Surgery is something that most people try to avoid, myself included. The idea of someone cutting into you like a porterhouse just doesn’t sit well with the mind, but there are particular areas of the body that one really hates to imagine being compromised. Foremost among them, the eye.
Having said that, there are worse things in life. Having to deal with contacts on a windy day in NYC (of which there are many annually) is a pain. Add dry eyes from long wearing times, never being anywhere without drops, glasses on the nightstand and the inability to be as active as you’d like to be due to wearing some form of corrective lenses and suddenly, laser eye surgery doesn’t sound so bad.
Of course, horror stories abound in the world of LASIK - not because they are abundant, but because you never hear of the hundreds of thousands of surgeries that go well. “Go well” is subjective to the individual, however, and this individual doesn’t consider halos, poor night vision and compromised corneas a success. But this is New York City, where access to the best of the best is always available.
In the world of NY LASIK, the choices are abundant, but my choice was to forgo LASIK altogether in favor of LASEK, a much safer surgical option that reshapes the surface of the eye and doesn’t cut a flap, which is where 99% of complications occur. If you want LASEK in New York City, you want Dr. Chynn.
Dr. Chynn is the only MD in NYC whose practice is LASEK only. He stopped performing LASIK in 2003 (though almost everyone else still offers it) because of the potential for slight complications. In his own words, “Any complication, however slight, is one complication too many”.
So, I went in a few times. They checked my eyes, double checked my eyes and went through a laborious pre-op to make sure I understood exactly what I needed to do during the surgery, which was basically follow directions and stay still. It was over fairly quick and I felt nothing, but afterward…holy moley! I could see. I could see clearly, crisply and without corrective lenses. As a lifelong wearer of both glasses and contacts, this was a great moment for me.
A few days of healing and keeping my post-op appointments have left me with greater than 20/20 vision. I couldn’t be happier. If you’re considering LASIK, I urge you to reconsider and look into LASEK. Your eyes will thank you for it.
