A friend of mine had Lasik eye surgery performed in June (5 months ago) and has a perfect experience so far. No complications and the doctor has been fantastic throughout the entire process.
I have been wanting to get Lasik eye surgery for a long time and, seeing my friend's successful experience, decided to get the surgery (also, I graduated from college in May and can actually afford the procedure now that I have a job). I did some research, visited the same eye doctor as my friend, and scheduled the surgery for January after it was determined that I was a prime candidate. I felt extremely comfortable with the doctor and he is a leader in his field in the Baltimore, MD area.
I made sure to tell the doctor that I am a programmer and stare at a computer screen for far too long everyday. They said it was not an issue and that I was still a prime candidate.
What are your experiences with or opinions of Lasik eye surgery?
I wore glasses since I was a kid, for 15 years. Then a couple of years ago I had LASIK performed, and after a second touch up procedure I ended up with a "perfect" lens on my eye (according to three different doctors). So the LASIK was a success, I see as well without glasses now than with glasses before.
BUT, I never saw too great with my glasses before to begin with. I can totally have a normal life, but I need to be a lot closer (than people with a normal vision) to text to be able to read it. This affects me greatly on my day to day as I'm a developer, and I need to be staring at text on my screen all the time. I can work just fine (larger font, screen closer to me, etc) but the biggest problem of all is, I tend to get my head closer to the screen a lot to see smaller text, consciously or not, and I have ridiculous neck and back pain as a result. I've been suffering this already for a few years. I've been to several eye doctors and all say wearing glasses or more LASIK wouldn't make a difference since "my eye is OK", and of course I've gone to every kind of back expert on Earth. All agree it's a posture issue (doh!) and while a good massage is a relief, the relief doesn't last more than a few hours, so that's not helpful.
Has anyone gone/is going through the same? Any ideas what could I do to improve my vision?
I know all about "stop working every X time and do this and that exercise to relax your back", and would appreciate any "amazing and not-well-known exercises", but I'm mostly interested in improving my vision, if that's at all possible.
I'm getting Lasik eye surgery later in April, and was wondering if anyone out there would be willing to share their experiences with the surgery? Also if anyone has their own tips before the event, that will be greatly appreciated.
I wear glasses and have pretty bad eye sight (-8). I am considering Lasik surgery (in NYC). My research indicates that the procedure is pretty solid but everytime I read about isolated cases that did not work out, it freaks me out. Also the pricing seems to be all over the place - from $399 to $3000 per eye - which also gives me pause. A mature procedure should not have such variations in pricing right? So would appreciate any feedback on this.
Hi HN! I’m Aakash, and I’m a long time HN reader. My cousin Manan and I are excited to share our startup Wyndly (https://www.wyndly.com) with HN today.
Wyndly is focused on making long-term allergy relief convenient through at-home allergy immunotherapy drops and telemedicine. These personalized oral drops train your immune systems to stop reacting to allergy triggers like pollen, pets, or dust.
Manan is an ear-nose-and-throat surgeon and allergy doctor, and in his physical practice, he’s treated thousands of patients with at-home allergy drops, a form of allergy immunotherapy. During allergy immunotherapy, you gradually introduce your immune system to your allergy triggers. Over time, your immune system learns to tolerate these allergy triggers and stops reacting to them. For patients, this means greatly reduced allergy symptoms and long-term relief [1] without any other medicine for years after patients finish their immunotherapy.
While allergy drops are 80% of allergy immunotherapy in some European countries, in the United States, allergy drops are just 5.9% of allergy immunotherapy prescriptions [2] and are really only available in university hospitals like Johns Hopkins, University of Pittsburgh, and West Virginia University [3] [4] [5].
Part of the reason for their limited availability is physician training, and another part is the health insurance system’s incentives. Most allergy doctors were trained on allergy shots, and prescribe what they are most experienced with. Additionally, health insurance programs incentivize prescribing allergy shots.
In his medical training, Manan trained on both allergy drops and shots. When Manan gave his patients the choice between at-home allergy drops and allergy shots, his patients always chose drops, which are safer, convenient, and don’t require needles [6].
When Covid-19 hit Denver in March 2020, Manan switched all of his allergy drop patients to online care to continue treatment. After shelter-in-place was lifted, his patients continued online care due to the convenience, which told us one thing—patients preferred and were comfortable with telemedicine for allergy care. And that's why we started Wyndly.
We’re trying to make allergy immunotherapy convenient and affordable, so that any one of the 60 million people in America suffering from allergies has the opportunity to get lifelong relief—just like braces straighten your teeth and Lasik fixes your vision.
We’ve done our best to make our patient experience as easy as possible. First, we learn more about you and your allergy history. Then, our medical team creates a personalized treatment plan with treatment sent straight to your door. Most patients notice benefits at 6 months, and some patients have reported allergy symptom relief as early as 6 weeks [7]. Patients lock-in lifelong allergy relief after a few years [1]. Throughout this time, we stay in touch with the patient to work with them towards allergy relief.
Please let us know if you have more questions or feedback. We love talking about the science behind allergy immunotherapy, our treatment model, and what we’re doing. We're happy to answer any questions!
I am a long term HN member writing under an anonymous account as this is a somewhat personal issue for me.
I have been short-sighted (myopia of about -5.00 in both eyes) all my life, and generally wear both contact lenses and glasses. I find contact lenses really irritate my eyes when programming (dry eyes due to less blinking when on computer) and am fed up of issues with glasses (steaming, cleaning, etc) and recently have been considering laser eye surgery.
I live in the UK, and have booked consultations at the 3 main providers here - UltraLase, Optimax, Optical Express. I'll write my assessment of them each later once I go for my consultation with the last provider at the end of the month, but so far have concluded that one has to really research the area to avoid much of the nonsense that they tell patients especially with regard to equipment and surgeons used and why e.g. Ultralase charge £4700 for lasik+intralse+wavefront and say they use new Bausch & Lomb lasers that has higher resolution (dpi) and better surgeons (but ironically most of them are ex-Optimax surgeons) but Optimax charge £2395 for a similar lasik+intralase+wavefront procedure but say they use Nidek lasers as gives better results (even though it is older generation device) and they are cheaper as they already bought their machines and premises and have less ongoing overheads.
Anyway, I was wondering if any other HN members have had laser eye surgey (or thought about it and why you did not do it), what prodcedure you took (e.g. Lasek, Lasik, with Wavefront and/or Intralase), what your experience was like, what equipment was used (e.g. Visx, Nidek, Alegretto), and whether you researched this and what your thoughts are about various equipment-factors in the final result, and most importantly your surgeon and final result.
I've been looking into Lasik and PRK at 30 now that my eyes have stabilized. I do Jiu Jitsu so the doctor recommended I get PRK instead of Lasik as Lasik leaves a permanent flap that can be damaged by contact sports.
My main worry is a bad outcome and the recovery time. I was told I could start working at a computer again 5 days after the surgery when the remove the protective contact. I have a nice job at FAANG and don't want to risk my career or take too much time off after the holidays break.
Anyone been in the same situation? What is vision like at 5 days, and can it take longer?
Also how is your light sensitivity? Is it harder to look at a screen after the surgery?
A couple years ago I changed my life by getting LASIK and I still can't believe money could buy this much impact. Do you have any other similar "life altering" things you can do to your body for money? I suppose this includes food and drugs..
I've had Lasik surgery and it didn't go particularly well. I've developed meibomian gland dysfunction and it's been a pain to
- look at screens - work in environments with heavy AC - survive in cold weather (I'm currently in the UK, it's cold and windy, and my pores (glands) basically don't open so less tears come out of my eyes.)
I wonder if anybody else has been through this and has found a way to cope, a cure or something that works for them.
I just want to go back to coding 10 hours a day in front of a screen
Have you acquired dry-eye syndrome from working with screens (or even lasik but current work worsening the issue). What are your plans for the remainder of your career/life? Plans to change profession? Staying with change of lifestyle/hoping for a cure to come? Myself, I'm considering change of career to offline (+ investing in dry eye products pharma stocks I guess, given how widespread it is)
I have approximately 10 hours of screen time per day. Typically, experts recommend following the 20/20/20 rule (try to look at something about 20 feet or approximately 6 meters away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes), but I never adhered to it. As a programmer, I suppose I’ll always have high screen time. I’m planning to have LASIK surgery in a few months. Has anyone else experienced this? Did you become nearsighted or manage to overcome it?
I have been wanting to get Lasik eye surgery for a long time and, seeing my friend's successful experience, decided to get the surgery (also, I graduated from college in May and can actually afford the procedure now that I have a job). I did some research, visited the same eye doctor as my friend, and scheduled the surgery for January after it was determined that I was a prime candidate. I felt extremely comfortable with the doctor and he is a leader in his field in the Baltimore, MD area.
I made sure to tell the doctor that I am a programmer and stare at a computer screen for far too long everyday. They said it was not an issue and that I was still a prime candidate.
What are your experiences with or opinions of Lasik eye surgery?