I consider getting Lasik for years only to be put off by the dozens of horror stories all over the Internet anytime I got close to even considering doing it but earlier this year in January I actually went to a consultation and decided what the heck if I go blind then maybe at least all my senses are going to be so heightened that I become a superhero and can spend the rest of my days saving the week from crime I mean there's worse ways to live right now there are three different types of major laser eye surgeries you can opt for the one you've probably heard of is LASIK there's also PRK and smile I'll go into the differences between all of them later in this video all you need to know for now is that I did opt for smile although I do believe that my experience and everything I'm about to share with you is applicable no matter which procedure you end up choosing now just for a little bit of background about me I started having Vision issues sometime around Middle School maybe like 10 or 11 I would have to wear glasses in the classroom but I didn't need to wear them all the time and it wasn't until I think maybe eighth grade that I went in to get contacts to wear permanently and ever since then I have been wearing contacts and using glasses at night so my prescription before I went into the surgery was negative five in both eyes with a slight astigmatism in both now what is the difference between Lasik PRK and smile and why did I choose smile so Lasik uses a laser to cut a little flap in your eye and then they lift the flap reshape the surface of your cornea close the flap and you're good to go now you can see 20 20. now the pros of this are that it's very quick the recovery time is really short now the two major cons are the number one you're more likely to experience dry eye than the other two procedures because you are cutting a lot of nerves that have to heal over time and number two now this is a little bit more of a rare concern but that flap never fully heals back into a flat cornea you're always going to have a flap there and if you were to end up in some sort of freak accident where you get hit in the eye you get Jabs in the eye then that could potentially dislodge that flap and cause problems now PRK is the oldest procedure of the three instead of creating any sort of like incision in the surface of your cornea what they actually do is shave down the surface and reshape it and then allow that cornea to regrow over time now the pros to this number one most obviously you don't have it flop created so if you have any sort of concerns about that flap being dislodged that's not a problem with BRK that also means that there is less chance of dry eye the biggest con to PRK is that the recovery time is a little bit longer and more painful than the other two surgeries because you're actually waiting for your cornea to regrow itself you're going to be more sensitive to light for longer you're going to experience a lot of that pain stinging burning for maybe a few days maybe longer and in general your eyes are just going to take longer to heal now smile is the newest procedure of all of them it is only 10 years old and I believe it was introduced to the us back in 2018 that's when it first became legal so it is a very young procedure and that's something that I was concerned about at the beginning luckily my surgeon did have a good amount of experience with this procedure and they had worked on a lot of patients before me now smile is pretty similar to LASIK in that you are creating an incision except instead of that being like a really big flap you're just creating a small hole and what's happening during the surgery is this laser is creating what's called a lenticle I think that's how it's pronounced and it basically looks like a big cataract that they're forming in there and once that's created the surgeon actually goes in and pulls out the lenticle manually so this surgery takes a lot more manual skill from your doctor and it also takes a little bit longer because it's not just the laser that's doing the entire procedure now the pros of smile is that you are much less likely to experience dry eye because you're not creating a really big incision around the entire cornea and the healing time is similar if not quicker I believe than Lasik so it has the smallest recovery time out of the three there aren't really any downsides to getting the surgery in terms of like complications that you're going to experience later at least not compared to PRK and Lasik the only real downside I would say is that the pool of candidates who qualify for smile is a lot smaller than the other two so that's a big reason why people don't get it and you know everyone's not really familiar with it because it is so new as well so it can be a little bit harder to find a doctor who is qualified so when I originally went in for my consultation I was asking for PRK because I do a combat Sport and that's one of the things that disqualifies you for from LASIK you can do Lasik of course but given that I spent a lot of time voluntarily being punched in the face I did not want the chance of a flap in my eye opening during a fight or sparring session and PRK just sounded better for me in the long run but when I did go see my doctor he introduced me to smile I hadn't heard about it before then you know he talked me through all of different pros and cons of everything and I decided at the end of the day that smile probably would be a better option for me and that's why I went with it I know you're just dying to know why I am wearing glasses right now and that is because in about two hours I'm gonna go to get my corneas lasered off technically not lasered off they're going to get a little incision and make a little thing and pull it out and then I'm gonna have 20 20 Vision I had all my appointments a few weeks ago so today is actually the day that I'm doing the whole procedure I am extremely nervous and I have made myself very anxious by reading a lot of negative anecdotes on the internet about how laser surgery can go wrong which I don't suggest doing that if you ever want to get your eyes corrected especially if you are anxiety prone like me it was actually one of the reasons why I waited so long to do it partially because my eyes were still adjusting but also last year when I did plan on going to get my eyes fixed I started reading all these stories got really freaked out and just procrastinated on it because of that but I'm trying to remind myself that anecdotes are not statistics and plenty of people come out for the better for it so it's going to be fine it's going to be fine it's going to be fine so I'm gonna check in with y'all in a few hours and we'll see how I'm feeling so what exactly happens on surgery day my surgery was scheduled for February 2nd which was two or three days ago now it's February 4th currently my appointment was at 4 15 so I was the last patient to come in for the day I arrived about 20 minutes early because I was really nervous and I checked in they gave me a little goodie bag with some artificial tears in them uh like an instruction pamphlet telling me what the surgery was going to be like an emergency number in case anything happened during my recovery and they also put in the two medicated eye drops I picked up prior which were steroids for inflammation and antibiotics I believe I started taking the antibiotics 24 hours before and the steroids were gonna start immediately after surgery they offered me Advil and Ativan in case you were nervous and in my case I was extremely nervous so they gave me two milligrams which I don't know if it helped me that much during surgery not sure if you're familiar with Ativan but it is a very slow acting anti-anxiety medication so at the beginning I maybe felt like a little bit relaxed physically right before my surgery and during my surgery but I definitely was not loopy at all and that was my intention because the surgery is actually very active and as a patient you really do have to participate and work with your doctor which I'll go into a little bit later but because of that they don't want you taking anything that is going to make it difficult for you to follow instructions so after I got my little goodie bag and took my medication I sat down waited to be called they brought me into the prep room gave me some eye drops talked me through the procedure again so I knew what was going to be happening and then I think I sat for about like maybe 10 or 15 minutes for whatever drops it gave me to take effect then they came in to get me they brought me to a separate room where they had the big laser bed they helped guide me there because I obviously I couldn't see I didn't have anything in my eyes and you know I laid down had my head in like this little donut hole thing they gave me like a knee prop rest so before they get started they put in some numbing drops in your eyes which work instantly and then they tape down one eye and they put a clamp in the other eye so you don't really have to worry about blinking they're putting in drops in your eyes so it's not going to get dry or anything it's not uncomfortable everything is numb of course and once all of that is prepared they do like this little brush over your eye which you can't feel at all and they push you underneath the laser so once you're underneath the laser you're going to see like this White Ring of light and then there's like this little green laser in the center of it and the doctor tells you to focus on it for about 10 seconds your vision starts to get kind of hazy because there's like this little cataractical thing forming over it and then once that's done there's this part where they really emphasize that you kind of have to like zone out and not focus on anything because your eye muscles have to relax and if they don't relax then that can cause like complications so I was really nervous about that part because I think focusing on a point is one thing but being told to specifically not focus on something is like a little bit difficult but luckily because your vision is so cloudy at this point I think it is easy to sort of like zone out a little bit I really just focused on singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star over and over again and trying not to think about the fact that there was a laser in my eye and then after a few seconds of that they pull you back out and this is where the doctor starts to actually manually go in to the incision and pull out the lenticle that was created and that part took forever okay you think that the laser is the the worst part but honestly having this guy like go in and like scrape around in your eyeball even though you can't feel anything it's kind of stressful and I think the worst part about this is you have to be so active because there's like this little white light that's above you and you're supposed to be focusing on it the whole time but the white light starts to kind of like move and get blurry because they're manually moving your eyeball around right and the point of you focusing on the light above you is that you want to counteract the doctor's movement and make sure that your eyeball is still straight ahead I don't know if that makes sense but you're just gonna kind of see this like white light moving around all the time and you know that if you don't focus on it something could go wrong and to me that was just really stressful and my anxiety meds were not strong enough to counteract that stress overall is fine I got through it once that was done they did like a lot of brushing they used some saline drops to flesh out any particles that might have gotten underneath and then they tape your eyes shut open the other one repeat the same procedure on the other side and when I had my left eye which was the second one they did done I got really nervous during like the green laser part of it because I started to move my eye a little bit and the green laser started to jump around I had to try even harder to follow it which made it jump around even more and then the doctor sounded kind of nervous they're like oh my God you're moving a lot you're moving along you need to stop moving but luckily it was fine I focused on it it was good nothing bad happened overall the procedure to me felt a lot longer than they said it was going to be Abby was in the waiting room waiting for me at the end and he said it was really quick he thought it was maybe like 10 or 15 minutes but I checked the video I took right before I left the prep room and it was at I think like 4 41 and then I checked my phone again coming back into the prep room after the procedure and it said 5 19. so I was like almost 40 minutes 20 minutes per eye I don't know if I'm like misremembering it but I do think it was a little bit longer than it should have been maybe because there was just difficulty getting certain things done anyway going back to after the procedure they got me up from the laser bed and I initially could tell right away that my vision was clear there was like a huge Haze or grayness over top of it and also just some like black spots from the bright lights but in general I would say my vision was probably 80 of the way better at this point the doctor got me out from the bed and walked me over to the slit lamp just to make sure that like everything was okay he said it all went perfectly then I went back to the prep room they gave me sunglasses I went out Albie brought me home and that was it is this very weird for me because like you know how without correction everything is closer and your glasses and stuff make things a little farther so it's like the distance is weird I'm like dizzy now I'm your Uber driver your boyfriend sent me Bert Macklin FBI is that the medication talking yes yes there's another lady the one right before you yeah she came out like skipping and stuff and I was like oh that's definitely a [ __ ] medication no I don't think it's medication I think it's relief relief like your body being in stress and then it's over I think the Ativan helped a little bit but it wasn't a lot like I could still feel my heart thudding in the waiting room all the way up through surgery okay just finished surgery it's over my goodness so right now I see I can see like mostly clearly but I just have a really thick Haze over my eyes so are you ready for this all right you've actually been in a coma for five years 2027 you just woke up and we want to ease you into world I did get you some robot eyes this car does fly so put on your five seat belts it's funny you say that because the entire surgery felt like I was being operated on by aliens like I felt like I was on a spaceship and I woke up and was like in a haze and there's aliens like Savor open your eyes and they're like don't move follow the lights well we're gonna have to back because president Elon is going to do his student of the Union so my eyes are starting to hurt now though sorry yeah starting to sting a little bit it's not great so I'm gonna go home hang out you're gonna go too much take my protective goggles no we have here we have those big goggles for you to wear a helmet too the in a few days on the way home I did start to feel a little bit of the pain in my eyes as the numbing drops are wearing off if you've ever had like an eye infection um I personally have had two corneal abrasions so I'm very familiar with the sensation but it's similar to that where there's just a lot of like stinging and kind of like light sensitivity and it becomes like a little bit difficult to open your eyes it wasn't that bad honestly like I mean I just kept my eyes closed for the most part and it was very manageable I would say probably about like an hour after I got home it started to subside and I felt totally normal okay so a little update it is 8 15. my surgery ended around 5 15 so it's three hours right now and my eye stopped hurting it only started hurting for maybe like 30 minutes to an hour once I got in the car and came back so that's good and the film over my eyes clearing up things are getting a little bit clearer there's actually lights on in here and it's not like insanely bright about an hour ago I was trying to like watch the TV when it was dark and I just like couldn't open my eyes so progress so far and we have our celebratory Korean Fried Chicken and some beef soup they did tell me that I was not supposed to sleep for a few hours because I needed to make sure that my eyes stayed lubricated and didn't get too dry so I laid down listened to an audiobook eventually I was able to go to sleep and when I woke up in the morning I had 20 20 Vision which was insane I thought it would take longer for me to heal and my vision might be like a little bit blurry at first but everything was great it did feel a little bit dry kind of like you know when you wake up after having slept in contacts and things are like a little bit cloudy or blurry at times because your eyes are so dry it's a little bit like that but I can tell like you know for the most part I can still see like my vision is 95 there I did have my post-op appointment at 9 45 so that was less than 24 hours from the surgery and when I went in they said everything was great uh confirmed my vision was 20 20s so that was amazing to hear later in the day I was out in the evening and I did notice Starbursts and Halos around traffic lights and it wasn't so bad that I wouldn't trust myself driving and that is something to be expected in general no matter which surgery you get it's very normal for your night vision to kind of like be a little wonky for a little while and now on February 4th two days later my vision is still great I don't have any issues no pain I still have a little bit of dry eye but it's not uncomfortable by any means it's just sometimes things get like a little bit hazy because of the dryness but that's what I got these artificial tears for and that is expected to continue to clear up within the next week and they said my vision should keep getting better and better over the next few months although it's pretty good now so I'm definitely okay with being patient for it to get perfect now I'm sure the question on your mind is would I do it again knowing what I know now and the answer to that is yes it was totally worth the time the money the preparation the recovery the slightly traumatizing experience of being operated on by my alien overlords and yes I would do it again overall I would say it's kind of like having an Apple Watch where your life is totally fine before it but once you actually get one you can't imagine ever going back and the biggest benefit is that if there's ever a zombie apocalypse I will be able to see long enough to survive for a few months until I inevitably do something stupid enough to get eaten and just to address the elephant in the room which is what I talked about at the very beginning of this video there are a lot of people who get the surgery and do have complications okay it's not a guarantee that you're gonna be a successful outcome so it's it really is up to you to do the research to understand what you're getting yourself into I will say you should be careful about treating anecdotes as statistics you know of course if something goes wrong it's much more likely that you're going to want to complain about it so when you see these stories online about how these surgeries did not go as planned just keep that in mind I'm not trying to Discount anyone else's experience those experiences are totally valid and again it's possible things are not going to go the way you want it to same can be said about anything in life I mean you could get in a car accident on the way to the grocery store it doesn't mean you're never going to drive to the grocery store again if you are considering it my only advice is to make sure you go to the best doctor available to you and to not I repeat do not cut Corners when it comes to costs I know there's Groupons out there I know you could fly to another country and get it done cheaper but just remember these are your eyes you're talking about if you can't afford to go to someone who is experienced and the best in their field then I highly highly suggest you stick to your contacts or glasses until you've saved up a little bit more I hope some of that was helpful I know it can be really nerve-wracking going into an elective procedure that literally involves lasers in your eyeballs so I just wanted to share my experience in case it gives you a little bit more information on what it's like and of course as always you should take the things you see on the internet with a grain of salt and do your own research I'm not a licensed Medical Professional I'm not an eye surgeon I am just a girl talking to you from her camera trying to share her own experience getting her eyes fixed if you have any more questions about the surgery or what I went through in particular feel free to drop a comment below and other than that hope you have a great day bye together [Music]