It is hard to believe that three years have gone by since my LASIK disaster. When I look back at the time it now seems to have gone so quickly, but I can remember a time where the days went by slowly and were full of depression as well as many sleepless nights that I thought would never end. Sitting there thinking of the stupid decisions I had made. Knowing this one takes the top prize. I have lost my vision, can’t work and it is very difficult to enjoy life. What kind of life would I have from here on out? How was I supposed to support my family?

If you’re reading this chances are you have had a bad experience with LASIK and now trying to figure out what to do. I was there and know pretty much how you may be feeling. It all depends on what stage you are currently in and how much help you have gotten a long the way. The fact is there is no single answer to these things as each case is unique with it own challenges and possible solutions. I tell you my story to give you hope and to tell you the things I did. Maybe these are not the things you want or should do, but maybe they help you think of something you can do and it leads to improvement. I hope you get the help you need and your life back.

The day after my LASIK surgery was my 49th birthday. I was looking forward to waking up and seeing the clock without glasses for the first time. I had a significant amount of astigmatism and far-sightedness. I could not see anything clearly without my glasses. So with great expectations I looked at the clock when I woke and found that it had about 5 or 6 faces on it; all kind of running into each other. All were pretty blurry and I was very concerned. That day I was scheduled for a follow up so I asked the DR if this was normal or not. He said it could take a week or more for my vision to clear up and not to worry. At the time I was not working and recently moved to FL from NJ. There was no way that I could work with the vision I had.

Next appointment was a week later and still no improvement and in fact my vision was getting worse. All the DR would tell me was I had to be patient, things will come around. When I asked if this was normal, he said he had patients where it didn’t improve for a month or so. He was not worried and things would turn out ok.

That just didn’t sound right, so I got on the internet. I could see the screen if my nose was 3” from it and I squinted so that I had two little slits to look through. I could only do this a couple of hours a day and each day ended with a big headache and more fear and apprehension.

Wishing I had never seen that slick VHS tape running in the waiting room telling me how I could finally have a life without glasses. Go swimming, hugging love ones, participating in sports all free of the problems of wearing glasses. And now they could even fix my astigmatism! Man I was sold. Next step – find out if you are a candidate. I was so happy to hear that I was and that I would see 20-20.

By now I was hoping and praying that a pair of glasses would enable me to have vision good enough to drive again.

Back to the DR, this time a month out and the vision is still getting worse. This can’t be normal, but he says I just have to be patient many patients improve given enough time. And if I didn’t he could always do an enhancement. But what went so wrong this time? – no answer.

In the meantime I found the Surgical Eyes web site and was reading about the hundreds if not thousands of people that were all looking for help with their failed LASIK procedure. I started to write in the forums and get advice. It was clear that after two months of continuing decrease in my already poor vision a more proactive plan was in order. Also there was no way I would go through a LASIK with this DR who had no idea why this was the result of the first LASIK.

I learned about a Surgical Eyes meeting and attended. There I was able to get some help and advice about what to do next. In the meantime I saw another local Dr and he told me some epithelium cells were growing under my flap and they needed to be removed immediately. I left his office and went directly to my DR. Last time he saw me (about two weeks earlier he told me that my eyes “looked as if they hadn’t been touched”. Now I was looking at a procedure to re-lift the flap and scrape out all the cells that were growing under it. We did that the next day and my vision for the first time improved – but only slightly. A week or so later I was delighted with the fact that my vision was no longer getting worse and I was very lucky not to have had an issue with re-lifting the flap or with the cells coming back.

Next step was to see if I could find a Dr that could do an enhancement since this is all that was needed - according to my DR. I ended up at Emory in Atlanta. The Drs up there are extremely busy, but I found that there is no way I could get a LASIK procedure that would help in my situation. What I was experiencing and continuing to experience could not be resolved though further surgery (maybe in a year or two if some new technology were to live up to its potential/hype – Interwave). They had an Interwave based examination process which was supposed to be the best around and the results of that exam was not very good news for my hope of an enhancement that would be effective.

They suggested using all sorts of contact lenses and combination contacts lens and working with a local Dr in order to try to recover as much of my vision as possible. So I started tracking down that path. I saw another Ophthalmologist here in town and he suggested that I go to Bascom Palmer because there were still some epi cells under the flap that he thought should be removed. With his referral I went down to Bascom Palmer and was told that the flap was very fragile and was most likely cut too thin to begin with and it was far to risky to lift it again. They also confirmed that there was no known surgical procedure to deal with my situation. Glasses would never be a big help again since the surface of my cornea was so irregular. My only hope of some vision recovery was contact lenses that would trap liquid between the back of the lens and the irregular peaks and valleys in my cornea. If that would happen, I could see significant improvement in my vision. The trick would be to find a contact lens and a competent DR that was willing to work with me (I would be spending lots of time in his chair ) to obtain the best vision possible.

I followed up with a local DR who was an expert in hard contact lenses and he was a huge help.

My local Dr was able to get enough of a vision recovery that I was able to work the day after I got my 3rd pair of lenses. It took about 4 months to get through 3 pair and a 20 -40 result in one eye, a lot worse in the other. But at least I could look for work and had a good part of my life back. So after about a year, there was light at the end of the tunnel.

I continued to do research to find out what I could do to get a further improvement so I could not only work, but enjoy my Golf again as well as reading without getting huge headaches.

To do this I had to: #1 – Find a good Dr that was willing to work with me to the end and #2 – This Dr would need to be experienced with a technology of Hard Contact lenses that would or could be helpful for my particular situation and #3- Be a Dr that would listen to what I was saying (since I was the only one that could convey what I was seeing) and use this feedback in order to make improvements in vision and comfort.

I knew this was not going to be an easy task and as I began to reach out to a number of possible Drs.

Through the SE (Surgical Eyes) web site I started going through all of the threads about contacts - what worked, what didn’t and why. I had tried to wear hard contacts a few times 10 or 15 years ago, but could never get a pair that would give me good vision. Later I would find out the lenses weren’t the problem. Most Drs only know about soft lenses and those easy to fit. Very few know about the RGPs that would be needed in my case.

I went to another SE event here in FL and a DR was there that worked with some lenses I was reading about which seemed to fit the bill as far as what some of the other Drs told me I would need to find in order to see the improvements I was looking for. These lenses were called Z wave and the idea was that it was possible from a Orbscan (a sort of topography of the cornea) a set of lenses could be made with the rear part matching my irregular corneas and the front carrying a prescription that would improve my vision. I had had some experience with RGPs 10 years ago and that experience was not a good one. To make things worse the DR at SE said that they had their place but he was moving away from them because he didn’t get the results he wanted. Also it was a very time consuming process.

Finally I noted that there was a DR about 2.5 hours south of me that was actually working with patients that had failed LASIK procedures and he had more than a few successes with the Z wave lens. I wrote to him, like I did all the others, and explained my entire situation and what I was looking for. I had done this a lot lately and often, did not hear one word back. When I did, 1 or maybe 2 of my questions would be answered/acknowledged; and I would be told to make an appointment for an exam. By this time I had had 5 or 6 exams. What I needed was for someone to listen and work with me as a partner in this and not as a patient that knows nothing about his situation and had nothing to offer that could be helpful. This is the other frustrating part about being in this situation. You are forced to become a kind of subject expert in the things that reflect your situation. But Drs are not used to their patients knowing anything or even asking a bunch of questions. I very rarely felt that the Drs I was seeing really listened to me and weighted what I was saying. Certainly none took the time to explain to me (in detail) the issues I was facing and what (if any) real options I had. So you take all this time to learn about all of these things and the only person in the world you can talk to about them is your Dr, but he doesn’t have the time to correct your misconceptions or to give you more accurate information that is closer to your particular situation. So they basically say nothing while they talk to you with the hand on the door knob.

But one of the Drs I wrote to sent me a most interesting email….

You can’t imagine my surprise when I got the email back (a day to two after I sent it) with a very detailed response on all the issues/questions. Further, it was clear that this Dr had worked with post refractive patients and was willing to have a look at my case. This Dr was Dr Maller of Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

My first visit must have been more that an hour as I asked him every pertinent question I had about my condition. He patiently sat there, listened to what I had to say and all the questions I asked and he answered every one of them based on my particular situation. He felt that I had a pretty difficult case, but he had a number of things he could try with the Z wave lens and felt confident that working together, we could improve my vision. He also told (and showed) me how the lenses I was using would cause me great difficulty if I continued to wear them. In order to get them to fit and position correctly, they were too tight and the free flow of natural tears were unable to flush out and keep clean the cornea covered by the lens. I had to do something and he felt that Z wave could address this problem and give me better vision. He also felt that improvements in comfort were possible. I couldn’t wait to get started, but was not really very optimistic since I had been through this a half dozen times or more without any real progress.

We could not start right away since I was wearing contacts which had an impact on the shape of my cornea, I would have to go without one for about 6 to 8 weeks (until my eye went back to its natural post LASIK shape). I did that and saw Dr Maller about 7 weeks later. He carefully took a topography of that eye and then designed a custom fit Z wave lens for it. About a week or so later I went to his office and he gave me my first Z wave lens with appropriate words about expectations (I didn’t really take them in). I was not impressed but wore the lens for the week or two and went back to him. He immediately saw some of the problems with fit (remember he was not only working on vision but also tear flow under the lens). He redesigned the lens and the process repeated. I had gotten my hopes up for this second pair even though he told me the next was most likely not the one that would make the vision improvement. So when we tried that lens, I got pretty well depressed after I found that I could not see well. All the way home I continued my negative thoughts since there was no real improvement in vision. But I could feel this lens was more comfortable. Two more weeks go by I am now back in his office he tells me we have a good fit now and he can add the prescription needed and see where we end up. About a week later I am back in his chair and he has a newly designed Z wave lens for me to try. I would not let myself get excited because I did not want to get depressed again. Really at this point I was going through the motions, basically doing what I was told because it was the only thing I could do. But I had been here before, putting lenses in wearing them for weeks being told that the vision would improve with time. This was just another one of those visits.

But it wasn’t just another visit. Just as Dr Maller had said this lens fit and felt good AND I COULD SEE! I could see out of that eye for the first time in more than a year and the first time ever without glasses! Needless to say, I was elated. Dr Maller was happy with the tear flow and the vision.

Next we moved on to the other eye. We repeated the process and again the 3rd lens did it. I was seeing almost 20-20 again. I could actually see the golf ball land. I could read. I could work. I had my life back. I was not gong to have to live some handicapped life that would have a negative impact on the things I wanted to do. It was wonderful.

Of course this elation was great for a time, but now I wanted to see if we could work together to get a good multi focal lens for each eye. Carrying reading glasses everywhere was beginning to be a real hassle. My work involves a lot of computer time and I really need good vision at that distance to do product demonstrations. So Dr. Maller agreed to try and went through the process with me. It would not be quick or easy and in fact it might not be possible, but if I wanted to work with him on – he would give it a try.

As I type this today I can tell you that my computer vision is very good and we have only done one eye so far. One of the very best unexpected benefits is that I can now see details in the faces of people that I was missing for almost 2 years. What a pleasure it is to see this. We are having some trouble getting the second lens to fit right and to help out. It is nice to have someone to work with in order to give it a try.

I hope that you recover your vision and your life. If you can work with Dr Maller, you should. If you can’t, I hope that you are able to find a Dr like Dr Maller who will work with you and do their best to make sure your are part of the process to recover as much of your vision as possible.

Good Luck.
Stephen Crisafulli
Florida

 

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