I remember the day I realised I was losing my eyesight. It was 2004, I was 21, living in London, holidaying in Spain, watching a Real Madrid Game when the legendary David Beckham was at his peak in his soccer career. He was the bees knees. I didn’t (and still don’t) give two shits about ball games, but I was beyond excited to sneak a peek at David Beckham. I was sitting fairly far back from the ground, but not ridiculously, everyone around me had no troubles seeing who was who. Me on the other hand, needed to take pictures of the players on my 3 megapixel Olympus Stylus 300, then zoom in on the them to see who was actually wearing number 23 and who was just some other bloke parading around. By the time I had figured it out, play had well and truly moved on and I was about 3 minutes behind everything and everyone, playing catch up. The penny dropped hard… I was going to need glasses when I returned home to Australia.
David Beckham - the bees knees
It’s no surprise really, my mother is blind as a bat. If you ever catch her in her glasses (she’s mainly in contacts), you’ll be forgiven for thinking she has two coke cans on her eyes… I’ve never seen a thicker lens in prescription glasses, ever!
Fast forward 15 years, and I’m over it. Over the glasses, the contacts, the prescriptions, the refilling, the lens solutions, the grubby finger marks on glasses, taking glasses, sunnies and contacts all out in a bag to adapt from an overcast day to a bright sunny day. Not to mention, I’m over the continual drain on the hip pocket.
I had been thinking about laser eye correction surgery for a few years now, but wasn’t sure I would be a candidate. I had heard that you needed your eye sight (however bad) to be stable. For the first ten years, every check up at the optometrist I had, my eyes were slowly getting worse and worse. The last few years however, that all changed, I started having constantly bad eyes. Hallelujah! A close friend of mine had laser eye correction surgery last year. She briefed me on the experience, the recovery time, the freedom in not having to wear glasses. I was sold.
Eye tests look something like this
First step, have the (free) assessment to confirm I am a candidate for surgery. This was lengthy, 2+ hours roughly, nothing painful, just a bunch of vision test, one test is done after some pupil dilation drops that make your muscles in your eyes go very lazy, so seeing anything close up after that appointment is a bit dodgy for a couple of hours. But hurrah, success, I’m a candidate for Lasik surgery! Yes, LASIK, which actually stands for (Laser-Assisted-In-Situ-Keratomileusis). There is another type of laser surgery on offer, one that is better if you fit another set of bad eye credentials or you play professional sport- the recovery time is longer for this one apparently. They run you through all this in the appointment.
Second step, to get over the guilt of spending a large sum of money on myself. Not the kids, not a family trip, not a business expense, but just something that I will benefit from. Not sure if I fully got over this, but enough to proceed was good enough. Oh and side note- this wasn’t covered on my private health, it might be for you, but from my research, there are a limited number of health insurance companies out there that offer their members a rebate for laser eye surgery. Expect that the surgery, in Australia, can range anywhere from about $2600 to $3700 per eye.
Third step, don’t book in your surgery at the beginning of a global pandemic. I moved the first surgery time I had as I was worried about surgery and immune system and germs (plus cost, I mean, at that stage, who knew what would be happening to my income/job because of the state of the world right now) . Once I got over that and re booked, my new surgery time then got cancelled. That’s what happens when the government shuts down your whole state for a stage 4 restrictions. Third time lucky! Finally, new surgery time scheduled one day after the lift of some restrictions and elective surgery can go ahead again. Yay!!!
D-Day. I didn’t start to get really nervous until about one hour before surgery. I don’t think I truly knew what to expect in terms of pain during and after as a few people that had previously said ‘oh it’s nothing, you’re in and out so quickly, you barely even notice’, I think this led me to set the expectations pretty low, maybe a little too low.
In my scrubs.
After another round of eye assessments to make sure nothing has changed from the first set of results, the nurse gives you a full brief about what is going to happen during surgery, she lays out your scrubs and offers you a valium (side note: TAKE THE VALIUM). She asks me ‘any questions?’ So I say, ‘will it smell? You know the smell of eye ball flesh burning under the laser beams?’ She gives me a resounding, ‘might do. Some people notice a smell, others don’t’. Great.
Well, safe to say, I didn’t notice a smell, just an extraordinarily uncomfortable feeling from the moment they clamp your eyelids open with an oversized eyelash curler being used in reverse. A quick squirt of some numbing drops and a reminder to keep looking at the red dot and don’t nod or shake your head, but use your words if you want to speak or answer the surgeons questions/remarks. It reminded me of how I used to tell my boys to ‘use their words’ when they were learning to speak, instead of chucking a wobbly. If only I could chuck a wobbly to make this surreal experience be over faster! You can see in your perhiperhal vision the scraper and vacuum thingy, and peeler looking type thing, but you can’t feel a thing. A hell of a lot of pressure yes, but no real feelings of pain…yet.
Keeping calm was seriously hard.
I kept trying to tell myself to breath, I was trying to visualise the spots of my body I wanted to send the air to, like my toes or my knee or other weird obscure and irrelevant to eye surgery places, mainly for the distraction but also so I could deepen my breath to help encourage a state of calm in my body. Yeah, well, that’s nice in theory, but even with all my Pilates practice under my belt, I could not shake the tension in my body during surgery. At one stage I was squeezing the living daylight out of the nurses hand, I hardly even realised I was doing it, until I felt her pry my fingers off from around her hand.
Once they scalpeIed off the epithelium of the eyeball, the actual laser only takes 20-40 seconds, you loose your vision for about 10 seconds of that but they are consistently reminding you not to worry, it will come back. On my left eye, I heard him talking about a contact and for his assistant to get the contact. Turns out the flap they scalpeled was particularly flappy (technical term) and rough along one edge, so they put a clear contact over the top of it to help with the healing over night. They said that otherwise I would have felt the roughness every time I blinked. They also mentioned this was not a rare occurrence and nothing to worry about. Ah ha, yep, ok.
The actual surgery itself takes maybe 15minutes tops. They strap on some sexy see-through eye googles that you have to walk out in and not touch until your follow up appointment the next day. As you sit in the initial recovery room for 15minutes processing what just went down, they give you a take home kit full of antibiotic drops, anti-inflammatory drops and lubricated drops, plus a sleeping pill and a strong pain killer.
It is amazing that you can walk out of their yourself, a little disorientated and in no way can you drive immediately but I’m still impressed that I could see so quickly.
About an hour after getting home, the pain started kicking in. Oh the pain. Didn’t see that coming. Get it. ‘See’ it coming. Sorry, bad joke. I had already had a strong pain killer, but still, my eye balls felt like they they were exploding in my head and I could only find relieve by closing my eye lids. Thankfully the surgery happened just before 4 in the afternoon, so by the time I got home and had some dinner (which my 4 year old son feed me, cutie-pie), I had a bath in a dark room (light was seriously killing me at this point!). At it’s worst, I remember crying to my partner in the loungeroom, ‘help me get to the couch pleeeeeease’ so I could sit down and hang my head in my hands wondering if actually this was a good idea after all. Before my kids even went to bed, I was crawling into bed myself, with a sleeping pill, which took quick effect. I was out like a light. Thank goodness.
Thankfully when I woke up, a full 12 hours later) I had absolutely zero pain. Amazing. Still a little disorientated and my eyes were a little mucky from all the liquid they had been excreting over night that has now dried, man the body is an amazing thing when it goes into healing mode!
Follow up appointment was early that next morning. They undressed my eyes, removed the contact on my left eye that was acting like a bandaid for my flappy eyeball flap. Did some vision tests (20/20 in my right, my left was almost, but not quite, they said it needs a week or so to catch up, because of the whole flappy flap thing apparently and to my relief, every day since then I felt the improvement in vision in that eye.
I had to dress my eyes myself for the next two nights with the see-through googles just to ensure I don’t accidentally knock my eyes at night time, but then after that, it’s just the drops for the next few weeks.
Captured by @neetaphotography
I was able to look at my computer/phone 24 hours later. I was driving and working again in less then 48 hours. I did have to lay off the rolling and legs over head exercises in the Pilates mat work for 5 days, as the risk was that too much pressure at the back of my eyes would stretch the healing flaps on my eyeballs! As I already mentioned, I seriously enjoyed my first Roll Over that weekend after surgery. Amazing how that rolling and stretching in Pilates is like a drug to my body now…. I crave it, and sure as hell missed it!
My first selfie post surgery!
A month on and another check up later, my vision is 20/20 (in both eyes!) but I still wake up in the morning reaching for my glasses on the bedside table, I suppose some habits are hard to shake. It’s just so incredible what technology can do today. I can SEE!!
If you are interested in getting your eyeballs lasered to correct your dodgy vision, then reach out to me, if you go with a recommendation, you will get $ off the cost!. Side note- this is not a sponsored post, I only know that because I got the same discount when I mentioned my friend who referred me.
And then come and do Pilates with me, we can Roll Over together post-surgery, it feels Ah.Mazing!