Ms. Boswell was being seen by her ophthalmologist when he noticed she had some irregular corneal issues and he sent her to Dr. Slade’s office to potentially be a part of a study. Luckily when Ms. Boswell arrived at our office, she found she was not suffering from a corneal disease, but was experiencing vision loss from maturing cataracts.
She describes that her vision was fuzzy on the edges and she complained about seeing badly at the end of the day due to her eyes being tired. She would have to put on her glasses at night.
Ms. Boswell has worn glasses since she was 7 years old. She got fitted for contacts at 15 years old. She was corrected by LASIK eight years ago and chose monovision.
Monovision is a common correction format for patients. What this means is one eye is corrected and positioned solely for distance vision and the other eye is corrected and positioned solely for near vision (reading, etc.). This can be done with glasses, contacts or refractive surgery (like LASIK). This can also be done with intraocular lenses during cataract surgery.
Due to the fact that Ms. Boswell’s vision kept changing, it could not be corrected by her ophthalmologist with any more contacts or glasses after her LASIK and because of her corneal shape, her doctor believed it could be a corneal issue such as keratoconus plaguing her vision. Eventually, she got referred to our office and Dr. Baker explained to Ms. Boswell how her maturing cataracts were affecting her vision.
As far as the surgery goes, things could have been a bit scary for Ms. Boswell. As a patient who suffers from what she explained as “Panic-Driven AFIB”, we were on alert for any episodes of panic as she was being prepped for surgery. Due to the help of the staff, the kind smiles and the fact that “someone was holding [her] hand the entire time”, Ms. Boswell recounted to us that she never had 1 minute of panic. “I went through it so calmly. I don’t know if it was the girls, and how happy they were,” but she remembers it all as a calm experience.
She shared with us that if there was one thing she could tell you at home it would be: “This Laser Cataract Surgery is NOT what you think, don’t let it scare you.” She explained that she believed before she had it done that it was what she equated to a sci-fi movie where a large laser beam comes from above to burn into your eye.
She also had experienced LASIK before where patients often hear noise from the actual laser itself. She wants everyone to be aware, that until they see it, they don’t understand what it truly is and how simple of a procedure it actually is. We are happy to share that if patients ever ask, we are more than happy to give them a tour and let them see our equipment. We are also happy to walk them through what the process looks like on surgery day to make them feel more at ease.
Lastly, Ms. Boswell left us with this thought:
“If I am going to someone to fix my eyes, I don’t want to wear glasses. There should be a reward at the end…I don’t ask for much, just no glasses!” It is not easy to get patients out of glasses with ANY surgery, and this can NEVER be guaranteed as every patient ‘s eyes are different and their healing and recoveries are different.
Luckily, Ms. Boswell is now experiencing great postoperative vision after her laser cataract procedure. She has since completed both cataract surgeries and is very happy with her story. We want to thank her for sharing and hope that her testimony has helped you or a loved one decide to get your eyes evaluated!
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