I have suffered from poor vision my entire life.
When I was in second grade I got glasses.
Being the first kid in your class with glasses makes you the target of a lot of ridicule.
Being called four-eyes is no fun.
Neither is having to make decisions like should you go swimming with glasses on and risk losing them, wearing ugly goggles to protect them, or diving in and not being able to see.
I got contact lenses in high school.
They provided their own obstacles.
I would lose them, fail to keep them clean, and they were expensive.
The minute I first heard about Lasik I knew I needed to learn more.
An eye doctor who using lasers reshapes the eye's cornea performs Lasik surgery.
This provides improved vision and therefore eliminates the need for contacts or glasses.
While the procedure seems like it is new, the patent was granted in 1989, and it has been popular since the mid or late 90's when it became a reliable technology that many people opted to try.
The day of my surgery I was really nervous.
It certainly wasn't because I was going to miss wearing glasses.
However, I've never loved seeing doctors, and knowing that I was undergoing a procedure on my eyes gave me a queasy feeling.
I was even more on edge when I read the forms that they make you sign which indicate the absolute worst possible scenario's should the surgery not go well.
That being said my doctor assured me that he had done this hundreds of times and that the next surgery went wrong would be his first.
I knew that he was probably right because I had read a study by The American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery that found that more than 90 percent of patients were satisfied with Lasik.
What I found even more amazing was the high percentage that never needed to use glasses again.
This is so amazing because as people age generally their vision declines.
To be able to have surgery done while you are young and healthy and reap the rewards of the procedure 50 years later is incredible.
My only complaint about Lasik is that my eyes sometimes felt dry in the months immediately after the surgery.
A couple of my colleagues who have had the procedure noticed the same thing.
While dry eyes are no fun, the condition went away after a few months, and I happily would have dealt with it on a regular basis if it meant no more glasses or contacts.
For some people contact lenses are just a part of their day.
Others don't mind the way glasses look and feel.
For me I didn't like wearing something on my face and in front of my eyes from the day it was determined my vision needed assistance.
After years of complaining and suffering Lasik was a great solution for me.