Laser Eye Surgery: An Honest Review (Featuring Optilase Eye Clinic Dublin)

Welcome to my comprehensive review of laser eye surgery! For those contemplating a lifetime free from blurry vision, glasses and contact lenses, please read on. For those who don't need it, well aren't you lucky?

So you've come to a crossroads in your life where you've decided that you've had enough of the constant near blindness and want to actually do something permanent about it. Well, my review will give you my experience with it and whether I think that it's worth it or not.

Background: I was short sighted, meaning that I couldn't see anything clearly that wasn't right in front of me. My prescription was -3.75 in my left eye and -4.25 in my right eye which sets me firmly in the middle ground of blurry eyesight. For reference, I have friends who have contemplated the surgery with a prescription of -1.00 and others who have a prescription of -7.00. I don't know if they are eligible for the surgery, I just know that between us, I didn't have the best or the worst eyesight.

So I wore glasses since I was first "diagnosed" in 6th class, making me 12 years old. I then moved on to daily contact lenses from 4th year onwards (16 years old) and then from 6th year (18 years old), I wore monthly day and night contact lenses which allowed me to sleep in them as well. The monthly contact lenses were great but my eyes were starting to get too dry for my liking and my hay fever also caused a lot of problems with them when summer came around. The no swimming aspect of contact lenses was also a bummer.

October 2016: At this point, I decided to just go for the surgery. I had the money and I was satisfied that my eyesight was not going to drastically deteriorate much further from then on (23 years of age) so I booked my free consultation at Optilase eye clinic in Dublin.

I arrived at the clinic and was greeted by the receptionist. I was told to take a seat and a few minutes later, I was called in by the optician. She performed all of the necessary tests and asked all of those medical questions and tested your eyesight. It was just like a visit to your local Specsavers. She then told me that I was suitable for LASIK (official name: Wavefront IDesign with Intralase) but the surgeon will double check that and advise me again on the day of surgery. She explained the whole procedure and answered my questions and after that was done, I booked my next appointment which was the surgery day itself! Quick and painless. On a personal note here, I felt like the optician could've been a tad less clinical and maybe a wee bit friendlier, just to ease more jumpy would-be clients but that's just a side note really.

She quoted me a price with my corporate discount of 20% which came to €3140 including lifetime care. There was an online Facebook offer that gave a discount of €500 (anyone can do this) which came to €2990 including one year aftercare. It was one or the other so I chose the one with lifetime care because why not? Might as well go all in. I might need more aftercare later on in life. I also receive a substantial tax refund which I believe everyone also gets so I will receive about €500 back which makes the total price for LASIK €2490. This price might be different for you because it's on a per case basis but that's the ballpark number. I paid the €200 deposit and so the wait began.

Surgery Day- The Waiting: So a month later, I came back to the clinic and brought everything that they advised me to bring (sunglasses and painkillers) in a phone call that happened a week previously. The receptionist offered me a hot drink which was nice and told me to wait in the waiting room once again. I filled out all of the forms and paid the bulk of my bill (I had set up a finance plan for the remainder earlier in the month). Now here was where my major gripe with Optilase was. I was left waiting for literally more than 2 hours. I had arrived about 20 minutes earlier than I needed to so that time was fine but even without factoring that in, I was waiting 2 hours. I was getting annoyed and hungry (possibly "hangry") and no one had come to explain or to apologise for the delay. To be fair though, they may have had a backlog of patients due to complications to other patients in the day so I can understand that but I don't know if this happened because NO ONE said anything to me. I would've appreciated it if I was told that I was going to be waiting longer than expected so I could perhaps pop down to coffee shop in the meantime. Honestly, this oversight was incredibly inconvenient for me but I could let it go because I wasn't nervous or stressed (just hungry). However for someone else who was nervous about the surgery, this would put undue stress on them and definitely impact them negatively. I hope this was an isolated incident and not a habit for Optilase because they really are a great clinic that delivers great results.

Surgery Day- The Surgery Itself: Finally I got called in and brought downstairs to the get checked again by the surgeon himself and then straight off to the surgery room next door. Again everything was explained to me and the surgeon advised me that I may not have enough eyelid space for LASIK and might need to switch to another type of laser eye surgery called PRK. He'd find out when I'm actually in the chair. I went into the surgery room which was just a normal room with high tech machinery and two nurses standing by. I laid down on the chair which reclined like a dentist chair. I had to put on a hair net-ype of thing and shoe covers beforehand. The nurses were very friendly and kept chatting to me throughout the entire procedure. I think a part of their job was to distract me from what was about to happen. They flooded my eyes with anesthetic which was an uncomfortable experience because it was so cold and unexpected. They put a shield on one eye so that they could work on the other. The surgeon then tried to fit the conical rubber apparatus on my eye but couldn't get the edge of it under my eyelid because I didn't have enough space between my eyelid and eyeball. After a few attempts, he had no choice but to switch me to PRK. He sat me up and explained about the different procedure. I signed the papers and off I went again. Again one eye was shielded while he worked on the other. He taped my eyelashes out of the way and held my eyelids open with something. At that point, I couldn't see what was happening around me. He brushed the middle of my eyeball with a tiny sponge like applicator to remove the first layer of cells and then turned on the laser. All I saw was a blue light pulsing for 37 seconds and he intermittently flooded my eyes with drops of saline afterwards and placed a contact lens on my newly lasered eye. The lens acts as a bandage for my healing eyes and had no prescription in them. He repeated the process on my other eye and 15 minutes later, I was done. There was no pain, just discomfort. I was given drops and more instructions with a follow up appointment to remove my contacts in 5 days.

LASIK vs PRK: If you would like to know more about these procedures, please google it because I could write a whole paper on it at this point. The main things that I would like to point out, purely in the view of a consumer, are these:

1. LASIK is almost €500 more expensive than PRK (so I got my money back for the difference obviously).

2. LASIK is newer than PRK and has a much faster recovery time of 1-2 days which is preferably to most people (hence the difference in price). PRK has a recovery time of minimum 4-5 days.

3. Recovery from PRK is more uncomfortably from what I hear (find out how my recovery went further down).

4. The results are virtually the same and according to my surgeon, in his experience, PRK has less of a chance of sight regression (therefore requiring additional surgery later in life).

The Recovery: If you've reached this far, then you must be really sick of wearing glasses :D I went straight to bed when I got home from surgery and pretty much stayed there for the next 5 days. I got up to eat and go to the bathroom but that was the extent of it. My eyes were moderately sensitive to light and the pain made it unwise to go outside. The pain wasn't that bad actually. It meant that my eyes were healing properly. Well that's what I told myself. It wasn't actual pain as opposed to the feeling of something in your eye, poking at you every time your eyeball moved. It was highly irritating and uncomfortable but not painful. The discomfort was manageable in the first 2 days but peaked on the 3rd day and subsided substantially by the 4th and 5th days. The 3rd day was the worst. I literally laid in bed with my eyes shut for the entire day, listening to an audiobook and listening to disney movies. On the bright side, I got lots of sleep during that time and was being pampered by my much abused husband. Throughout the 5 days, I had to a whole horde of drops to put in my eye each day and continue to do so a month on. When I went back to the clinic, the relief of getting the dry contact lens out of my eyes was instant. I could see! Throughout the recovery my eyesight had vastly improved but was still blurry because the lenses had gotten cloudy. I could see fairly well (to the driving standard) after the removal of the lenses but was advised that my sight would continue to fluctuate and get better with time. My left eye was perfect soon after that and it took maybe a week for my right eye to get perfect. At the time of this writing which is a month later, my eyes have both gotten to the point where I can say that I have excellent vision. I don't know if it will get better than what I have now but I'm excited to see!

Bottom Line: Is this surgery worth it? 100% yes. I have a life free from glasses and contact lenses and can do whatever I want! Swim in the ocean! Play contact sports! Wake up to a bright, clear world! The money that I spent thus far in my life on my eyesight is undoubtedly more than I have spent on this surgery and I can finally start saving that money and use it on something that I'll really enjoy.

Do I recommend Optilase? Yes, I do. Despite that one grievance, Optilase was professional, has a good reputation and is very good value. If you do decided to go with them, don't forget to mention who sent you there ;)

xxx Sarah

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