Hi Glenn,
I am near-sighted and my prescriptions are:
L: Sphere: -6.25 Cylinder -0.75
R: Sphere: -5.25 Cylinder -0.75
I had a Lasik pre-screening check last week. The doctor didn’t see me until the end. So basically his assistant did all the checks. She told me couple of things:
1. There are some problems with my eye muscles. She told me there is a name for it but I forgot. (Should’ve asked her to write it down) She said basically it means that my eyes cannot converge onto one focus. Or, I tend to do cross eyes a lot and as a result of that I’d see double visions. This is known to myself because I can feel that when I see double images. She said that this might have negative impacts on the healing process so she recommended to over correct my vision so that when it regresses it will regress to normal, say 20/20, rather than down to minor myopia.
2. My pupil size is at the large side. 7+mm? She said I may suffer some night vision problems so I may have to wear glasses while driving at night. I told her that my night vision is not good even now. Sometimes I see halos or starbursts around the lights.
3. Blepharitis. I get this kind of infection very often (upto once every month). I use diluted baby shampoo to clean the eye lids twice a day and hot compress twice a day as well. If I skip for couple of days, the infection will sure come back.
4. Very dry eyes. I use artificial tears about 6-8 times a day. It’s hard to open my eyes without a bit of struggling when get up in the middle of night or in the morning. Had tried plugs but did not work on me.
The assistant told me that she is not sure if I was a good candidate but she said she will leave the doctor to decide.
But the doctor did not say anything about my eye muscle and things like these, he only asked me one question, which is, is it OK if I had to wear glasses to drive at night. I said of course it is not ideal but I can put up with it. Then he said he thought I had more than 90% chance to achieve desirable results and I was a good candidate for the surgery.
My question is, is the eye muscle problem serious? Why would it affect the healing process? Also, based on what I have provided, does that make me a real good candidate? Or does the doctor just want to get me to sign up for the surgery? Oh, besides, I still have the infection on my upper eye lid at the moment. But the doctor didn’t seem to care much about it. He basically said I can have the surgery done anytime.
Sorry this is long. Really appreciate your opinion and honestly, this is the best website I found on this topic and I couldn’t thank you more for giving all of us the chance to have our questions answered. But it also means that there are so many doctors/surgeons out there who just do not bother to answer questions to their patients, even though we pay them!
Thanks heaps,
Lee