# Final Summary of my eye surgery ICL and PRK



## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

An update and summary, I decided to start a new thread because my old one was lengthy and I didn't want this key outcome summary to disappear among all the posts.

This is the original thread:
http://www.preparedsociety.com/forum/f74/finally-addressing-my-vision-15753/index3.html

I will go into as much _reasonable detail in plain language _as I can muster since I know many others are also thinking about eye surgery to increase their preparedness.
It may even sound a bit repetitive to those who are familiar with eye surgery but I want to make everything perfectly clear and understandable.

Before I go into details also let me state that my prescription was complicated as was the shape of my eyes, especially on the left.
So as a result some very high end techniques were necessary as was a 2nd surgery on one eye..
Others will likely have a much faster, cheaper and easier experience.

When I originally got my surgery I had strong myopia (near sightedness) on both eyes.
On my left also significant astigmatism and on the right slight astigmatism.

Pre-surgery Contact lenses would restore me to 20/20 or 20/25 on the left and 20/20 or sometimes even 20/15 on the right (at least early in the day when lenses where fresh and clean and my eye was rested and making plenty of tears)

Based on this the first Ophthalmologist I spoke to was unsure he even wanted to do surgery since i could see so well with contact lenses, but I often have to wear protective masks at work and be on supplied breathing air.

This dries out the lenses greatly degrading my vision when I need it the most.
(your not even supposed to wear contacts with such masks but I did anyway; this is because glasses did not perform as well for me, as the shape of my face pushed my high prescription glasses further away from my eyeballs... and so glasses always gave me a bit of tunnel vision)

So the doctor relented and prescribed me ICL (finding me a poor candidate for LASIK and PRK due to shape +thickness of my eyes especially the greater amount of prescription needed on the left).

I had one eye done first the left, the worse one.., ICL which is a technique where they insert an artificial lens over your natural lens.... then 5 months later ICL on the _right_ and then one month after that date PRK touch up on the _left_.

It has been approx 1 year total now
So both my eyes received ICL to take care of my significant myopia, which is what ICL does well.

My left got it in jan 13 and my right in April 13.

Outcomes:

The right:
The outcome on my right is fantastic, in terms of long distance vision, went to 20/15 (!) vision from unaided 20/400.

Since I now have a second lens internal in my eye over my natural lens (ICL) the focal length of both has added so I now cannot readily focus at close and need reading glass assistance on the right eye.

Cannot see the front sight post of carbine clearly and this had limited my ability to perform with iron sights as the right is my shooting eye.

I still think this is a good trade-off since I have never seen this well with my right eye in the distance . Even with contacts I could only match it when wore fresh and newly made toric contacts and my eye was perfectly rested and had good tear production.

So even with perfect contacts as the day wore on and they dry out my vision would not be as good as it is now and I have electroptics on all my rifles now (AIMpoint PRO and EOtech 512) to address my inability to focus up close on my front sight post.

Left eye:

After the original ICL I achieved 20/40 or 20/50 vision (coming from approx 20/800!), which was a little disappointing to me at first but given where my eye was before it was a great outcome.
But the ICL only addressed myopia ( nearsightedness)and not my astigmatism. 
So the doctors felt and I agreed to add PRK surgery as a touch up and we expected a significant betternment from that.

This had been understood as likely necessary right from the beginning due to my significant astigmatism.
PRK since it had to do only a smaller amount of correction was no longer disallowed on my left eye ( as it would have been had we tried to correct everything including the myopia with PRK from the beginning)

The day of my left eye PRK they also offered to give me PRK on the right as a two-fer and correct my very slight astigmatism on the right eye on the same day.

I declined as my vision was absolutely perfect except at close range .... and this the PRK would not address ,or only address at great risk, to my fantastic long range vision.

I am glad I did decline to also have astigmatism correction w/ PRK done on the right, as the PRK recovery on the left was lengthy, painful and fraught with poor vision.

On 1 August I received PRK as a "touch-up" to address my astigmatism on the left. The PRK touch up result was not good. 
Especially at first. my vision being much worse than before, after just the ICL.

My vision was poor for a couple months. If I had both eyes done at the same time I definitely could not have driven a car for approx 1.5 to 2 months.

Anyone who does PRK, I STRONGLY recommend to do one eye at a time ONLY! Unless you can afford to not go to work for a couple of months.

Later my left eye stabilized at a level approx the same as pre- PRK surgery (post ICL) for distance.

Close range miraculously improved, and i can read w/o reading glasses now via my left eye.

I say miraculously because this was not predicted and they were only supposed to go after the astigmatism.. so my focal lenght should have been untouched and my near vision should not have been able to improve at all from the PRK touch up.

To this day I think maybe something was possibly set wrong with the settings or when they told me to "look wherever just straight ahead", I moved my eye to straight ahead when before it was focused on a light slightly off to left forward. maybe this was wrong thing to do and maybe the machine had already "pegged" my eye for the original position??

Either way, now 6.5 months after the PRK touch up and 13 months after my first ICL I notice my vision on the left is still _slowly_ improving.

I am now confident that it is better on the left long distance than after the ICL only. Not tons better but a slight bit better. 
Added to my better left eye vision up close compared to before the PRK touch-up ,I think I can finally call the PRK touch up a moderate success, something I was unsure of for many many months.

Well was it worth it?

Yes, its given me something approaching normal vision w/o lenses or glasses for the first time since my early teens, but it was not a trivial process and I have been told on the open market for those who pay 100% out of pocket, this would have been approx. $12,000 worth of surgery (5k for each eye ICL + 2k for 1 eye PRK)

I hope this write-up may help inform others who are currently weighing options.


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## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

Hmmm.. I guess it wasnt as interesting as I thought...


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## hiwall (Jun 15, 2012)

Hey, I'm impressed! Sounds like you went through alot! I had simple lasik many years ago(about 15) and it was the best thing I ever did. A great prep item!


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## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

yet another Update first surgery was 2.5 years ago.
touch up surgery was almost 2 years ago.

My left has stabilized at 20/20 (day) to 20/30 (night)
my right has stabilized to 20/10 (day) 20/20 (night)


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## Toffee (Mar 13, 2012)

That's fantastic! My husband finally agreed to get glasses for his myopia. He only has to wear them at night during stormy weather and when he's on the gun range, though.


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## Tweto (Nov 26, 2011)

I'm very impressed with the effort you went through to get your eyes fixed. From what I could read about your uncorrected vision, surgery would be the only solution. What did the doctor say about presbyopia?


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## IlliniWarrior (Nov 30, 2010)

wow, they certainly have come a long way with the various eye surgeries .... there was nothing for someone like you when I had my LASIK done ....


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## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

Tweto said:


> I'm very impressed with the effort you went through to get your eyes fixed. From what I could read about your uncorrected vision, surgery would be the only solution. What did the doctor say about presbyopia?


If you do ICL for Myopia (near sightedness) like I did, it may exascerbate presbyopia.

I had no significant age related far sightnedness (that I noticed) prior to the ICL.
But the addtion of the extra minmal focal lenght via the ICL lens onto my own makes close-in reading more difficult.
As presbyopia sets in, I will likely need higher ditopter reading glasses than I would have w/o ICL.

But thats fair tradeoff for me since off-the-shelf readng glasses will be available even SHTF.

And the ability to drive with confidence , spot dangers etc in any weather even when tired is a trade off I will make gladly


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