Risk management isn’t solely based on how bad the outcome is but also on how likely that outcome is.
It’s a big factor considering the benefits.
Had all-laser LASIK done in 2007.
Was scary, and the excimer laser sounded like a giant electrical wasp, but overall, I’ve had zero problems. Best procedure I’ve ever had done.
My older sibling had it done back then, too. No issues. 2 other close friends did the same. Not a single issue.
Give it a rest people.
Go get checked to see if you’re a valid candidate, and have the procedure done by a professional ophthalmologist with an “all-laser” setup who has more than a decade or so of experience and also has the $200,000 equipment to do it right and a lifetime contract-backed guarantee, and you will be happy with the choice you made.
My cousin had his done for like $3000 several years ago. No issues. He actually has surprisingly good vision.
Bob’s Discount LASIK Barn or whatever it is called down by the Confederate flag monument on the 5 had a big sign for the Nazi “America first” congressman and I feel like I wasn’t about to trust my eyes to them anyway but I especially want to avoid them now, Jesus fuck
What’s the success rate? Oh yeah, over 95%. Get outta here
Xcom players: nah. Fuck that
I feel this in my bones…
…unlike the Muton who just Neo’d his way through 4 overwatches.
5% is way too high of a chance of getting permanent chronic dry eyes.
Go look at horror stories on the dry eyes subreddit and take note of the people considering a permanent solution.
meaning around 1 in 20 people who do it end up facing consequences? that sounds like quite a lot actually, at least when its about longterm health.
A little less so when the main consequence 1/20 people face is something like dry eyes.
You’ve clearly never dealt with dry eyes.
Or halos, which are just a little annoying
I just don’t mind my glasses that much that I want to put myself through this/take the risk/pay the cost. I’ve had them since I was a child, I’m used to them and as far as I know, that’s still what has the least side/adverse effects.
Yeah! This ^ Lasik doesn’t sound worth the risks at all.
I can think of two specific instances in my life when wearing glasses saved me from serious eye damage, I’m sure there were more.
You can still wear glasses, and not need them.
I live in a sunny place, so I’m never outside without wearing my sunglasses. As you’ve pointed out they’ve saved my eyes from traumatic injury at least a dozen times over the years.
I wear safety glasses when I’m working around the house with anything that could be considered a power tool (kitchen mixer, drill, etc…) and those have saved me a few times as well.
But not needing glasses, now that could be a lifesaver. I have a close relative who is basically blind without his glasses. He’s told me that if he’s in an unfamiliar place and is woken up by the fire alarm, there’s a good chance he can’t find his way out without his glasses.
- I can wake up and glance at the time instead of having to lift something up and put it centimetres from my face to tell the time.
- I can do sports without the glasses falling off, getting mashed into my face, etc.
- I look a lot better, with a -13 prescription, my glasses were heavy and thick
- My nose and ears aren’t in pain from carrying the weight of my glasses all the time.
- I’m not having to constantly adjust my glasses whenever my nose sweats a bit.
- I’m not completely blind any time I have to take off the glasses, like when I take a shower or go in a pool, or especially swim in the ocean where there are big waves.
- I’m not utterly helpless because I’m blind if I lose my glasses. If you’re blind without your glasses, and your glasses aren’t where you expect, you can’t really use your eyesight to find them.
- I don’t have to deal with all the problems of using and potentially losing contacts.
- …
For me, before I got laser surgery, I was once swimming in the ocean at a very big and popular beach. I was wearing contacts because obviously wearing glasses in the water is next to impossible. I got hit by a big wave, tossed around, and lost my contacts. Now I was almost completely blind, in a foreign country where I knew almost nobody, and trying to find my beach towel and bag among thousands of others. I actually can’t remember how I resolved that problem, but I do remember the massive stress and panic being blind like that caused. When I got back from the trip, I got my eyes fixed within a year.
Not necessarily useful to you any longer, but you can utilize a pinhole lens for situations like that. You can even use your hands/fingers to make the lens. You’ll look fucking ridiculous, but I doubt it’s bother you too much when it’s that or being blind.
To expand on that, you make a very small hole by curling your index finger, and look through that hole.
Just tried this and am now reading comments below to learn what the actual fuck. That works. This random internet advice isn’t a lie.
just tried it and it work?? how
When your eyes are open and unobscured, light is coming in from every direction. The lens is shaped in such a way that light rays parallel to the eye’s axis are focused on the macula, the center of your sharp vision. A near-sighted (myopic) eye focuses those parallel rays in front of the retina, and a far-sighted (hypermetropic) eye focuses them behind. The farther away the ray is from the eye’s axis, the more it is refracted by the lens, and the more obvious its out-of-focus-ness becomes if the lens has an incorrect shape.
Corrective eyewear works by refracting the light before it enters the eye and essentially cancelling out the lens’ imperfections.
A pinhole works by obscuring light rays that are farther from the axis and contribute to the blurry image, only letting through light rays that are near the axis, already aligned more or less with the macula, don’t have to be refracted as sharply, and don’t contribute as much to the blurry image. This is why the camera obscura works, and why apertures in modern photography are used to control both the image’s exposure and the strength of the depth of field.
Afaik if you’re myopic, your eyeballs are too long so the plane of focus created by looking at a far away object is no longer on your retina. So i think by looking through a pinhole you widen the depth of field. This means even stuff you don’t focus on is seen sharper.
I wonder if this also works for hyperopia…
huh! our bodies are so weird
Yeah, but not only our eyes/bodies are weird. If you want to know more about weird eyes look up goat pupils (they have horizontal pupils the can rotate 50% to be always level with the ground) or nautilus pinhole eyes (early stage of our eyes with no lense).
I use it to read with hyperopia
Big spectacles hate this trick!
Is this why I can see so much better in VR? Smaller field of view? I always assumed it as kind of a side effect of the depth of field hacks they do but FOV would make sense.
I learned this in school. It’s because it focuses the light through a narrow passage which increases the details. It’s also how cameras originally worked.
Optics.
That has limits. Not sure what it comes down to exactly, but under the most ideal conditions I have pulled off yet, I’d estimate it improves sight by 3-4.
-8 with the fov of a pinhole is still blind.
but you didn’t have any massive stress or panic thinking about the worms that burrow into your eyes after wearing contacts in the ocean?
No, I was on vacation on Earth, not Proxima Centari 6.
Before my wife got the surgery, she used her phones camera to look around. She used to jokingly say that she is a cyborg.
Regarding the topic. For her the procedure was also a game changer.
The worst one is when you wake up having drunk a little bit too much and you can’t find your glasses. You are now effectively blind and helpless and hungover.
If I was at home, I always knew where I had some backup glasses. But yeah, wake up at a friend’s house or something and you’re screwed.
I once had a friend forget to take out his contacts when drunk. He woke up bleeding from his eyes and struggling to get the things out in severe pain…
Now all I wonder is how the hell you solved that issue.
So do I.
So, what I think happened was that I knew roughly where my stuff was. When I went to play in the waves I basically went straight out from my towel. Because of the rip currents I was being pushed sideways while in the waves, but I mostly kept trying to correct for that so that I didn’t wander too far from my stuff. I am pretty sure about that, because that’s what I always do at the beach. I always hate being pushed around by rip currents and am really worried about getting caught in the undertow so I try to stick to the same part of the beach.
When I got tossed by the huge wave(s) I did end up getting moved sideways. I remember that because I remember how out of control I was. But, I suspect it wasn’t too far. So, when I went to search for my stuff I wasn’t searching the entire beach, just a small section of it.
I think I remembered what colours my beach towel was, so I think I just wandered that section of beach, squinting so I could see a bit better, looking for a towel with roughly the right colours and with nobody on it. Then when I thought I had the right one I crouched down to see if I could recognize the bag I brought.
I don’t think I asked for help, which would have been the smart option. But, I was a shy kid in a foreign country so I am pretty sure I didn’t do that.
But really, I don’t remember. I just have a clear memory of how helpless I felt, and a vague memory of wandering up and down the beach. The rest is just reconstructing how I think it probably happened based on vague memories and what I know about myself.
maybe not in the case of swimming but when you have your phone around you can always turn on your camera and then look at what it’s showing you
If you can find it
Depends on what issue you have, I get intense headaches/nausea/dizziness from looking at digital screens without my glasses for more than 20 seconds or so. The longer I look at them the worse it gets and longer it lasts. So it’s not really viable.
yeah same, but if all you use it for is to scan the room to find your glasses then it works quite well!
i have prescription swimming goggles
Yep, a good idea, but if you use them when playing in the ocean and are hit by a big wave, they can be knocked off.
fair enough, when I think about it theyre probably not better than the contacts in that sense
That’s actually awesome, I didn’t know those existed.
The answer to almost all of those is contacts.
Honestly that meteorologist that sadly took her own life several years back after having really bad complications from laser eye surgery was more than enough to convince me to not get it done.
Source on that?
Not the first and won’t be the last.
https://moskowitz-eye.com/blog/lasik-safety-whistlin-diesel (The original video got taken down)
I’m not going to dissuade people from doing lasik, in theory 99% of candidates should not have any issues. Personally the complications of a failed surgery are a little too scary for me.
The other problem is that not every clinic is a morally good one. They might try to upsell lasik on a not so good candidate, and that risk is not a risk I’m willing to take.
also people with damage to thier cornea, like from shingles even if it made a small scar on the sclera, makes in ineligble for lasik.
I was a very early adopter, as soon as lasik came out I got it, the radial-k that preceded it couldn’t handle my prescription. It’s regressed over the intervening 30 years, but even now I wear thin light glasses and can at least sort of see without them.
You know what sold me on this, even though the vision isn’t as good as I could get with hard contacts? My mom had to go back to glasses after wearing contacts for years because the contacts wore away her corneas! At least the glasses I have to wear at this age are only like a -2 prescription, that’s much more comfortable than what they would have been.
My mom had to go back to glasses after wearing contacts for years because the contacts wore away her corneas!
That’s a slightly horrifying thought… My wife has keratoconus and has to wear hard contacts (scleral lenses, but functionally the same thing) in order to see at all.
Yeah it was unsettling.
My hope lies with science. Two women at my work had to have cornea replacement and both of them don’t need glasses at all anymore - one is 65 and one is 70.
And oh yes I was profoundly nearsighted and hard contacts gave me superhuman vision. They are the best correction by far. But I am really hoping that good artificial corneas are available soon.
at work
70
Excuse me wtf?
Welcome to the USA.
She is planning to retire in a couple of years. Both of them say this is their last job.
MURICA, land of the freedom to die at work.
yeah the lady who I taught how to use the new computerized inventory system was like 74 or something. muricaaaa
Duplicate post, sorry
You missed the part where not all LASIK procedures are “bladeless”. As in: there is an eye knife and guess which way you gotta look for that to work.
Bonus:
Have had it done, bladed. Yes, you look straight at it, but you can’t see shit anyway because of the drops they put in your eyes first. I was much less concerning than I expected.
That was only for one eye though. The other was not a candidate for LASIK, so I had the alternative procedure known as PRK. This one is super fun because instead of cutting the cornea off then put it back on (LASIK), they just scrape off the outer layer of the cornea.
Yeah, the vision during the procedure was not an issue at all. The smell of burnt eye as the laser works away was a bit off putting though. I can attest that burnt eye smells a lot similar to burnt hair.
I don’t have eye problems of any kind. Don’t even need reading glasses…
And even I cried upon reading this.
just wait you’ll get there
As if I didn’t have enough reasons to avoid that procedure.
There’s a lot of folks in the comments who are pretty cavalier about the safety, yet the CEO who produces Lasik machines refuses to get the procedure and just wears glasses.
Obviously there’s a lot of folks happy with it.
However, many people end up needing glasses within ten years. “Relating to the legal requirements in Germany, sufficient visual acuity was found in 76.7 % of the LASIK group, in 73.9 % of the Ortho-K users and in 85.7 % of the reference group (72.7 % in the adult group, 100 % in the juvenile group).” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23508754/
“Nearly 5% of subjects were dissatisfied with their vision after Lasik… eyes feeling irritated (50%), glare (43%), halos (41%), and [trouble] seeing in dim light (35.2%).” Source: Mamalis N. Laser vision correction among physicians: “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. J Cataract Refract Surg. 2014 Mar;40(3):343-4.
“Lasik Suicide” is a real thing, most of the folks who have been affected don’t take the time to say much about the excruciating pain, they just commit suicide.
https://www.lasikcomplications.com/suicide.htm
Definitely think very carefully, your eyes are something you can’t fix if you get this surgery. For some people enough nerves are damaged to cause persistent pain that doesn’t go away.
I almost got the surgery a few years ago, if it worked 100% of the time I would have taken the risk. But vision is so important that I didn’t want to take the risk. Several of my family members did get it and still have dry eyes and halos ten years later, and two now need glasses again anyway.
The sample size of that study was only ~300 people. A study with 20,000 participants in Singapore found that 90% of patients had 20/40 or higher vision after 10 years. It found that high-myopia (-14+)(the most extreme form of near sightedness) patients had a much higher rate of regression, with 39% of those patients losing 2 points or more from their vision within 10 years of tratment (and likely choosing to wear glasses [not listed in the study] or get retreatment [27%]).
So basically, if you have extreme vision problems before LASIK you’re much more likely to have to wear glasses again down the road.
Also, worth pointing out that almost everyone will need reading glasses as they age regardless of LASIK. This conversation only surrounds glasses for near sightedness.
Good points. So roughly 10% chance of needing to get glasses or surgery again, which gets higher the worse your vision is to start.
Yep you got it. So for people with only minimal vision issues it might not be worth it, but for those with severe vision problems it may be worth the risk even though their vision likely will degrade slowly back to their original prescription.
Yup friend of the family got it years ago and now sees coronas of light intensely enough while driving at night that they had to stop driving at night in their mid-40s.
I did it because I was blind. Hella blind. -6 and -9. When covid hit I suddenly realized that if supply shortages ever hit hard and I lost my glasses, I was absolutely fucked.
I could not drive, I could not use two monitors, I would be functionally blind… I always joked I would be dead weight in the apocalypse but in the midst of a hurricane, a wildfire, I could be absolutely fucked. With months before a replacement pair could be acquired. And with all the shit that went wrong with covid… I just wanted to hedge my bets.
if supply shortages ever hit hard and I lost my glasses, I was absolutely fucked.
And the results? Did you died?
Went perfect. Although I had a friend who went same weekend. It did NOT. Couldn’t peel the first layer of the eye.
Otherwise I have full 20/20 vision. No side affects.
It was so WEIRD though. I felt like I was on an assembly line. The process was so fast.
no but he will… probably of old age the poor fella 😔
Glasses are a hotness superpower
Spoken like someone who has normie glasses
Talk to me when your prescription is -13 or worse, your glasses always have to be special ordered with the most expensive high index lenses, your glasses are physically heavy, and they distort your face so the area around your eyes looks far away.
You go to warby Parker and get the $99 frames but it’s still somehow $230. Even a place like Zenni is $75 for 1.74 lenses (not including frames).
Also you have to be cautious about what frames you pick because the larger your lenses are the thicker they’ll be. You one of those zoomers that wants cute big grandma glasses? Bad plan
Still cute as hell
Thank you for making me feel more confident
I do not have to wear glasses, although I have some reading glasses with a hacked prescription I made.
I find the psychology of glasses somewhat fascinating. I can fake my actual visual limitations in almost every instance using peripheral awareness. I have no clue what it is like for others with worse vision than my own. When I put on glasses adjusted to my vision, it feels like relaxing, like my mind shifts to other interests and awarenesses. But I kinda like my normal visual focus, even if it limits me in some way that could be improved.
I also have a pair of ultra magnification hacked reading glasses I use for soldering very tiny things. I adjust and relax with them just the same.
So really, when I see you in your big thick glasses, first off, I see someone aware of their needs and both willing and able to address them. Looking different is actually looking interesting to me. Secondly, I am curious how my vision measures up and the psychology. I really want to probe and explore self awareness from many angles. Finally, I find nerdiness super attractive although the glasses and look are only a hint at the possibility of what I actually find attractive.
I am a jack of all trades type of person. I am very aware of my limitations. I have no ego or narcissism. I can be very unintentionally intimidating in the broad spectrum of what I am interested in and know. Hidden in this aspect of life, I need someone that can correct me, can tell me no, but also has their own curiosities independent of my own. And this is key to what I really see; when I see someone that looks a little different, I see the potential for an independent mind. I see someone that might have hobbies, and interests. Someone that may not be totally absorbed in simple friends or fixated on some fantasy future expectations. I see the life catalyst that pushes a person to explore within themselves incrementally across their years of existence. I see the potential for someone I can respect and someone that can tell me no with substance and understanding. That is what is truly attractive. Looks fade, but friends first and forever.
So you see, glasses say a lot more than one might imagine. It infers much about a person before we’ve even met. I pick up on the details and it is the implied meaning behind them that I value. These are not some judgmental expectations or anything like that. I am only perceptively aware of the potential and it is the potential that I explore with an open mind. That is what I actually find attractive. It has nothing to do with the aesthetics of those cute glasses. Conformity is ugly and boring in almost all instances. Differents are who make life interesting; so much potential is hidden just under the surface of different.
Tldr, Jake is tryina fuck
De facto can’t. Physically disabled in social isolation and too easily harmed by such physical interaction. Like right now I wake up after only sleeping 5 hours. My spine feels like a twisted towel. I can barely move. I write a few words at a time with long pauses you can never see between the words as I try and twist and turn against the pain until I can get up through the tears. And this is a good day. One of my best. I am haunted by the knowledge of how fast I am degrading and what that will mean.
I come here to escape that reality. Here is the only place I can exist as me; as some simulacrum of who I was because in the real world I am a hollow shell in extreme pain, ridiculously fragile. I don’t want to make anyone watch me fall apart. I have nothing to offer anyone but burden. I can’t be fixed. I can’t get anyone to even fully diagnose the problem. Such is life after barely surviving a broken neck and back. Sex would be suicidally inducing levels of frustrating and I could never sleep with someone else in a bed with how I must move around constantly to keep from locking up entirely and losing my remaining mobility. So while there may be some element I am drawing on from such an emotional place that rings true to your accusation, there is nothing I have that can back that up. Reminding me of this is a little hurtful. Like telling me I can’t exist and oppressing the last outlet of humanness that remains a thread of me that did not die at the hands of a terrible driver while riding a bicycle to work 2/26/14
I will be with you there soon.
-7 and deteriorating like a mother fucker.
Yup, same. - 7.75 and -8.25 plus astigmatism on both sides. The last lenses, which weren’t even the most expensive ones, including the health insurance benefit cost me nearly 700 Euros.
Does Europe have options that break the luxottica stranglehold?
I have some major qualms with zenni optical, warby Parker, etc but the fact of the matter is that luxottica/essilor had a stranglehold on many independent opticians, places like Walmart and target, chain stores like LensCrafters, etc and drove prices up substantially. Those other places have issues but they bring costs down substantially
My newest glasses I got last week. -15, -15.25, astigmatism both eyes, prism. Warby Parker frames were $99 and 1.74 index lenses brought to 230, with insurance it was $130 because they pay for frames. Zenni would’ve been even cheaper because they have frames super cheap and the 1.74 index for like $75 but warby Parker has actual stores near me where I can get an exam and also get the glasses adjusted if necessary.
Whereas a few years ago I was in the same boat as you. My script was closer to -13.75 then but the local optician only had luxottica brands: Gucci, Ray ban, etc. a few no name ones that still cost like $150 instead of $250-300. High index lenses were like $3-400. Insurance would bring the $6-800 glasses down to 4-600
Someday I’ll get implantable contact lenses. They recently approved the ones that correct astigmatism in the USA and can correct up to -20. No insurance coverage though. “Cosmetic”. $5-7000 per eye. Sigh
I don’t even know tbh. Never heard of Luxottica before. After a quick search I found that they manufacture Ray Ban, Oakley and other brands. They’re very available here as well but I have no idea what conditions apply to what optometrists.
Thought about LASIK but I think my sight is already to bad for that, so maybe ICL might be an option but with 4,5 - 7k I won’t be able to have it done soon.
Not just that, but you’re absolutely blind without your glasses. Someone sexily takes them off to look at you sexily, you’re now squinting and can barely see their face. You wake up in the morning and either put on your glasses or pick up your phone and put it right next to your face otherwise you can’t see it.
There’s a reason why any scene where an actor wears glasses they have essentially zero prescription, unless the goal is to make someone look nerdy. (Aside: Stephen Root is an incredible actor!) In fact, it gets even more ridiculous. There are pictures of Brad Pitt wearing glasses going all the way back to the 1990s. But, when he’s in a movie role he’s wearing contacts and then has zero-prescription glasses on.
You rep a -13 in both eyes? Ouch, my -9 is bad enough, and I feel you in the pain of everything relating to glasses is very custom and very expensive, I get the extra bonus of I’m a large human, at 6 foot 6 and that reduces the small selection of frames i can choose from even further, as so many just don’t fit my large head.
Laser correction won’t really help in these extreme cases, no?
230 bucks? I usually paid twice that. Then I spent 7000 bucks on getting ICLs implanted. The years later my eyes got worse again so now I’m wearing glasses again plus I’m a bit farsighted from the ICLs.
But those glasses are only at -2 dpt and are so comparatively cheap that I’m still saving money over my expected lifespan.
So. Fucking. Worth. It.
Warby Parker, Zenni optical, eyebuydirect, etc are finally breaking the luxottica monopoly. 5-6 years ago my glasses were easily 2-3x that
Very jealous of the ICLs. I need the toric kind (or to also get lasik or also continue wearing glasses/contacts) and the last quote I got was 5-7k per eye. It should be covered by insurance, ridiculous
*“Optional” glasses are a hotness super power.
Real glasses are more about how you see than how you look.
: Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys enters the chat :
