I had been mentally ready for Lasik for a few years. But I had my two sons fairly close together, and women can’t have Lasik while pregnant or nursing because their hormones can change the shape of the eye.
Lasik, an acronym for “Laser-Assisted In Situ Keratomileusis,” has been around for decades but wasn’t perfected until the last 15 years or so. It’s now so easy, all you need is a few thousand dollars and an hour.
So, as soon as I was done nursing my youngest for a couple months (the advised wait time) I asked around and found that Dr. Mark Volpicelli, an ophthalmologist based on Castro Street with more than 9,200 laser eye surgeries under his belt, came highly recommended.
I made an appointment to be evaluated at his office. Before my appointment I consulted my father-in-law, who happens to be an ophthalmologist. He looked at Dr. Volpicelli’s qualifications online and approved, with the caveat that being evaluated by the surgeon himself before the surgery is crucial.
Dr. Volpicelli did, indeed, see me himself. A number of tests deemed that I was qualified for Wavefront Lasik, the state-of-the-art in laser vision correction. Wavefront makes the procedure highly individualized and has been shown to have even better results than standard Lasik. I made an appointment on the spot.
I arrived at the office half an hour before the surgery was scheduled. The nurse and Dr. Volpicelli re-did some of the tests I had undergone a month previous, to make sure the results matched and nothing about my eyes had changed. Many drops were administered, most importantly the numbing drops.
The doctor took a pad of paper and a computer disc with him from the exam room and told the nurse, Gigi Dovigi, he would do a few more calculations and then load the machine.
Dovigi said I should look at the clock in the operating room before lying down. When I sat up, I would be able to see, she said. I think I half believed her.
She had me put down my glasses — for the last time. She guided me to the operating room, telling me to watch out for a cord taped to the floor, which of course I could barely see. I laid flat on a bench next to the laser machine.
Dovigi asked me if I was cold, which I was, so she put a blanket over me. She then gave me a teddy bear to hold on to, which I regarded skeptically. Once the procedure started, I was still tense, despite the Valium, and I found holding on to her hand and hearing her encouraging words to be very comforting.
Dr. Volpicelli swung the machine over my face and directed me to look at the blinking red light. He put a couple pieces of tape over my left eye and held my right eyelids open with a small device. He added some more numbing drops, then used a sort of suction cup to hold my eyeball steady.
Finally, it was time for the cut. It was hard to tell what exactly was happening. But there was a moment when I saw some movement across my eyeball and I thought, “Oh my gosh, that’s him lifting the flap!” I decided it was time to start thinking happy thoughts; for me, that entails ambling through a meadow in Yosemite Valley.
Dr. Volpicelli described each step in detail: He spreads the eyelids, administers drops, secures the eyeball, more drops, has me look at the light and makes sure my eye is on the right track, then makes the incision, then directs the laser and pushes a button.
It was all over very quickly. I’m sure I was lying on that bench for less than 10 minutes. And I didn’t feel a thing.
When I sat up, I could read the clock.
After another check of my eyes back in the exam room, I was free to go. It had only been an hour since my husband dropped me off and left with our kids. I could clearly see my little boy waving to me across the parking lot, with no glasses and no contacts.
Dovigi had given me a small bag full of eye drops and instructions for when and how to administer them: artificial tears every half hour for the first day and every hour for the next several days, plus antibiotic and anti-inflammatory drops twice that first day and four times a day for the following five days. I had a scheduled check-up the next day, Saturday morning, and a follow-up one week later.
A small percentage of people who get Lasik have poor outcomes: blurred vision, poor night vision and even vision loss. Estimates are 1 percent or less for severe problems. Dr. Volpicelli says that in 9,200 surgeries, he had only one complication, and that was an eye infection, treatable with antibiotics.
As of this writing, it’s been 10 days since the surgery, and my eyes feel great. At my one-week follow-up, Dr. Volpicelli said my vision was 20-20. It still seems unbelievable to me: After totally relying on contacts or glasses for 27 years, I can now see nearly perfectly, unassisted, after a 10-minute, painless procedure. It feels like a miracle.
