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Getting corrective eye surgery?
manwiththemachinegun
METAL GEAR?!Registered User regular
METAL GEAR?!Registered User regular
My vision is not terribly great. I can't read the text I'm typing right now without my glasses. I'm starting to seriously consider corrective surgery. It's been around 20 years since being initially approved. And I'd like to hear if anyone here has had it done, and any questions/problems to discuss with the doctor during my consolation. What do I need to look for in a doctor, and equipment they use to get the best result? The degree of vision being restored isn't as important as avoiding complications.
There's LASIK and non LASIK, with different procedures/risks associated with each.
There's LASIK and non LASIK, with different procedures/risks associated with each.
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If you are worried about complications, get nighttime hard contacts. Those are designed to reshape your eyes while you sleep, then you remove them during the day, for perfect eyesight, which gets a little worse by bedtime, but you're talking 20/20 degrading to 20/30. I know several people with these, including my sister's kids - yes, kids, that's how safe they are, and they're known to stop eyes from getting worse, and even to completely correct vision if the kids are young enough. While you still have to wear contacts at night, you get good vision 24/7, and don't suffer the downsides of contacts during the day.
Second lowest in complications is implanted lenses. Basically anywhere from small rings to thin lenses placed just under the surface of your eye. This removes zero material, cutting only a small slit into your eye, resulting in fast recovery. If something goes wrong, they just remove the lens and let your eye heal the tiny cut.
I have nothing but praise for my LASIK, but if I were to redo, I'd probably go with implanted lenses, which seems to be the fastest recovery time. And that's only because of how bad my eyesight was. If my eyesight wasn't too bad, like say 20/60 vision, I would probably go with nighttime hard contacts.
I've been considering on and off having something like lasik done since my dad did. He had to have cataracts removed, and they just sort of corrected his vision while they were in there. The did one eye at a time a week or two apart I think, I forget why. I want to say it was something to do with monitoring recovery.
He needs to use eye drops more often than he used to, but other than that he said it's been great and he wishes he'd done something similar sooner... though not TOO much sooner because of what hsu said about recovery.
You will need someone to drive you home, as your eyes will be pretty irritated afterwards. And my clinic offered me a half a valium to help me relax, so they wouldn't let me drive myself home anyway.
I slept for the rest of the day, had some irritation (like spending a day at a pool that had too much chlorine) and by the third day I was fine. Just keep taking the prescribed eye drops, and I still take artificial tears for some dryness.
My vision has slipped a little, but it's mostly at night or when the air is dry. Still, I don't regret it for a second.
I was given two choices for my procedure; bladed surgery or non-bladed. Non-bladed uses just a laser and is usually more expensive and is usually reserved for people who have thin tissue, as it takes less. I got the non-bladed because, at the time, it was exactly the same cost as bladed.
If you want I can go into more detail about the actual procedure and what that was like, but that's the gist of it.
Worth every penny.
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Although the recovery was short, there's a lot of follow up appointments so be sure you can make time at work for those.
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Also, here's an old thread I recalled that asked a similar question: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/175291/having-lasers-shot-into-my-eyes-considering-lasik
Copy/pasting my response there since I'm too lazy to rewrite it lol:
I'm also willing to spend more for a better type of procedure. Just want to be a bit careful since, after all, they are my EYES. :P
If you have a powerful reaction to even optometrist check ups, then laser surgery is going to be a trial. I am spoilering the following with a warning that the more sensitive may find it unpleasant:
I thought it was cool, but if you don't like people messing with your eyes, I can see that being super awful. So, heads up.
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And yeah the procedure is quick and painless. The only part that can be slightly painful (and pain might be too big a word here) is the first part when the machine is installed around your eyeball, and only if you are clenching your face to resist. After that you're just staring at the lights then your vision fades to black for a few seconds then comes back and it's done. On to the other eye.
And you already see the difference a few minutes after the operation it's awesome. It's sharp yet covered by a slightly fuzzy filter.
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In the interest of full disclosure, it's worth noting my wife is a centre director for a LASIK clinic so, not only am I hilariously biased, I actually know a fair bit about this stuff both from first hand experience and from learning quite a bit through her.
I can answer questions you may have, and stuff I don't know the answer to or have enough details on, I can ask my wife for more info.
Please note that there's actually a few different varieties of laser eye treatments that are generally lumped under "LASIK" and are done by LASIK clinics, but they can be pretty different from each other in terms of what they do, how they work, and most importantly who they are for.
That last bit can be the toughest part about talking about laser eye surgery with people, because people want to ask about what is "best" as if there is an objective answer. I will tell you, straight up as a dude who has money going into his pocket from this industry, there is no objective "best" solution for all people in all situations and anyone who tries to tell you there is, is either misinformed or ignorant or trying to jerk you around. If there was, that would be the one I'd be telling you to get and it'd be the one my wife's company does since it would make the most money?
For example, the procedure I had performed was LASIK using a micro-keratome surgical tool (basically a super tiny scalpel that prepped the area for the laser to correct my prescription). This is a safe, quick, simple procedure that is completely painless (although uncomfortable and weird feeling while they're doing it).
I had the option to go with an "all-laser" treatment option which would have used essentially two lasers to do the surgery. One to make the incision to prepare the area (effectively a laser scalpel), and another to treat the area (which is the same laser as the micro-keratome surgery). All-laser sometimes has fancy brand names at different LASIK clinics (please, please do not be wowed by fancy ass buzzword commercial jargon like "eyeDesign" or whatever that some of these companies use)
I chose not to do all-laser because it was several hundred dollars more expensive and (this part is key) for me it provided no medical benefit. That "for me" is important because there are circumstances in which all-laser is medically superior or even necessary compared to micro-keratome. These are usually based on your individual corneal thickness (which the LASIK clinic or your optometrist or both will measure). If you have very thin corneas (which I did not), micro-keratome may not be an option for you, so you would need to do all-laser.
But all-laser also takes longer to perform the procedure. At the clinic I went to, micro-keratome was done in less than a minute per eye for the actual surgery part itself, whereas all-laser would have taken over a minute per eye. Doesn't seem like much of a difference, but I'm a giant fussy baby about my eyes so the faster it was done the better.
The cost factor also wasn't a situation where the more expensive option was de facto "better" (an assumption my wife has to dissuade patients from assuming all the time). The all-laser is more expensive because it costs the clinic more to do (lasers are expensive, yo), that's all. So ultimately, I went with the micro-keratome and was perfectly happy, because I had that option.
People talk about "complications", but ultimately it's the risk you run with any kind of surgery. Surgery is surgery. You are given specific eye drops to take after your surgery (antibiotics, anti-inflammatory, etc.) depending on the procedure you get. You are given a recovery timeline, specific to your procedure and lifestyle and occupation, that will tell you when you should go back to doing whatever your normal is.
If you decide to say "nah" to doing that and go back to your construction site job a day after surgery and then get an eye infection, whose fault is that? Yours, right? But that doesn't stop people from posting "horror stories" on Reddit about how they nearly "went blind" or whatever. On extremely rare occasions, complications do occur that have nothing to do with the patient, but most of the time if there's a post-surgical issue it's because you did something dumb or something awful happened outside your control or the surgery.
For example, a few weeks back my wife had to have a patient sent back to the surgeon a day after surgery for an immediate re-do because the patient's damn kid jammed their finger in the patient's eye and damaged the area. Was that the patient's fault? Eh, not really. But it's a reality of "hey you just had surgery, maybe try to avoid getting grubby toddler fingers in the eye". That patient was fine, btw.
Another complication that you will see people talk about online is the need for getting LASIK redone (called an "enhancement" in business jargon). Either a few years after you get it done, or like, a few months because the first one didn't actually work properly.
The latter did happen to my wife. Like, her own surgery had a complication in that it didn't fully work properly on the first try. She could see just fine for the most part, but there was a really slight "off" element to the correction that gave her some problems.
Basically, they didn't 100% nail the exact perfect prescription correction on the first go, so some stuff for her was a little blurry. Where she noticed it most was text, especially text on a TV across the room. She was playing the Witcher 3 on Xbox a few weeks later and could barely read stuff like item or quest descriptions. After a few hours on the computer she'd get a headache and have to stop.
The fix for this was pretty simple; six months after her initial surgery (at which point she's considered healed enough), she just had an enhancement (a second go of it).
This fixed it, and everything was fine, and she's been perfectly happy since.
Most LASIK places will try to sell you on a lifetime enhancement plan if you need a do-over. GET IT. Because your eyes can regress and in 5, 10, 15 years and not having to pay for surgery again is worth what those usually cost, if they cost anything (at my wife's clinic, the plan is included in all but their cheapest procedure package).
I had my surgery two years ago. I have better than 20/20 vision.
If anyone wants to ask me stuff in this thread shoot me an @ I don't normally hang out here.
my wife was told that.
So, fun fact about the so-called "burning smell", like people talking about being able to smell their eyes burning or whatever.
It's just gas from the laser. They aren't actually smelling their own tissue being affected, because the amount of tissue being affected is too small to give off an odor strong enough to overcome everything else going on in that room, like the antiseptic smell of an OR or the argon gas from the laser.
Which is what people are actually smelling. They are argon-xenon lasers and they produce an odor when they run, and that odor can have a smell like "burning" to some people.
What's interesting is there's some psychology going on here. Some people will insist they smelled a burning smell, but those are usually people who were told by friends or family or read on the internet that there would be a burning smell. So they smell the laser doing it's thing, which is a fairly foreign but similar odor for most people, and their brain goes "...oh"
Some LASIK clinics try to fight this misconception, not just because it's actually incorrect, but because the idea of smelling your own eyes burning would wig some people out too much and they wouldn't get surgery over it.
Some other clinics have given up trying to correct people on this dumb myth, because they find people get defensive about it and that like nuh uh, their cousin got their eyes did and they totes smelled it burning and when she asked the surgeon if that's what it was he shrugged and said "sure, please stay still".
Or they have administrative staff who themselves are misinformed and help perpetuate this weird myth, often because they themselves have had the surgery and smelled the weird argon odor too. (in a lot of LASIK clinics, you'll find most of the staff have had it done).
YMMV.
Functionally not really. They're different procedures to accomplish the same goal, and ideally if suited to the right candidate they'll end up with the same good outcomes.
Also, it's not accurate to say that PRK has "no actual cutting into the cornea". It doesn't cut into the cornea, no, in the sense that no microkeratome surgical tools or laser scalpels are involved. It's not making an incision.
But you are removing corneal tissue to reshape the cornea. PRK accomplishes this through ablating corneal tissue away. There's many different ways to do this and depends heavily on the clinic you go to and what specific technology they use, but it all does basically the same thing. They ablate away the outer layer of your corneal tissue, make some pew pew modifications with the laser to the deeper layers to reshape your cornea, and then just... let it grow back.
The difference between PRK (sometimes also called LASEK, with an E) and LASIK is that LASIK doesn't ablate that surface tissue, and instead uses either a microkeratome tool or a laser scalpel to create an incision and the surgeon peels back the area to get to where the treatment laser adjusts your cornea, effectively creating a "flap" which heals closed.
PRK is clinically recommended (as in, it's clinically the better option over LASIK) in cases where either a person's corneal tissue is really thin, so thin that it would be tricky to make a flap with a laser/microkeratome, or the person works in a profession/lives a lifestyle where they're like to have major pressure or abrasion to the eyes and as such damage the work done by LASIK as opposed to PRK. For example, if you're a professional boxer, MMA fighter, SCUBA diver, fighter jet pilot, or other person who has a profession where your eyes are being subjected to intense pressure/being struck or prodded on a regular basis. If you're not one of those people, and you don't have a cornea reason to get PRK, there's few medical reasons to get PRK.
If a person is super oogy about scalpels/lasers cutting them for whatever reason, I recommend they seriously think twice before considering PRK as an alternative because it's still basically doing the same thing, except instead of cutting it's basically sandblasting.
The recovery time for PRK varies a bit from person to person but it is substantial. Whereas, in my case (Microkeratome LASIK) I had my surgery on a Friday and was back to work on Monday as normal, my wife's clinic generally recommends people book a week off work at the least for PRK. While the actual procedure of PRK isn't painful (neither is LASIK, but both are weird), the recovery from PRK abso-fucking-lutely is in a way that LASIK is not.
Like, to put it into perspective, when I had LASIK done the only "painful" part of the recovery was putting in my eyedrops for the first few days, which burned like hell because I'm a fussy baby man about my eyes. And even that wasn't really about the surgery itself, but simply because I have dry eyes normally and wasn't a person who normally used eye drops so when you put eye drops into super dry eyes they sting.
But PRK's recovery can fucking hurt. It can feel like you have glass stuck in your eye. The surgeon at my wife's clinic gives people some Dilaudid to help them with the pain, because it can be that bad especially for the first few days.
You also have to wear what's called a "bandage contact" for the first few days after PRK, which is basically a contact lens that you sleep in and wear for like a couple days as a band-aid to let your freshly ground corneas heal a bit before being exposed to air. Some people find these really bothersome to deal with, and you have to make sure to go to your 72-hour appointment to get them taken out by your optometrist. It's like getting stitches removed. It would be... bad, if you didn't.
I know it sounds like I'm coming down hard on PRK. I'm not against PRK in situations where it's medically necessary, but I don't recommend it unless you have a very, very good reason. It's generally not cheaper to do at most clinics (in fact, at many clinics its more expensive).
Because it does, functionally, do the same thing as LASIK in terms of results, just get LASIK unless you have a reason not to.
Does Lasik still require a 'perscription' to go off of, or is it fixing the basic problem causing the need for a perscription, so it essentially cant get it 'wrong'. Also, Does this correct the cause of Astigmatism permanently since over time my astigmatism has gotten stronger, would i expect the issue to reoccur later down the line?
The primary factor in astigmatism is your cornea shape being, to use a medical term, "fucky". It's oblong or whatever, and that contributes to vision issues.
In the most common forms of laser eye surgery (LASIK/LASEK/PRK) the cornea is being surgically reshaped by a laser. So generally even the heaviest astigmatism can be corrected. They just buff that shit out till it's fixed.
I had a pretty serious astigmatism, and got micro-keratome LASIK (which is a very conventional, normal version of the surgery). Fixed it completely.
Most of these places have their own on-staff optometrists, and do their own testing, screening, and scanning prior to recommending a surgery solution.
There's some places out there that keep their operating costs down by just being like, the surgeon and his office staff and the surgical equipment, and they rely on your optometrist to do all the legwork to figure out what is needed.
Don't... don't go to one of those places that don't do their own screening. I'm not knocking their surgeons at all, people go to them and have perfectly cromulent surgery, but it's better to go to a place that does all their testing and pre-screening "in house" with their own optometrist and scanning equipment.
Why? Nothing against your local optometrist that you've possibly been seeing for years, but A.) he's generally testing you to determine your prescription for glasses/contacts, not surgery, which are slightly different numbers and B.) The grim reality is if you're North American there's a very good chance your optometrist is in the pocket of Luxottica, the DeBeers of the eyeglasses industry, and your optometrist may have a personal incentive to dissuade you from a surgical option.
Whereas a good, proper laser eye clinic will be able to take you in, scan your eyes with their own stuff (which includes fancy shit like 3D topographical scanners, seeing a 3D scan of the surface of your eye is wild, lemme tell ya), and see an optometrist who will of course be biased towards recommending surgery over buying eyeglasses from Luxottica.
So they'll figure out your astigmatism a lot more accurately than your local eye doctor, and permanently fix it (because the surface of your eye is being permanently reshaped).
That said, regression can happen even to people without astigmatism. It's not absurd for you to need a "re-up" in 8-10 years, sometimes less. A lot of places offer lifetime care plans, like if it does regress sometime after surgery, they'll do it again at no extra charge. This is worth every penny. If you have this option, take it.
I get hit in the face occasionally kickboxing so...
Can you give more details about your micro-keratome surgery.
With regards to micro-keratome surgery I received, I technically received a LASIK procedure using a micro-keratome surgical tool for the incision, that was wavefront-guided and topography-assisted. Some of those technologies are fairly modern and didn't exist ten to fifteen years ago when laser corrective surgery was first a thing.
You can look up the details about how LASIK normall works on like, wikipedia or whathaveyou and it'd go into more detail than I will for a forum post.
I can give whatever details you want about my specific surgery and experience if you were interested, sorta depends on what you wanna know.
well mostly your experiences, what you remember. Did they sedate you at all, did you freak out at all (I have a strong eye phobia about this kind of thing), do they tape your eyelids open? did you have trouble not blinking or closing your eyes? do you actually feel anything when they cut into your FREAKING EYEBA...sorry...phobia kicking in here...Part of me says if you can knock me out and promise me there is a very damn good chance this is going to work and i wont need glasses for a long time then I might do it, the other part of me has the willies too strong just thinking about someone cutting into my eyeball.
Did they sedate you at all?
No. I had the option, if I so chose, of taking a Xanax. Like, the surgeon would have prescribed one to me prior to surgery for me to chill the hell out if it was going to be an issue. I was a giant wussy baby man about my eyes being touched (to the point that I didn't wear contacts because I found them hard to put in on a regular basis) but I was able to just do it. I would not judge people who took the Xanax. I opted not to for my own reasons. You can't be fully sedated for this kind of surgery for a variety of medical reasons, but they can dope you up on anti-anxiety meds if that's an issue for you.
Did they tape your eyelids open?
No. They did put a special kind of eye speculum in there to hold my eyelid open, which is a freaky looking tool but doesn't hurt at all. It does feel weird and foreign, and apparently if you strain against it and try to force your eye shut anyway with it on, that can hurt? But I didn't do that. Don't do that. It's like shoving against a restraint, it's gonna wear your eyelid out, it's dumb. You won't do it reflexively, even if you have a strong aversion to your eyes being touched (which I do), it would have to be something you're consciously doing. Very rarely do people do it. Don't.
Did you have trouble not blinking or closing your eyes?
You physically can't. They put a thing on your eye to hold your eyelids open. It's not physically possible to blink or close your eyes when the surgery is going on. You can actively try, but as I said, it's like trying to tug on handcuffs. Don't do that, it's dumb.
Do you actually feel anything?
Not really? The procedure is not painful and no, you don't really feel the incision or anything else. They use local anesthetic (freezing eyedrops, basically) so you don't feel really much of anything. The speculum holding your eye open does feel weird and foreign. It is not painful. You can sorrrrrrrta feel something going on with your eye but not really, as the freezing drops pretty much remove all sensation from the surgery itself. It definitely doesn't hurt.
Here's some stuff to consider:
- They're not really cutting into your eyeball. Not really. The treatment area of LASIK and PRK is literally microns into your cornea, and doesn't penetrate the cornea itself. While it is still absolutely surgery and should be treated with the gravity of such, there's a lot of mental imagery people have with this stuff that's just not accurate. They imagine their eyes being cut open and the lasers shooting their retina or something. It's not. Literally a tattoo goes deeper into your skin than LASIK and PRK go into your corneal tissue. For LASIK, they're essentially peeling back the top-most layer of your cornea to reshape the underneath of it with a laser, and with PRK they just basically grind that surface of your cornea down into a new shape. In either case, this is a really, really superficial level of incision or tissue interference, which is why the healing is so fast (2-3 days for LASIK, 4-6 for PRK). If you have a cat, your cat has scratched you deeper, I guarantee you.
- You cannot be sedated for LASIK, not in a general anesthetic kind of way like you'd do for more invasive surgery like wisdom tooth removal or getting your appendix out. It's important to realize that first of all, being anesthetized into unconsciousness is actually a significant health risk and should never be perceived as an easy way out to deal with something you find consciously unpleasant. There's a reason that professional anesthesiologists exist, because general anesthetic can kill you. Many people die in other, more invasive kinds of surgery every year not because of the surgery itself or any sort of complication from it, but because something goes awry with the general anesthetic and the person just... doesn't ever wake up. LASIK is a very superficial out-patient procedure, less invasive than a vasectomy (which are done in urologists' offices, not even full ORs), and doesn't justify the health risks of general anesthesia. Moreover, it's unnecessary and actively makes the procedure far harder (if not impossible) to do, since your unconscious eye will roll around or move on its own and you will be unable to follow the surgeon's directions (you do, y'know, have to look into the light for the laser to work). If you are telling yourself you could only get laser eye surgery if you are under general anesthesia, then you need to seriously rethink your goals, intentions, personal aversions, and learn about what options are available to you.
- Related to the above, while no laser eye surgery clinic will put you under general anesthesia for the surgery, most are pretty generous with anti-anxiety medications like Xanex, Lorazepam, or Clonazepam to chill you the fuck out. If you have a personal, ethical, religious, moral, or medical reason you cannot or will not use anti-anxiety medications, that kinda puts you up shit creek if you believe your aversions and anxieties will make it impossible to do surgery. If you don't have those kind of strong objections, then consider simply being honest with the optometrist and other people involved with setting up your surgery, and they'll openly discuss whether an anti-anxiety drug is something they do. If they don't, and you think it'll be a stopping point to getting surgery, then consider checking out a different clinic, because it's fairly normal to throw anti-anxiety meds at people who are facing out-patient surgery or things like claustrophobic people going for a MRI.
- If you don't have personal experience with anti-anxiety meds and you are skeptical that they'll work for you because gosh, your aversion and phobia are just so strong, I would like to point out that I had a vasectomy done about nine years back and I was obviously somewhat anxious about a man taking a laser to my fuckin' balls and cutting my sack open. So they prescribed me Clonazepam. To say it worked... well, let me put it this way: I asked the doctor if it was okay if I live-tweeted my surgery, and he was fine with that as long as I didn't move. That was how few fucks I gave about him tinkerin' with my goods, because Clonazepam doesn't fuck around.
- I will caution you against any kind of self-medication with regards to any anxieties, phobias, or aversions you may feel. My wife has told me many, many stories of dudes (and it's always men 100% of the time who do this) who show up to the clinic on surgery day half in the bag, despite being told explicitly no alcohol for 48 hours before surgery. Alcohol dehydrates you, it fucks with your eye shape on the micron scale that LASIK is manipulating, showing up to your eye surgery with a bit of "liquid courage" in you because you didn't think you could do it sober just means your surgery gets postponed and all the office staff think you're a stupid boob. So listen to whatever recommendations the medical team have with regards to drugs and alcohol prior to surgery (no caffeine, alcohol, pot, etc.) If you have your own diagnosed anxiety disorder and you take your own anti-anxiety meds to deal with it, like you have a Lorazepam prescription because you get anxiety attacks or whatever, then ask the clinic doing your surgery if that would be okay for you to take one for that. If so, they will give you guidance as to when, don't just show up having taken it (which is what has happened with some of the patients at my wife's clinic because people don't listen) because sometimes you will be waiting for like 5 hours for your surgery and that fucks with it.
- While not super relevant directly to laser eye surgery, I really do recommend taking some time to learn about the insidious hydra that is Luxottica. Do some reading on them. When I call them "The DeBeers of Glasses" I'm not joking. If you don't know what's fucked up and sinister about DeBeers boy howdy do you have a fun life ahead of you. Effectively, eye glasses nowadays are a giant fucking scam. More accurately, what they cost, who makes them, how they're marketed and sold, and how optometrists and opticians and other eyecare professionals in North America especially are very heavily in the pocket of this global mega-corp that has every vested interest in you buying the most expensive as fuck glasses possible, even if contacts, cheaper glasses, or outright laser corrective surgery would be a superior and more cost effective method for you personally. When my wife was a surgical counselor she would often sit down with her patients and point out exactly how much they're going to likely spend over their lifetime on glasses and/or contacts vs. paying for LASIK once. We're talking the difference of thousands of dollars over your life in many cases, depending on your insurance and whatnot. This bit sounds like I'm anti-glasses and I'm somehow on the take from a laser eye surgery company... and that's kinda true! I basically am, given my wife runs a clinic and I benefit financially from people choosing this option and it becoming more popular. But that bias is up on the table, and you can make your own decision on how you feel about it, at least I'm not pretending a $25 dollar piece of plastic from a sweatshop in Bangladesh is worth slapping the PRADA brand on it and charging you $900 for. Just sayin'.
I don't have an aversion to it really, i just have never taken anxiety meds before so i have a probably mistaken impression that were not really a replacement for anesthesia. I've never been high or really drunk, so its just difficult to wrap my brain around what the experience would be like.
I've heard about the Luxottica monopoly but there isn't much i can do about that. I just tend to wait until I really need a new pair of glasses (i.e. several years) before going through the whole bullshit again..mostly because its been such a hassle getting lenses that fit correctly and comfortably for the first time.
The main reason I'm considering it is that I'm very close to needing bifocals. I really want to avoid that if i can.
Laser corrective surgery cannot fix presbyopia. Not really. If you get LASIK done, it will fix your ability to see at a distance. If you have an ideal success from it, you'll be able to see traffic signs without your glasses on or watch TV from across the room and not just see blurry shapes.
What LASIK can't do is save you from reading glasses. Nothing short of lens implants or some other, more invasive surgery can. If you are currently wearing glasses for your distance vision and possibly may be moving into bifocals for both your distance and near vision... LASIK can make it so you don't need bifocals. Instead, you'll be able to buy a $10 pair of reading glasses from the pharmacy for reading and other up-close stuff.
That's the situation I'm facing. I'm in my mid-30's, and they straight up told me that presbyopia is gonna be an issue for me when I get into my 40's and 50's. Right now, I don't wear glasses at all, reading or otherwise. But I've noticed lately that when I paint Warhammer miniatures, I gotta either hold them two feet away from my face or pop on a cheapie pair of reading glasses, because it's fine detail up close work. I ain't mad, is what it is, I knew that going in. Ideally, I shouldn't even be wearing reading glasses to paint my minis, I should be using a magnification lamp, but those things cost more than the $5 I spent at the corner store to get cheap reading glasses so it'll be something I get down the line.
Look at it like this: If you wear glasses/contacts 100% of the time for distance, and are possibly going to be getting bifocals for near in the future, LASIK can eliminate one half of that equation immediately, leading you to only wear cheap reading glasses a fraction of the time.
Still worth it, imo, but everyone's gotta make their own choice.
http://www.zennioptical.com/ among many others -- optically they're fine, though it's a bit of a crapshoot how well a given frame will fit, even with all the measurements and online face fitting tools and whatnot.
I don't remember much other than how they spaced each eye a week, they numbed my eye (which feels REALLY weird) and put the tube over it, then I stared at a red dot until they removed the tube. I blinked a couple times and realized I could see the room. Not perfectly, since the other eye was a week later, but my 20/800 vision (coke bottle lenses) had gone to 20/20 in what felt like an instant. Even now I'm still at 20/25 and 20/30 with my eyes, left and right respectively. When I went for a checkup a year later the doctor took one look at my eyes and recognized who had done them, saying I had made a good choice. No regrets.
Also they gave me sunglasses goggles and I wore the SHIT out of those things until the rubber bands snapped. I loved them so much. I still wear sunglasses because I'm light sensitive, but that's less Lasik and more indoor vampire.