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Lasik eye surgery is a miracle that restores sight to the legally blind By
Emily Aikele Jaime Caliendo sits cross-legged on her soft navy-blue, tan and cranberry-colored plaid couch. She is focused on the words in her French textbook and she keeps muttering pronunciations under her breath trying to commit them to her long-term memory. She looks and acts like a normal 25-year-old graduate student cramming for finals. It's likely no one would ever guess Caliendo used to be three times legally blind. Thanks to a 20-minute surgery called Lasik, (Laser-Assisted In-Situ Keratomileusis), which Caliendo had four and a half years ago, she now has perfect vision. Caliendo is a graduate student at USU studying literature. She is tall and slender and her black turtleneck and faded blue jeans hang on her bony frame. Her streaked brown and blonde hair is neatly pulled back into a low ponytail and her black and silver dangly earrings sparkle when she moves her head. Her bright blue eyes twinkle when she talks and her face isn't weighed down with a drop of makeup. Caliendo's poor vision started at an early age. She was fitted with her first pair of glasses in third grade and was wearing soft contact lenses by fifth grade. "Without glasses or contacts I couldn't even see my fingers clearly when my arm was extended," she said. Caliendo's eye doctor lived a little over an hour from Moore, her small hometown in southeastern Idaho. She said she had to go for checkups every six months and when she was 17, her optometrist, Dr. Dwight Hansen, told her about a new eye surgery that was capable of completely correcting vision and was performed with a laser. Caliendo said she knew immediately she wanted to have it done but decided to wait until the surgery was more perfected before she let someone touch her eyes. She said her eye doctor told her that eyes usually change shape until a person is about 18, so he recommended she wait a couple more years. According to www.allaboutvision.com, Lasik has been performed internationally for about 10 years. In the Lasik surgery, a surgeon creates a flap in your eye then uses a laser on the area underneath to reshape the cornea, which corrects the vision. Caliendo said the thought of someone using a laser to cut her eye was scary but she was sick of wearing glasses and contact lenses. "If I wanted to put on makeup I had to put my eyes in first. Now, I don't get the eye infections I got from dirty contacts and my lifestyle is much less restricted," she said. Prior to the surgery, Caliendo said campfires would dry her eyes out, swimming would get too much water in her eyes and water-skiing was impossible. In 1997, Caliendo decided she was ready to change her life forever. Dr. Hansen recommended an eye surgeon from Vancouver, British Columbia. Hansen told Caliendo that this surgeon was one of the first surgeons in the world to perform this surgery so he had a lot of experience. "I was most comfortable with him because I figured he knew what he was doing if he had lots of practice on many patients before me," she said. Hansen set everything up and did all of the pre-operation work Caliendo needed. "I think if people are interested in getting Lasik, they need to do their homework. They need to get on the Internet or talk to people who've had it done to get referrals. The cost is important but certainly not the most important thing, the surgeon is," she said. She thinks the most important qualities to look for in a surgeon are someone who will answer questions, not waste time, has experience, has knowledge and approachability. She said it is important that patients do research to make sure that Lasik is the right thing for them. Caliendo had to stop wearing contact lenses one month before her surgery. She said she was told to do this because contacts change the shape of the eye and to perform the surgery correctly, the natural shape of the eye shouldn't be restricted. "After the month without wearing my contacts, Dr. Hansen took pictures of my eyes to generate a map. Then he sent the map to the surgeon so he could program his laser to follow the contours of my eye and would know what to cut," she said. Caliendo and her mother flew to Vancouver in June of 1997 for a four-day trip where she received the painless but prompt surgery. Her mom was able to sit outside the operating room and watch the whole surgery on a television screen in the waiting room. It took her less than 20 minutes and cost a total of $3200. "I think it was worth it. It's worth every penny," she said. Caliendo said when she got to the surgical center she was taken to a dimly lit room where she listened to soothing music and listened to a tape that described the steps of the surgery in detail. Then the surgeon took her to the operating room and placed her in a chair and covered her left eye, which was the second one to be operated on, and told her to look up at a red light with her right eye. She was given eye-drops that made her eye numb. A clamp was placed between her top and bottom eyelids to prevent them from closing. A cold, black plastic suction ring was placed around her right iris, which made her eye become as hard as a pool ball. This was the point of the surgery where the top layer of her eye was being cut. The suction ring was removed and she heard the buzz of the laser and then she smelled something similar to burning hair. All of a sudden the single red light turned into a starburst of red rays as her cornea was peeled away. Caliendo said she couldn't see anything except for bursts of red light for about a minute and then the flap was replaced. She was a little nervous at this point and wondered if she would ever be able to see again. The surgeon used a surgical swab to seal the cornea back down to the eye. The clamp was removed and then her right eye was covered. This same procedure was performed on her left eye and then she was taken down a hall to a room where she rested with both eyes covered. An hour later, the doctor returned and had her open her eyes. "When I opened my eyes, I looked out these large windows and I could read the license plates on cars parked across the street. That was the coolest thing that has ever happened to me," she said. She said it didn't hurt after the surgery was over but she could just tell that her eyes were tender and she didn't want them to be touched for a while. The surgeon told her it would take about a year for the cornea that had been cut by the laser to seal back to her eye. He also told her not to wear makeup for a month following the surgery. Caliendo went back to her motel and rested for the night. She returned to the surgeon's office the next morning for a final checkup before flying home and the surgeon said everything looked good. She saw Dr. Hansen for a one-week, one-month, six-month and one-year exam. Hansen said her eyes had improved at each of these doctor visits and she said she hasn't had any changes in her vision for over four years. "The only thing I miss is waking up and being able to rub my eyes. I can't do that anymore. They said it could damage the shape of my cornea so I'm not supposed to do it for the rest of my life," she said. Caliendo is only one of the few people who have had Lasik. According to www.ksl.com, there were half a million Americans who had Lasik in 1999. In the same year, there were 6,000 surgeons trained to perform the surgery. An article that appeared in the Houston Chronicle in August said almost 1.2 million Americans will have laser eye surgery this year, which would make it a more common procedure than coronary bypasses and hysterectomies. Some of the side affects people who had the surgery reported were dry eyes and diminished night vision. This included glares, halos and starbursts while driving at night. While these halos might not be a big deal to some people who've had Lasik, they could cost Jeremy Jensen a career as a pilot. Jensen, a 25-year-old Liberal Arts and Sciences graduate of USU, had Lasik for the first time on April 18, 2001. Jensen was legally blind and heard about the surgery from a friend. His surgery was performed at the Mount Ogden Eye Center and his surgery cost a total of $2400. Jensen said his eyes were perfect at first but his vision gradually digressed in the few months following the surgery. He had an enhancement on August 16, but said he still sees halos around light at night. "I want to fly commercially and the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has special medical doctors who do physicals for the pilots and I need to pass a first class medical," he said. Jensen holds a pilot's license and said he hasn't had any trouble when he flies by himself but there is glaring at night. "There is no proven way to evaluate how much glare you have. They (doctors) just ask you and it's pretty much an honesty thing," he said. There are some complicated technical tests that can me administered, but Jensen said the doctors doing the physicals usually don't go to the trouble of giving them. Jensen said he would have to tell the airline he was flying for that he had Lasik but that he didn't have any glaring. Jensen recommends Lasik to anyone who needs it and can afford it. However, he doesn't think cheaper is better. "Usually the doctors who charge more for Lasik are leasing their laser. This means they are probably getting upgraded lasers as they are made so I would trust those doctors more," he said. Jensen said his quality of life has improved since Lasik and has especially enjoyed it for sports purposes. "I've loved it going swimming and basic living. My eyes aren't red anymore and that's the main thing for me. Everyone thought I was on drugs or tired before but my eyes were just irritated from my contacts," he said. Jensen and Caliendo both said they have heard of people who have had Lasik and not had as much luck as they have had. Caliendo said the only side-affect she has noticed is a slight halo around headlights while night driving that is noticeably worse when she is tired. "When you get older, my eye doctor told me all eyes naturally degenerate so there's a chance I will have to get reading glasses," she said. For now, Caliendo said she is so grateful for her vision and has had a few friends who have had Lasik done and loved it. "Anyone who can get it done definitely should. It's worth getting your eyes back," she said.
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