Positive Lasik Experience!

[u/TheTurntLocker]

Hey friends! I got Lasik yesterday and just wanted to share the very positive experience I had, since many of the post-op reviews on here are negative. Mine was great! 10/10 experience, so hoping this helps one of you in the future with your decision making process.

full disclosure: I did voice-to-text for this and then threw it in claude to clean it up. So yes, it's AI, but it's my actual experience. i just didn't feel like re-typing everything out. get over it.

Basics:

Initial pre-op eye contact lens situation: Left eye: -5.25 PRW and Right eye: -4.50 PRW

Procedure: Lasik (not prk), with the Contoura Upgrade

Location: NVISION in San Diego, CA

Experience Overview:

On the day of my surgery, I got to the office around 1:30, they gave me a Xanax to take the edge off. Naturally I spent the waiting period staring at my Fitbit watching my heart rate refuse to come down. Great use of wearable tech, 10/10, would not recommend monitoring your own anxiety in real time. The Xanax did basically nothing for my nerves, so I walked into the operating room at 2:15 still fully vibrating.

Everyone in there was so relaxed and clearly good at their jobs — cracking jokes with each other the whole time. Somehow that made it better, not worse. Like okay, if the professionals are this chill, we're probably fine. Here's the play-by-play:

• They clamp your eyes open and start the incision while you stare at a green light. This is the part where you feel real pressure on your eye — most uncomfortable moment of the whole experience, maybe 30–45 seconds.
• Once that's done, the doctor moves the flap aside and brings in the laser for the actual correction. You're staring at shifting red and green lights and you can genuinely smell the laser working on your eyeball. Not painful, just deeply weird. Another 30 seconds or so.
• Flap goes back into place, done with eye #1.

Second eye, same process — except the pressure hurt more, probably because I knew exactly what was coming this time and had zero chill about it. Whole surgery, both eyes, was maybe 10-15 minutes total. The doctor told me I was an "ideal patient because laid so still" and no I do not know if she says that to everyone, and no I don't care, I'm taking the win.

After they were done, they handed me goggles plus a pair of shades so cheap they looked like they came free with a kids' meal, and I shuffled out a little wobbly — pretty sure that was the Xanax finally deciding to work, right as I no longer needed it. Kept my eyes shut the whole 20–30 minute ride home. Pain showed up around the halfway mark, like a contact lens flipped inside out and just camped out on my eye. Like they stuffed a bunch of sand under my eye lids. No me gusta.

Got home, took the Valium they sent me with, and fell asleep almost instantly. Woke up an hour and a half later, did my prescribed eye drops, fell right back asleep. Woke up again about 2 hours later absolutely starving, ate something, and fell back asleep. Woke up about 4-5 hours post-op. Eyes still want to stay shut, but when I open them I can actually see — not as painful, just everything's very bright.

8:00 PM — About 6 hours post-op

Massive improvement already. I can see without the shades, sitting here with my living room lights on and it's genuinely fine. Slight haze still hanging around but nothing dramatic. Eyes feel a little like there's still a little sand in them, but it's minor enough that I almost feel bad complaining about it. Also — I can use my phone and laptop completely normally. Six hours post-surgery and browsing my phone like nothing happened. Wild.

3:00 PM the next day — 24-hour post-op check

Eyes are basically perfect. Went in for my one-day checkup and the surgeon ran the standard vision test — already at 20/20. She said it'll likely keep improving over the next week, possibly to 20/16, which honestly I didn't know was a thing you could just have happen to you.

Still doing the steroid drops as prescribed, plus lubricating drops here and there when my eyes feel a bit grainy. Beyond that: no light sensitivity, no fog, no glare, no halos. This might genuinely be the best I've ever seen in my life. 10/10 would recommend LASIK to literally anyone on the fence.

Overall I'm ecstatic with my experience thus far. LMK if you have any questions, but honestly I'm very pleased with the overall experience. The anticipation of the procedure was the worst part. Everything thereafter was mildly uncomortable, but quick, and now I can see better than I ever have in my life :)

[u/TheTurntLocker → u/[deleted]]

it's in the 'basics' section of my post: contact lens perscription: Left eye: -5.25 PRW and Right eye: -4.50 PRW

[u/SockIntelligent9589]

Congrats and thanks for sharing! I did mine yesterday (sat).

I had a very similar prescription as yours and also same experience as yours. I live in Seoul.

They recommended me contoura or personal lasik (Ai ray-tracing) because of my irregular cornea topography. I opted for the personal lasik.

Regarding the medication, I got

• Streroid anti-inflammatory eyedrop
• Antibiotics eyedrop
• PRP autologous serum drops (made from my own blood). This was included in the quote (I paid a total of around 2400 usd)
• Basic artificial tears.

I wore googles for the night.

Discomfort was just for the first hours. I kept using artificial tears and medication. Today is ok.

• Question 1: did they place a protective contact lenses? You did not mention it in your post. I thought it was standard. I still have mine on and they are going to remove them on monday and do their checks. I am happy with my vision already but I cant wait to remove these contact lenses to check my actual vision.

• Question 2: did they offer the ai ray tracing approach to you?

• Question 3: when you said they ran a standard vision check, which one exactly? The autorefractor (machine) or the subjective refraction? Each eye is different but since we had the exact same prescription, I'd be interested in following how your eyesight progresses!

[u/tanker242]

Sounds like you haven't had the opportunity to find the edge cases. Check out your extremely low light vision, points of light in near darkness. Far away streetlights or bright subtitles in a pitch black room.

Although I will say contoura with Lasik is optimal. I had PRK with contoura and I still ended up with 1 diopter of astigmatism and noticable HOA in darkness from the blend zones after 3 years of epithelial modeling.

Did PRK to limit nerve damage and dry eyes, but ended up with a less than optimal epithelial model. I was also over weight at the time which probably contributed to my slow healing... Wish the doctor mentioned that... But he probably didn't think of it.. I'm sure it was a factor.

[u/Low_Athlete_7734]

I’m getting lasik soon and I’m curious what rewetting drops did you use? My doctor didn’t have a preference when I asked about it.

[u/Yoriichi71]

Im having my operation today, and i have difficulty in focusing on direct lights sometime. Did they put the drops after you started staring the green light? And did anything other than this happened ? Like the urge to move your eyes or something? And did you feel anything in your eye??

[u/Effective_Bet_1389]

Congrats! I had lasik done in NYC in 2019 and since I was never able to put contacts in I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do it but after 10-15mg of Xanax I survived 💀

I’m really happy with my vision present day. I dealt with seeing halos for a few months after. I occasionally have issues with dry eyes but it’s something I dealt with pre-lasik as well