down and the other for healing, she said. The pill to make you calm is actually Valium. I really didn't feel much different after taking it. "It should feel like you drank a glass of wine," the nurse said, but I could drink quite a few glasses of wine without much effect! I waited in line behind two others who were getting LASIK done. The wait was about twenty minutes. The Valium is not for pain, but to relax you in case you get queasy from having things poke at you.

There are two steps to LASIK, the first is the creation of the flap and the second is the use of the excimer laser to reshape your cornea. The two steps require two tables, one for the IntraLase and the second for the LASIK. While lying on the IntraLase table, your eyes are held open with clamps. Something gets stuck on your eyeball so you can't move it. You are positioned under the laser and the fun begins. As the laser does its bubbling, your vision gets blurry. You can still see, but it's all blurry. At this point, you think to yourself, "What the fuck did I just do to my eye? I volunteered for this?" but the Valium kicks in and tells you, "It's okay to get your eyeball hacked. It's kind of fun and cool, actually." The entire process doesn't take more than 45 seconds. Then they do the other eye and now you've got blurry vision in both eyes. Then the reality kicks in and your conscience tells you, "Gee, you really fucked yourself this time, buddy," but another part of your conscience says, "It's kind of cool seeing blurry, actually." The doctor tells you that the most painful part is now over, but it wasn't painful, just disconcerting that your blurry vision without glasses is now even more blurry than before.

After the flaps are cut, the doctor tells you to get up and follow him to the LASIK table. The two nurses in the operating room help direct you, too. "What? They don't wheel you over to the other table?" you ask yourself. Nope. You walk over on your own accord. The doctor asks you not to bump into a table full of tools. Eeek. I think I saw the dreaded microkeratome, but it was just a blur to me. You lie down on the LASIK table and a nurse covers you with a plastic sheath that sticks to your face like a big Band-Aid. They open up one eye socket at a time to do the LASIK. They start with the right eye. This is where it gets really surreal. The doctor slides the corneal flap away. What blurry vision you had left over now gets really blurry. All you can see is light and faint colors now. I now know what it must be like to be blind and I don't like it. Your conscience tells you, "Holy fuck! What the hell did I just do to myself? I paid $4,300 to make someone blind me?" but another part of your conscience says, "Calm down! It's almost over!" A machine gun noise sounds, like one of those cheap plastic machine guns you buy at a toy store. The LASIK is doing its job. When the doctor finishes, he moves the flap back in place and it's very important to take this part in and accept it for what it is, so get ready... YOU STILL SEE BLURRY! He smooths out the flap, swipes it around and around like a skilled artist painting perfect circles... AND YOU STILL SEE BLURRY! Do not panic. This is normal. Then he does the other eye and the same thing happens. He tells you the surgery went beautifully even though everything is blurry. When you rise from the LASIK table, you will wonder if you'll ever be able to see clearly again. The doctor will tell you that you can see, but it will be like looking under water. Do not panic. This is normal. The nurse straps a pair of goggles on your face to protect your eyes. She advises you to tape the sides of the goggles to your face and to wear them for at least a week when you sleep to protect your eyes as they heal. She advises you to keep your eyes closed, but like a curious dummy, I open them every now and again to see if there's any improvement in my vision.

When you get home, you want to do nothing but sleep. What you just put yourself through was voluntary trauma to both eyes, so get some rest. Sleep for a few hours more than normal. You'll need it. I woke up a few times in the night and noticed that my eyes were still blurry. I forced myself to go back to sleep each time. When you finally wake up the next morning, there's a haze over your eyes and everything's still cloudy, but something's different now. I could see water droplets in front of me! "Holy shit," I said to myself, "I kind of see clearly, but what's with the bubbles?" You remove your goggles, blink a few times, and it feels almost like you left your contact lenses in your eyes. You notice that the haziness and bubbles were caused by condensation built up inside the goggles. You look in a mirror and notice the bloodshot look of your eyes, the technical term of which is called eye subconjunctival hemorrhaging. It's not so bad. One of my eyes looked worse after a sparring match in high school where my opponent got lucky and jabbed his finger in my eye. The redness should subside in two weeks. For some odd reason, there are very few pictures available of people's eyes immediately following LASIK surgery, so I offer mine for everyone's edification.

The day after surgery, I'm required to squirt Omnipred anti-inflammatory steroid eye drops in my eyes every hour, Vigamox antibiotic eye drops in my eyes four times a day, and Systane eye rewetting drops four times a day. For the next five days, I'm required to squirt Omnipred, Vigamox, and Systane in my eyes four times a day. Omnipred is a cloudy solution that will make you see blurry for a few minutes before everything gets clear again. As the medicine trickles down your nasal passages, you'll find the solution a bit icky to the taste. You will notice a lot of eye guck at the corners of your eyes. It's important that you do not touch this guck with your fingers or touch any part of your eyes for the next week.

I looked around and tried out my new eyes. Previously, without my contacts or glasses, I could read tiny letters about six inches away from my face. Now I have to move this same text about a foot away from my face to read it. That's the price you pay for good distance vision. I have a double-sided makeup mirror, one for normal magnification and the other with 3x magnification. The 3x side is what I have to use from now on for my close-up work, such as eye makeup, which the opthamologist recommended that I not wear for at least two weeks. Right now, I'm sitting at a comfortable distance from my computer screen typing away, but, over time, I'll have to get reading glasses, otherwise I'll be sitting further and further away from my computer. I impressed my wife with how far away I could see. I could read little letters on billboards far away. I had post-op appointment the day after my surgery and was tested to have 20/20 vision. My vision might improve a bit over time, the optometrist said. I asked the doctor if the amount of redness in my eyes was normal and she said yes. It might even look a little worse before it starts to look better, she said, because of the way the blood flows in the eye. This post-op visit took less than ten minutes.

Expect to allot three to four hours of time for your surgery. If the waiting line isn't too long and you pass all of the eye exams with flying colors, you can probably be done in about two and a half hours. Expect to wear sunglasses during the healing period because your eyes are very sensitive to light and air during this time. The day after surgery you will feel occasional stinging and dryness. The sunglasses will definitely help keep this to a minimum. Limit your exposure to pollutants. If you are a businessperson meeting clients, you should explain that you had eye surgery, so you don't freak them out with your bloody eyes. You will likely have plenty of questions before and after surgery and Kremer's staff will be happy to answer all of your questions. Even though Kremer says you can work and drive the next day, I recommend taking the next day off and refrain from driving so your eyes have a chance to recover. Road wind or air conditioning can dry out your eyes. Nothing good ever comes from rushing someone back to health.

Some of you might be wondering what I meant by "eyeball weirdness" in the fourth paragraph above. I have a condition known as amblyopia that leads to ocular dominance, the tendency to prefer visual input from one eye over the other. My left eye, the weak eye, never developed fully as a child so all this time my brain was likely processing images from only my right eye. If I cover up one eye at a time, the white balance of my left eye is different than the white balance of my right eye. My left eye sees things a little more orange. My right eye sees neutral tones as normal. My corneas are also flatter than normal so I wasn't a good candidate for the microkeratome.

It might surprise you to discover that I never enjoyed fully corrected 20/20 vision with glasses or contact lenses. All of my optometrists knew I had astigmatism in my left eye, but never diagnosed me as having a weak eye, so some of them upped the power of my left eye and the result was glasses or contacts that gave me severe headaches. Some of my glasses were so strong that it seemed like I was looking through a fish bowl. The mistake was the optometrists tried to give me 20/20 vision in my left eye using a nonastigmatic lens that was too strong. I shied away from the toric lenses because they were too expensive at the time and every optometrist said they were probably not worth the extra money since my astigmatism wasn't strong enough to warrant them.

Only one optometrist knew enough to lower the power of my prescription to still give me reasonable vision (20/40 at the time) and enable me to wear glasses or contacts comfortably with no problems. He was the only optometrist who ever gave me a comfortable prescription, so I went to him for almost twenty years before he retired. He never explained the weak eye concept to me, though. Weak eyes are not correctable, but astigmatism is correctable with LASIK. I feared after getting LASIK that 20/20 vision would give me headaches, but that's not the case. I can now see surface texture and the pores on someone's face, things I had trouble seeing in the past.

Not everyone is suitable for LASIK. Ask your eye surgeon plenty of questions before you proceed with surgery so you can feel confident about the procedure. Don't get LASIK done at rock bottom prices from inexperienced people. Remember that you only get one set of eyes, so don't cheap out on them! If there is any risk of complications, do not proceed with surgery. If you want to scare the bejesus out of yourself and convince yourself not to have LASIK done, see LasikComplications.com, a site that crusades against LASIK and blows things out of proportion. There's a lot of bullshit about golfers getting all of these complications from LASIK, but if that were true, why are all of these golfers still playing in PGA tournaments? Then there are supposedly people who get depressed and suicidal after their surgery because they still have blurry vision. One person even blames his blurry vision from LASIK for his inability to find a job and when his surgeon tried to correct the situation, he refused treatment!

Any surgery can have complications and many of these complications can be avoided with proper post-surgical care. If you forget to use your eye drops as prescribed, you are likely to get an eye infection. If you treat your body poorly after surgery by drinking in excess or using drugs, you will likely cause some kind of complication. When we damage other parts of the body, such as our hands or legs, we let them heal for a long time before we use them again. Something needs to be said about allowing our eyes to heal, too.

I wonder how many LASIK complications have to do with the overall health of the individual, the lifestyle he or she leads, the commitment he or she has to performing the instructions during the healing process. From what I gathered after reading all of the sob stories, here are the true prequisites to be an excellent LASIK candidate:

• You must be over 30 to give your vision time to stabilize. You must be younger than 50. If you are over 50, your eye surgeon may describe other procedures that are more suitable to you.
• You must be a genetic male. Women seem to have more complications than men and complain about it moreso.
• You must have thick corneas, at least 500 microns.
• You must not have any autoimmune disease, such as Rheumatoid arthritis, Grave's disease, Lupus, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Fribromyaglia, Reiter's syndrome, Crohn's disease, Diabetes, or Herpes.
• You must not suffer from any form of depression, anxiety disorder, or other mental illness that requires medication.
• You must not abuse your body with excess consumption of food or alcohol.
• You must not be afraid of wearing glasses again if required.
• You must not freak out if your eyes look bloody red after surgery or you see halos and star bursts around bright lights up to six months after surgery.
• You must not expect 20/20 vision. 20/40 is more optomistic, but the surgeon will always aim for 20/20.
• You must not play any sports or engage in any activities that could cause foreign particles to enter the eye for six months after surgery.
• You must not rub your eyes for six months after surgery.
• You must be able to follow simple instructions the week following surgery to allow your eyes to heal. People with attention deficit disorder should not get LASIK.

5 days after surgery: One major LASIK complication is the inability to see in the dark. I can tell you that, for me, this is not true. I can see as clearly in my dimly lit room at 10pm right now as I could while wearing contact lenses previously. I can walk around at night with no problems. At the movies, I did see halos around the exit signs, but my doctor says these should go away over time. Around really bright lamps or street lights, I see rainbow starbursts. It's kind of neat, actually. I know I'd have to pay a lot of money to get this effect on my camera. The rainbow starburts will take about six months to lessen or go away. Despite what I consider to be minor complications, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to see clearly without glasses or contact lenses.

1 week after surgery: I no longer need to use the steroid and antibiotic drops, but my eyes are still red, although nowhere near as severe as the previous days. It'll take at least a few more weeks to completely heal, my eye surgeon says. He says the rainbow starbursts should go away when my eyes completely heal. I keep thinking that I'm still wearing glasses and that I need to take them off so I could see blurry again. My next appointment is my one-month appointment.

2 weeks after surgery: There is a lot less redness in my eyes. The inner whites of my eyes are almost completely red-free. It looks like my left eye, the eye that had the stronger prescription, is taking longer to heal, probably because it got zapped with the laser more. My brain still thinks my great vision is the result of glasses, so out of habit, I sometimes try to remove glasses that aren't there. I still see rainbow starbursts and halos at night, but I'm not too concerned because I'm retraining myself to work around them.

3 weeks after surgery: The right side of my right eye is the next area that will hopefully be completely red-free. My left eye is still red, but improving. My brother said his eyes took about a month to heal, but his vision was not as bad as mine when he had LASIK done ten years ago. I still see halos around bright lights, but everything else is pretty damn clear.

4 weeks after surgery: The right side of my right eye is 99% red-free. The only "red" I see is a faint pink line that should go away soon. My left eye is healing nicely. The top part of the line is pink, the bottom part is reddish pink, so that should go away in another 2 weeks. Quite honestly, I cry every now and again because it is so beautiful to be able to see 20/20 having never been able to experience 20/20 before while wearing eyeglasses or contact lenses. Yes, I still see halos around bright lights in the dusk or dark, but so what? The other 99% of the benefits of LASIK have more than made up for this deficiency. Why can't other people enjoy LASIK's benefits without harping on its negatives? It seems to me that in the early stages of LASIK recovery we experience something similar to seeing with our rearview mirrors permanently set to dayview position. Try it and see what happens. Everything is blinding because everything is crystal clear in a rearview mirror set to dayview position! How do we correct this? We flip the rearview mirror to nightview position. For us, that means wearing tinted eyeglasses to decrease the glare. We are told by our doctors to be patient because, as our eyes heal, we should see less intense to no starbusts and less severe to no halos. Our MTV generation doesn't want to wait 6 months for all of this to happen, so many people complain about the end result when they havent even experienced the true end result yet! All I can say is please be patient with the whole process. Healing takes time. You've had bad vision for 20+ years, so waiting another six months is not so bad. Good things take time.

5 weeks after surgery: Both eyes are now 100% red-free. My vision is sharp, sharper than with any glasses or contacts I've ever worn. Daytime vision is perfect. This week I lessened my use of the 4x a day artificial tears that patients are required to use that for about a month. Except for one day, I haven't experienced much in the way of dry eye. I do have to be extra careful about flying debris, so I'll be wearing sunglasses to protect my eyes from that. My vision at night is excellent. A few people have complained that they can no longer see at night after LASIK, but I find I can see fine. The rainbow starbursts are a lot less noticeable around bright lights now than three weeks ago, but the halos are still there. Like I said in my previous entry, it'll take time to heal and I'm very patient. I wake up in the morning and cry sometimes because it is so beautiful to be able to see clearly without any help from glasses or contact lenses. My mother was right when she said that $4,000 is nothing for a surgery that is so meaningful. "Even if it cost you $40,000, it would've been worth the money because it's your eyes!" I am the type of person that would've paid $4,000 even for a temporary surgery that would've let me experience perfect vision for just one day. Why? Because I never experienced perfect vision before. Most people take their vision for granted. For me to be able to see as I do now is a blessing. It is a shame that my healing time for LASIK may have been affected by my recent battle with pneumonia.

Let's do a before and after. Here are my eyes on August 13, 2009, the day after surgery:

and here are my eyes on September 16, 2009, five weeks after surgery:

7 weeks after surgery: My vision still tests as 20/20 but I can definitely say that it isn't as clear as the week after surgery. The difference isn't noticeable enough to be a nuisance, but I'm nitpicking. The ability to see without glasses or contacts is such a lovely feeling. I told my optometrist on Monday that even if I continued seeing halos and starbursts, I wouldn't mind. Perhaps the halos and starbursts seem like a new thing to people because glasses or contacts all have anti-glare filters or coatings on them. For these people, it would've been better if the eye surgeon offered them a corneal transplant with an anti-glare coating on it. Dealing with the halo and starburst issue might require getting used to true visual clarity. Why not wear tinted shades while driving at night?