I got my first pair of glasses at age eight. Upon receiving them, I was super excited because not only could I finally see clearly, but also because I now had a new fashion accessory. It didn’t take long for the novelty of the glasses to wear off, however. There were many inconveniences associated with wearing glasses I didn’t know about until I had to deal with them. When it is rainy, you can’t see out of your frames. When you’re laying down, the glasses poke into the side of your head. Trying to see through a microscope was next to impossible – I kept banging my lenses against the microscope’s lens. Classes were a pain; I had to wear my glasses to see the board, but it hurt my eyes to wear them for taking notes or reading.
My biggest frustration with glasses was they made it more difficult to do things I love. Riding horses with glasses was difficult. I had to buy a separate pair for riding and working at the horse farm so I wouldn’t destroy my regular pair. Nonetheless, they always got dusty and hard to see out of. They would slip down my face constantly, impairing my reaction time and ability to work with the young horses I was trying to train. In addition, glasses made chemistry class very difficult. Wearing goggles on top of my glasses was uncomfortable and hard to work with. I came to the realization that if I was going to get more serious about chemistry, I would probably have to get a pair of prescription goggles.
I had always considered laser eye surgery, but I never thought of it as a viable option until I got much older. However, the cost of glasses starts to add up over the years, and though laser eye surgery costs on average $4,000 for both eyes, according to Lasik.com, laser eye surgery ends up paying for itself within 20 years. Though the decision to get the surgery was scary, I’m very glad I ended up getting it.
Not only will the surgery save me a lot of expenses throughout my life, but not having to wear glasses has made me able to do what I love with more ease and made my everyday life much easier. When I wake up in the morning, I can read my clock, and when I go swimming, I can clearly see the faces of the other people in the pool. When I’m cantering around the arena on a horse, I don’t have to stop to push my glasses back up my nose. I don’t have to worry about losing my glasses, cleaning them constantly so I can see, or worrying about forgetting them and not being able to function.
Yes, the surgery is expensive, and it’s definitely scary to have someone touching your eye while you’re wide awake. Despite this, I recommend if you have the means to get the surgery, you should get it done, especially while you’re young. You have less risk doing it when you’re young, and the amount of money you will save by getting the surgery early in life is huge! A brief disclaimer: if your prescription is still changing, you’ll want to wait until it stabilizes to get the procedure done, or else you might have to get the surgery again.
If you’re curious about or intrigued by the idea of laser eye surgery, when you go home for spring break, make an appointment with your local Lasik facility. You’ll be able to find out whether you qualify for the surgery and get more details about the process. It’s totally worth it, because in the end you can see clearly, and you get to tell people you have laser vision!