After evaluating the real estate listings my agent has been sending me for the past few months, I’ve decided that I did not want to live in the back parts of San Jose since it was the only thing I can afford with only $50k saved up. Instead, I’ve decided to move my housing goals to next year so I can save even more money for a larger down payment.

With that said, I also decided to shift my goals a bit. Since I was moving housing to next year, I took one of my next year’s goals to this year: get LASIK surgery on my eyes so I don’t have to wear glasses anymore.

I started to do my research on LASIK two months ago, understanding all the risks and complications, and stories that were positive and negative about it; in the end, I decided it was something I wanted to do.

How I chose my doctor was actually through a radio commercial. Energy 92.7 has commercials about a LASIK doctor named Dr. Hyver, who did LASIK surgeries for the San Francisco 49ers (a NFL football team). I figured that he must be extremely experienced to have radio commercials, and looking at the reviews on Yelp also helped the case.

I scheduled my appointment at his Daly City office during the last week of July; the evaluation session lasted two hours where my eyes were put through a battery of tests (including a general eye exam) to see if I was qualified for LASIK – which to my excitement that I was. The staff were nice people, and Dr. Hyver handled some of the questions I had that I couldn’t find answers for during my research.

Next came the pricing. My eyesight was around -4.75 to -5.00, and I think the worser your eyes, the higher the price. I was surprised to find my vision health insurance covered LASIK, so $1.3k was dropped from the price, and it came out to exactly $5k for the procedure to be performed on both my eyes. My operation date was Aug 13, or yesterday. Eyedrop antibiotics was prescribed to me, where I would put them in my eyes 24 hours prior to the surgery.

The operation went completely smoothly; the operation area looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, where aliens abduct you and you’re put under all these bright lights (and a few lasers pointing at you). The entire procedure was completely painless, aside from 20 seconds of discomfort from the pressure where an ocular microscope was pressed against my eyes for analysis. Anesthesia was applied to my eyes prior to beginning the operation, so there was completely no pain at all. You do not actually see the lasers beam down to your eye, but you know they’ve touched your eye from a slight burning smell. My favorite part of the surgery was seeing what I called, seeing the light, where right before the laser starts to strike, you see only darkness with this brilliant mix of red and oranges:

(The image shows only reds, but mix that with some orange, and you’re golden.)

I also liked how Dr. Hyver would tell me what he was doing to me before doing it to my eyes, so I knew exactly what was going on during the procedure – no surprises.

After the surgery, my eyes really wanted to stay close, and it was recommended that I keep my eyes closed for four hours. I was able to see, but not completely clearly right after; there was also slight burning and sinus pressure around my eyes. However, after just going to sleep, I’ve woken to see that my sight has completely cleared up, as in I CAN SEE! My night vision seems fine at the moment, and I’m not experiencing some dry eyes, but no irritation for now, or any pain. There are some halos for certain LEDs in my room, however, but I’m told that it should clear up as my eyes begin to heal.

I think that my sight is a little worse than 20/20 at the moment, but I definitely can see everything, and I know that my vision will gradually hit 20/20 or better during months of healing. They estimate that my vision will hit 15/15 or 15/20.

Overall, I’m hugely satisfied with the results so far, but I’ll need more time before I’m completely satisfied to see how my vision changes with the months.

I’ll be able to go into work today without any trouble, and first on my agenda? Lock away my glasses, and don some nice sunglasses that my brother got for me for after when I had the surgery.

So, I guess I can say that I’ve accomplished another one of my goals this year

Edit: For those curious about the equipment used, you can find more info here. The procedure I had was All laser-LASIK Wavefront, meaning that the entire procedure involves all lasers. Some doctors do not use lasers to cut the flap, but use what’s called a microkeratome.