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Experiences with Laser Eye Surgery?

Posted by Cliff on from the is-it-worth-the-risk-to-your-retinas dept.

GodLessOne asks: "I am about to get my hands on a reasonable lump of cash and I am working on my list of ways to make it an ex-lump of cash. All of the normal geek things appear on the list, but one item that I keep considering is corrective laser eye surgery. Would anyone care to share their real world experiences? I worry that the people selling it are the only ones saying how wonderful it is, and what percentage of people show a marked improvement afterward. Are there any stories out there relating how bad it can be if it goes wrong?"

7 of 1,104 comments (clear)

  1. Jessica Simpson had it done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    She's pretty smart. I'd follow her lead.

  2. A horrible disappointment by bravehamster · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hate to break it to ya buddy, but I was crushed when I found out, and I think you should know too. They use a laser ON your eye, to fix problems. They DON'T give you a laser eyeball to replace your puny and misshapen one. I know, I couldn't believe it either, but it's true. Shoulda taken that guy to court for false advertising.

    --
    ---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
  3. Check the Expert. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Friend of mine once remarked after thinking about it.

    "I wasn't sure, every surgeon I met who would perform it was wearing glasses..."

  4. An even better Idea for than Eye Surgery. by Timmy+D+Programmer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Get breast implants. Then you won't need a girlfriend ;)

    --


    (If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
  5. Re:My experience by flacco · · Score: 5, Funny
    The pleasure of being able to see...always...and not becoming an invalid if my glasses break is priceless.


    plus, if there's a nuclear war that kills everyone but you, and you want to spend the rest of your days reading all the books you never had a chance to read, you don't have to worry that an ironic accident will put the kibosh on your plans.

    --
    pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
  6. Hanging up the red and blue tights? by WillDraven · · Score: 5, Funny
    I have better than 20/20 whereas before I had something like 600/20
    I certainly hope you meant 20/600, because otherwise you've shed yourself of your superhuman abilaty to read at 600 feet as a normal human can at 20 that you inherited from your parents on Krypton.
    --
    This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
  7. Re:And the short answer is... by aqua · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is going to sound like the total slashdot linux-zealot posting; sorry, but it happened.

    In early 2000 the chief software engineer at LASIK came to give a talk before a Software Engineering course I was taking at Sonoma State (worthless CS program, but nevermind). He talked for most of an hour about various parts of the development process, hardware interlocks, millisecond-cutoff crash-detector watchdogs and so forth. Moderately interesting. At the end of a Q&A period, one student asked him what platform LASIK ran on -- since it had been explained that the machines had to be deployed to eye doctors' offices and be easy to use correctly and difficult to use wrongly, etc., etc. The answer, and I swear I'm not making this up, was "Windows 3.1." There was a pause while everyone in the room absorbed this, then he added "But we're considering porting it to Win95."

    Hooray for hardware interlocks. :P