Rhodes Family Page: I Have New Eyes!

I have to take a few minutes here to record a momentous thing that has happened! I CAN SEE!!!

So first a little history...
I got my first pair of glasses right before I started third grade. We had just moved into our new house on Mequon Ave and I had to start at a new elementary school. It was a GREAT time to get glasses and a bad perm which really started me out on the right foot as a "cool kid". (insert laughter) After the hair settled down and I just had the glasses, at least I managed to make a couple of friends. The glasses phase continued until sixth grade when I convinced my parents I was ready for contacts. I have been wearing contacts for the past 22 years.

My eyes went from bad to worse as time went on. I hadn't really had any complaints with contacts until about two years ago. It seemed like we just couldn't get my prescription spot on. I went to a three different eye doctors over the course of two years and nothing helped. It seemed like I had finally found a contact and prescription that was good enough and had been wearing it for about the past year, and then Acuvue stopped making that lens in my prescription! (Apparently the level of badness that my eyes were wasn't that common and it wasn't selling well enough to keep making. Sigh.) So then I was back to the drawing board. Over this last Summer I had decided that enough was enough, and I decided to go to Idaho Falls (about a half hour away) and get screened for LASIK. There is a place there that a lot of people I know had gone to and said it was great. So I set up the free consultation and took my kids with me one day in the Summer and had my free appointment. They only spent about 30 minutes checking my eyes. At the end, the nurse said, "I am going to have to talk to the doctor about this and see what he thinks." Okay, I thought, is that good or bad? Well she called me about an hour later and broke the news: "The doctor says you aren't a candidate for LASIK."

WHAT THE HECK?! So you're telling me that because my eyes are SOOO bad, I'm the one who ISN'T a candidate?! That doesn't seem fair. So I was pretty depressed about that for a couple months. I decided to go to a new eye doctor because he had just moved into our neighborhood. I talked to him about the rejection I got from the Idaho Falls Eye Center. He recommended that I got to Utah and check out a place called Hoopes Vision. I had also heard about this place from the PTO president at school so it was on my mind. I decided it was worth a shot! I called them right before we left for Wisconsin and scheduled a consultation for October 19th. The worst part was that I had to wear my glasses the entire week before my appointment. I was having flashbacks to grade school!

Finally, the day arrived. My appointment was on Friday the 19th at 1:30pm, so Josh and I dropped the kids off at school and headed down to Utah. The plan was to have Josh's sister pick up the kids after school and take them to her house, where Josh's mom would then pick them up after work and take them to her house to spend the night. We were planning on coming back by Saturday afternoon.

We got to Utah for my appointment at 1:30 and checked in. Over the next four hours I think they checked every possible aspect of my eyes. Cornea thickness, vision, tear production, and so on. I'm not saying this was a bad thing. I was really happy that they were doing a very thorough investigation. It really made me wonder how much they possibly even checked in the Idaho Falls place in that 30 minutes before they rejected me! At about 4:45, the doctor who had been evaluating me said he needed to go check with Dr. Hoopes (the main boss man!) about my eyes. "Here comes the rejection..." I thought. But guess what! He came back and said, "We can do it!" And I said, "LASIK??" thinking he was confused about what they could do. There are other surgeries like PRK and ICL that I thought maybe would be options. But he said they could do LASIK! I was overjoyed. I went to talk with the person who did the scheduling and saw that they had an appointment on the following Monday at 12:40. I said, "I'll see you Monday."

Then there was the small matter of our children to attend to. Josh and I stayed Friday night at Chris and Holly's house as planned, but then on Saturday at about noon Josh drove back up to Idaho. I got picked up by Kamrie and taken back to her and Stacey's house. We spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday shopping and having a fun girls weekend. Then it was Monday.... and I got a little nervous. What if something went wrong? What if I ended up BLIND?! I am sure everyone has these thoughts when they are about to have their eyeballs fried with a laser. But that morning I saw a double rainbow which I took as a sign of good luck.

So Josh met me and Stacey at the Hoopes Vision place at 12:30 and in I went. Stacey went back to work. Josh had dropped the kids off at school Monday morning at 8 and then headed right now to Utah to meet us. (It was a lot of driving for Josh this weekend.) He got there right in time!

We went in and got all set for the surgery. We paid the nice $4900 charge (thank you HSA card), then headed in to the prep room to have my eyes checked one last time. Then they gave me a little surgery type hair net hat to put on and little booties to wear over my shoes. Then they gave me a Valium. I had never had Valium. I decided I really liked it though and was instantly more calm. haha I even was a little wobbly as they escorted me into the laser room. Not like, unable to walk, but just a little tipsy. They had me lay down where the first laser was. This first laser is the one that made the corneal "flap." It only took about 10 minutes to prepare my eyes with numbing drops and then create that flap. I have little bit of bruising on my whites of my eyes right now from that part because they had to put this suction cup thing around my eyes and it made my vision go dark (that's normal) but they had a hard time centering it just right.

After that laser was done, I actually stood up and walked a few steps over to the next laser. This was the one that actually fried my eyeballs. The doctor's main job was to manually lift that flap up and open my eye so that he could aim the laser at it! The actual lasering part took only 15 seconds! 15 seconds to fix 22 years worth of deteriorating vision. That's pretty amazing. After it was done, he put my flap back down and then rinsed out my eyes. Then I basically stood up and walked out! I was able to see pretty clearly right away! Everything just looked a little hazy and my eyes felt dry. That's the number one thing that happens post LASIK is that you have dry eyes because the cornea is losing it's nerve endings for a few weeks and those help produce natural tears.

After a few minutes they checked my eyes again and I passed the test! I could see pretty well! Then they sent me on my way with some sunglasses and some eye drops and a free tote bag. (Most expensive tote bag I've ever gotten. lol) I joked "This is a $5,000 tote bag" to Josh and then doctor laughed and said, "Oh yes, it's all about the tote bag. The vision was just the bonus."

Then we drove and got me some food from Zupa's and then went back to Chris and Holly's. I took a long nap (as I was instructed to do) and when I woke up we just hung out at home with Chris and Holly and their adorable twin boys who are now 8 months old. They also have this massage chair that I spent a while in that evening. It was like being at a health spa.

The next morning we had to go back at 8:30am for my post-op check up. They said everything looked great and I was ready to head home! So we drove back to Idaho and got home about 1:30pm. My eyes felt pretty dry on days 1 and 2 but today is Thursday and it's been a lot better. I am still supposed to use eye drops for a while though. So that is my amazing LASIK story! I feel like going back to the Idaho falls guys and yelling at them for telling me my eyes couldn't be cured. You stink Idaho Eye center!

I am so excited to not have to worry about contacts or glasses anymore! Every night at bedtime I feel so weird just going to sleep with my vision intact and nothing to take out contacts! It's going to be so nice especially when we travel not to have to worry about contacts or glasses! Here are a couple pictures of my eye journey: