Sarah E

I’ve worn contacts since I was 15 and they changed my life at the time. But roll on 40 years and I found I was having to wear glasses more….given my prescription was minus 9.25 in one eye and minus 9.5 in the other, despite having high index lenses (latterly varifocal due to presbyopia), they were still thick and I hated them. My eyes increasingly became intolerant to wearing contacts which in recent years had been adjusted to ‘monovision’ to address the presbyopia. Although this worked well sight-wise, red and dry eye caused misery – forcing me to wear glasses more and more for the sake of the health of my eyes…often bloodshot which looked awful.

I will forever be grateful to my optician who put me onto David Gartry, who recommended I have LASEK surgery. I visited the Wimpole Clinic several times and he contacted my optician directly to better understand my monovision prescription. The surgery he carried out was based on this information and the resulting ‘blended’ vision is fantastic! Sight in my ‘strong’ (R) eye is fractionally less than 20:20 vision and the other eye was deliberately corrected such that I can read texts without needing reading glasses [N8 unaided reading vision]. If I need to read very small print, especially if it isn’t black type on a white background, I use Plus 1 readers off the shelf which is no hardship whatsoever. I’m also well within the parameters of driving without needing any visual aid. LASEK has been truly life-changing!!!

The prospect of LASEK can be scary when you read all the information provided, but frankly I don’t think anyone could be in better hands than those of Professor Gartry. Once I’d made the decision to go ahead, the hardest part was the run-up to the procedure, and worrying about what seemed at the time to be the intimidating eye-drop regime which needs to be adhered to for 4 weeks afterwards. I did request and have a mild sedative before the procedure which I’m sure helped as I was really nervous about it – but it was quick, entirely painless and I could see brilliantly immediately afterwards. It felt like a miracle!

I experienced quite extreme light sensitivity on days 1 & 2 (I wore sunglasses inside the house and switched off all the lights – thankfully this was in December!) but the anaesthetic eye drops provided immediate relief. This was the only post-surgical issue I experienced. On waking on day 3 I had practically no light sensitivity at all. I soon got used to the eye-drops, the frequency and number does reduce fairly quickly. I have had no red or dry eye to speak of since the surgery. Now I can just ‘get up and go’ – it’s amazing – swimming, festivals, camping and just life generally is so much easier! Some may say it’s expensive, but it’s an investment in quality of life; also I worked out that given the high cost of my glasses and contacts, it will have paid for itself within 7 – 8 years. The freedom afforded by fantastic sight through my own eyeballs (no longer red or dry) after all those years messing about with lenses and glasses is absolutely priceless!