| Trying to make an informed decision
I just had a consultation at a place here in Los Angeles which I was hoping to get ICL surgery. I was told that apparently there’s not room for the implantable contacts in my eyes. My next choice was PRK because my aunt had a bad experience with Lasik and has chronic dry eyes. My aunt has to put drops in her eyes 100 times a day. When I had the consultation they were pushing hard against PRK, not only were they actively trying to steer me away from PRK but the cost was $5000 which is $1000 more than SMILE and $1400 more than regular Lasik. In my research the cost of PRK versus Lasik has always been comparable…? Also I am getting conflicting information around the Internet as to which procedure is safer for dry SMILE or PRK?
I’m also completely confused…so with lasik you cut a flap in the cornea you lift the flap and then the laser does the correction and then replace the flap. In PRK you remove the cornea and then it grows back? I don’t understand how lasik can lead to chronic dry (which my aunt has after her Lasik procedure way back in in the early 2000s) when PRK completely remove the cornea… Then the nerve somehow grow back better with PRK? I mean couldn’t you just turn a Lasik procedure into a PRK pretty easy by just scraping away the cornea flap after the fact?
One last thing, when I told the doctor about my aunt eyes instead of alleviating my concerns he’s very abruptly said then maybe corrective surgery isn’t for me if you’re not willing to put drops in your eyes every now and again… that’s totally not where I was going with that and kind of disconcerting that he said that. The entire time I felt like I was on an assembly line with the consultation. One of the techs brought me back and started to do the tests/scans on my eyes and she was nice enough. Then a woman in a white coat who never introduced herself, that I’m assuming it was an optometrist put my prescription in that multiple lens device they always use and gave me a distance eye test. I then got shuttled into a room with a woman that started talking about the procedures and pricing. Then she left and the doctor came in for about two minutes and tried to answer my questions and acted annoyed that I was asking you so many… also there was a big to-do that I have different size pupils and they never told me what that was about…?
Does any buddy have any experience with this? Any advice or insight from this community would be helpful. Thank you.
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