They say redheads are more sensitive to medicine and while the quality of my redness has been debated it must be said I am indeed bowled right over by most medications.
When I got on anti-virals for my immune function the standard dosage had me curled up in the fetal position sobbing in agony. We had to cut it back twice before I could tolerate it.
So when I went in to get Lasik they told me Iâd be on a Xanax. The nice lady nurse showed me to a dark room before surgery and told me to take the pill.
âCan I start with half?â
She gave a patronizing smile and said, âSure, then we can have you take the other half if itâs not enough.â
âSure,â I agreed in the same tone.
No time passed until I was higher than Iâve ever been in my life which is saying something. She was astonished when she collected me that I was as floppy as a ragdoll and barely sensible enough to walk ten feet.
I was hustled into the surgery room and laid down. Iâd been shown the room previously, and the teddy bear Iâd hold along with the tech who would hold my hand. I had privately thought those touches were a bit silly.
Then I was lying there disconnected from reality by a wide margins with thoughts floating along on puffy technicolor clouds and the teddy bear was the grandest most comforting thing I could imagine. I loved the nurse holding my hand.
I did my best to focus on the machine and the dot above me, but even now I can barely recall the experience. Just the slightly unpleasant pressure on my eyes that I didnât care about in the slightest. I also the smell of burning meat but I was high enough not to care that it was me on the menu.
Twice the tech shook my shoulder and insistently reminded me, âLook up, donât fall asleep, you need to look up.â
I tried to obey but I wished only to curl up with the teddy bear in a perfect pharmaceutical haze.
Afterward the nurse had looked at the half tablet I had left of Xanax and doubtfully said, âYou could take it at home if it wears off too soon.â
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just a reminder that thereâs a clip of charles leclerc where he says he just doesnât wear his prescription glasses bc he doesnât need them but with them he âcan see more perfectlyâ
like sir?? you are a RACECAR DRIVER. youâre going 200 mph. PLEASE wear your glasses while driving your fighter jet of a car. or if you really hate wearing glasses THAT much. I think you can afford lasik.
On 3rd March I went for my LASIK evaluation appointment.
Before they can even consider doing the surgery, they run a lot of tests to make sure your eyes can actually handle it. And when I say a lot⊠I mean a lot. My eyes were scanned by different machines at least six times and I genuinely lost count of how many times they put drops in my eyes.
At one point they had to dilate my pupils, which alone took about thirty minutes. Once those drops kick in your pupils become huge and everything goes blurry.
Most of the tests were basically machines scanning my eyes and making these weirdly beautiful maps of the cornea. One of them is called a Pentacam scan, which creates a 3D map of the front of your eye.. showing the shape and thickness of the cornea.
Those colourful circles are basically a topographic map of the eye. The colours show how the cornea curves and how thick it is in different places. They check these to make sure the cornea is healthy and strong enough for LASIK.
After about two and a half hours of tests, I finally met the doctor who will actually be doing the surgery. She went through all the reports and said everything looked really good... she said my "corneas look beautiful, they are healthy and thicker than average"...
Because of that, she actually recommended bladeless Contoura Vision instead of standard LASIK. Itâs a slightly more advanced version that uses scans to guide the laser.
So apparently I have very nice corneas.
I never in my life thought I would receive a compliment about my corneas, but here we are.
Conclusion: It is now a medically confirmed fact that my corneas are beautiful⊠and also thicc.
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âLiterally the worst decision I ever made in my entire life.â
LASIK is marketed as a miracle cure for vision problems. But behind the glossy promises lies a billion-dollar industry built on questionable research and incomplete information.
The surgeons who perform LASIK often tout a customer satisfaction percentage rate in the high 90s and a complication rate of less than 1 percent, backed by an FDA survey. âThatâs less than 1 percent of anythingâinfection, dry eye pain, halosâitâs an all-in risk of less than 1 percent,â says Ashley Brissette, MD, an ophthalmologist who performs LASIK and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. âThere [are] very, very few surgeries that can quote that same level of complication.â
Other experts who have reviewed the research on LASIK complicationsâbeginning all the way back in the late 1990s, when it was first put on the market, until nowâsuggest bad outcomes happen at a rate closer to 30 percent or higher. Among those experts is the FDA regulator who initially helped get LASIK on the market, Morris Waxler, PhD.
Waxler was the branch chief of the FDA who oversaw the approval of LASIK back in 1999. Most recently, in 2022, the FDA proposed new draft guidance for manufacturers, in part because of âconcerns that some patients are not receiving and/or understanding information regarding the benefits and risks of LASIK devices.â Years later, the draft guidance still hasnât been implemented, partly due to protests from LASIK surgeons, alleges Waxler. âItâs a dishonest enterprise,â he claims.
From Waxlerâs perspective, the data that originally got LASIK approved was based on weak science. Regulators had incomplete information, and, most importantly, the approval process didnât involve patients directly, he says. The studies were also too short in duration and only followed up with patients at 12 months post-op, which means they werenât able to capture the long-term effects of the surgery or the rate of regression. (Itâs a problem that persists today. The FDA survey that yielded a complication rate of less than 1 percent? It checked in with patients at one, three, and six months.)
Getting LASIK approved by the FDA wasnât as rigorous a process as one might assume. âItâs not like a typical clinical trial,â Waxler says. When going to the FDA for approval, presenters have more control over how a study is designed and the information they share with regulators. Plus, since surgeons already had access to lasers for other eye surgeries, LASIK was being performed illegally, so the FDA was incentivized to approve the procedure quickly so it could be regulated.
It wasnât until after Waxler retired from his position at the FDA in the early 2000s and received a call from Paula Cofer, who was dealing with LASIK complications of her own, that he realized there was more to the industry than meets the eye. The âpain, suffering, and intractable consequencesâ he heard about from Cofer and other patients led him to contact his old colleagues at the FDA, but âthey were very dismissive,â he says.
After talking with Cofer and other LASIK patients, Waxler changed his mind on the surgery and looked back at everything that had gone wrong in getting it on the market. He thought he got the full story when LASIK was going through the approval process. âThat turned out not to be the case at all,â Waxler says.
The Hidden Risks Of LASIK
So, what exactly are the dangers of LASIK and related corrective vision surgeries? The most common symptom to expect following LASIK is dry eye, which is something a performing surgeon likely wouldnât dispute. It goes âhand in handâ with LASIK and similar procedures, says Dr. Brissette, who is also a dry eye specialist.
With LASIK, the number is steep: Up to 75 percent of patients complained of chronic dry eye at least four years later, according to a 2025 study in Ophthalmic Research. Dry eye after LASIK is a result of nerve damage caused by the laser, according to Pedram Hamrah, MD, a cornea specialist who treats dry eye and neuropathic pain at Tufts Medical Center. (And women tend to experience more severe dry eye symptoms, possibly due to how different hormone levels affect tear secretion, per a separate study in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.)
But sometimes the nerve damage doesnât stop at dry eye. Between 10.5 and 13.3 percent of patients experience neuropathic corneal painâa chronic condition in which the brain sends frequent, abnormal pain signals to the eyeâone year after LASIK or similar surgeries, according to a study published this year in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. At six months, an even higher numberâ24 percentâof patients report experiencing ocular pain, per a recent study in Ophthalmology.
Thereâs also the potential to develop visual distortions like glare, halos, starbursts, and double vision, according to the FDAâs 2022 draft guidance, which states that 41 percent of patients experience these symptoms six months post-op. The visual distortions can be caused by scar tissue, changes in how the eye focuses when the pupils dilate in lower light, and corneal bulging. (Corneal ectasia is a type of corneal bulging, and your risk may increase if you become pregnant after getting LASIK, even years later, per a study published in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology.)
You also might notice more floaters, which occur in between 20 and 85 percent of patients, per an older study in Cornea. This could be a result of suction during the procedure.
This is another hard truth: LASIK might not workâand if it does, it might not last. In a 10-year follow-up study, researchers found that over 75 percent of LASIK customers whose myopia was corrected experienced regression of one diopter or more, according to the Korean Journal of Ophthalmology. Initially, though, over 95 percent of patients reach 20/20 vision, says Dr. Brissette. (Another thing to keep in mind: LASIK cannot stop the natural aging of the eye, which means that it wonât prevent you from needing reading glasses down the line, Dr. Brissette notes.)
Beyond the statistics, though, are real humans grappling with these effects and more.
Sarah McSwan, 45, got LASIK in both eyes in 2020. âLiterally the worst decision I ever made in my entire life,â she says of going through with the surgery. Instead of getting up from the operating table with clear vision on that August day, McSwan had blurry vision and âexcruciatingâ pain once her meds wore off, she describes.
âIn the very beginning, I would walk down the hallway and the breeze would burn my eyes just from walking,â she says, adding that it felt as if there were constant smoke or sunscreen in her eyes. They burned. They itched intensely. They were gritty. Today, even after years of seeing specialists and trying new treatments, âit feels like thereâs always a foreign object in them,â she says, or âlike the top layer of my eyes is scorched or charred.â McSwan never achieved 20/20 vision.
...
Understanding The Realities Of LASIK Complications
In her consultations, Dr. Brissette says that glares and halos are ânormal phenomena of the optics of the eyeâ and can occur while your eyes heal post-LASIK, but that they should resolve over time. She adds that symptoms like dry eye and visual disturbances are âpart of the healing process.â
For Kirsten Martin, 37, who got LASIK in November 2022, the visual disturbances and other vision changes were so serious that she spent her first six months following the surgery âin shock,â she says. âThe halos were out of controlâit felt like somebody was lighting fire to the nerves between my eyes.â Martin also had persistent halos and floaters at night, which led to nightmares for the first few weeks. âItâs a lot to take in,â she says.
Her experience was a striking contrast to what sheâd heard before the procedure. After her consultation, Martin was left under the impression that it was going to be âthis easy surgeryâ and that âI was an easy candidateâthat I would just be in and out.â
People who have gotten LASIK are also at risk for a flap dislocationâwhich could happen at any point for the rest of their lives. This is because the flap created by the laser is attached âwith the strength of a contact lens,â according to Dr. MacKay. Going swimming, playing contact sports, or rubbing your eyes vigorously could potentially dislodge the flapâthough Dr. Brissette says that flap dislocation occurrences are âextremely rare.â Studies say that flap displacement happens in anywhere from 1 to 8 percent of patients.
Following her LASIK surgery in January 2019, Kat Woodhouse, 57, experienced three back-to-back flap detachments in her left eye, all while her right eye was infected. âI couldnât see anything,â she says. âI saw lights, shadows, colors, and extremely blurry shapes.â
Woodhouse couldnât drive or work and was in âsevere pain,â she says. âIt felt like someone poked me in the eye with a needle.â Her eyes were extremely sensitive and couldnât handle most light sources, from LEDs to sunlight. Eventually, she needed to get three stitches in her eye to hold the flap in place and was offered Motrin for the pain. Today, Woodhouse has cataracts, a vision-impairing condition that LASIK patients were found to develop seven years earlier than non-LASIK patients in a recent study in International Ophthalmology.
All LASIK patients also lose contrast sensitivity, which is the ability to distinguish between shades of gray, Dr. MacKay says. Their surgeons wouldnât spot this because the main test done after LASIKâa standard vision testâasks patients to read black letters off a white background, which has a high contrast.
This might also explain why thereâs such a discrepancy in the reported rates of happy customers, according to Dr. MacKay. âThey count a complication only if the eye cannot see 20/40ânot 20/20âwithout glasses in a room where theyâre looking at a chart with straight black letters on a white background,â she explains. âYou can have a patient in horrible pain, who got an infection under the flap, whoâs totally disabled because of starbursts and halos and can no longer work, hates what happened, is suing the surgeon, but itâs not a complication.â
Essentially, you may not consider your laser eye surgery a success, but your surgeon might. (Dr. Brissette would not consider that example scenario a success, she says. She factors in the âcomplex systemâ that makes up vision, including how the brain and eyes work together, and overall patient satisfaction.)
