 My vision may be made worse. You see these eyeballs? I'm gonna get some lasers shot into them today. So I am gonna have surgery today, not your typical surgery, but it's still surgery nonetheless. I am gonna finally get LASIK. And this is something that I've been putting off for probably 15 years. It was always one of those things where I was like, oh, it'd be so cool to get LASIK someday, but I get scared about the potential consequences and it's pretty expensive. It's like $3,500. But this year I turned 40 and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do it. I'm finally gonna do it. I'm gonna make it so I have perfect vision. And my eyes aren't that bad to start out with. I don't exactly know my prescription, but I actually don't wear glasses and I don't wear contacts. I definitely should. But it's one of those kind of things where I can't see stuff that's way off in the distance. If I'm in a sports bar, I can't see scores. And sometimes when I borrow my friend's glasses and I put them on, I'm like, oh, damn, look at all the leaves on the tree. Look at all the stars in the sky. My God, it's full of stars. This is the informed consent for laser and essentially after the initial here and here and here and here and here, about all the potential consequences. But this page right here is the one that gets me. You have to repeat after them essentially. You have to write in here that you understand what's going on. I may not achieve the results I hope for. And this one right here, my vision may be made worse. There are risks and no guarantees. And this is the stuff that freaks me out. But I'm gonna do it. I've been thinking about it for a long time and I'm gonna save up my pennies and I'm gonna do it. And I'll tell you right now, I'm extremely nervous because I have very sensitive eyes. I can't even put in eye drops without freaking out. So just the act of a Lasik scares me. I know it happens really quickly. My doctor is one of the best. I did a little Facebook post asking who I should go to in Boulder and everybody's like, go to this guy, Dr. Byer. He's the man. I went to his website and he has a photo of Kevin Costner on there. So I figure if Kevin Costner went to this guy, he should be pretty good, right? Please sit down. Sit down. The Lasik office is really close to my house but they say I can't ride my bike unfortunately but I'm gonna get on the bike anyway just to loosen me up. My bike is my happy place, right? Seriously, biking just kind of calms me down and I definitely need to be calmed down right now. I didn't sleep very well last night. Maybe I'm making more of a deal out of this than I should be but it's just kind of scary. Later. Oh boy. Here we are. So what is this volume for? Anti-anxiety so that you'll just be nice and relaxed for the surgery. Bye-bye everybody. Ha ha ha ha. Phew. 12 seconds later. This is pretty cool. He has the wall of all the famous people he's worked on. There's Lindsey Vaughn, Grammy Award winner and lead vocalist of Cool and the Gang. That's the one that really sold me. Bye. If I look okay, here's okay. I just got out of a pee. So this is Dr. Byer finally get to meet him in real life. He's gonna tell me about the difference between PRK and Lasik. Yeah, okay. So the difference between PRK and Lasik, I always give this analogy. Lasik is more like planning sod. We make a flap, lift it up, laser underneath the flap, put the flap back down and then all the grass is still intact on the surface. So that's why the recovery is a little faster. PRK is like planting grass seed. You take the grass off, laser on the surface, but then the grass grows back very quickly. So the recovery again is different. But the risk, everything, they're different between the two procedures. And it just depends on the patient. Younger patients with lower prescriptions, I tend to push them more toward PRK because PRK is more stable. There's less risk of like long-term complication known as corneal lactasia or Lasik induced lactasia. That virtually does not happen with PRK. So you think I should do PRK? I do based on your prescription. And what's the recovery difference you talked about? So with Lasik, your vision immediately after surgery is pretty cloudy because the flap swells. So right when you sit up, people really don't notice a huge difference. They're like, it's really cloudy. But then the next day, it's about 95% improved. And that continues to improve over a week. And then even more of a work. So by the end of the week, it's like 98% by the end of the month it's going to be where it's going to be. With PRK, typically what happens is your vision is probably about 80% improved just when you sit up from the laser, 70 to 80% improved. And it stays that way the next day, but the third and the fourth days are the worst because the surface heals from the periphery toward the center. And it's irregular in the center for the third and the fourth days. It's kind of like a little stab or something right in the center. It's not really a stab, but it's just heaped up epithelial cells in the center. So those days are the worst, but then it gets better. So typically by the end of the week, it's going to be 85, 90% better. By the end of the month, it's going to be where it is. You know, I trust you of course. So let's do the PRK one. Okay, sounds good. Really very low surgical risk. I mean, there's really, there's no cutting or anything like that. So intraoperatively there's really no surgical risk. The main risk of PRK is the risk of infection because that surface has to heal over a week. So if you get tap water, sweat, face cream, eye makeup or anything like that, that could cause an infection. Our current rate of infection is about one in 20,000 for patients that have had PRK. How do I get X-ray vision? X-ray, but you need a brain transplant for that. I feel pretty good. I think the volume really is kicking in. It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. Can I get some more of that? It's good. Blue eyeballs, but I stay the same color, right? You're okay, good. Well, I feel very at home knowing there's a Simpson with me. Marge in the room. All right, bye. I'm going in, deep breath. See you in a few minutes. A few moments later. Ah, that was so great. It was so fast. It was so easy. I can see. Thank you, this was great. Walking out with my cool new sunglasses. Woo, that one moment like held my hand because I was getting a little squirmy and you just stare into the laser. Seriously, it's like when the Millennium Falcon goes into hyperspace. All right, now it's time to go home and close my eyes for six hours. One eternity later. I'm going to call the doctor's office and I can barely even see the phone number. Hi there, I had PRK surgery on Monday. And yeah, and I know the doctor said that my eye sight would fluctuate on day three and four, but I'm having a hard time seeing anything. Just want to make sure that's normal. Arming and I'm gone. Yeah. But that is completely normal. Okay, good. Okay. But it should be getting better. Is going outside okay? Is that gonna make things worse? Should I just stay in a dark area? I'd just make sure you have your shades on if it's a windy and really bright or bold. Okay. Well, they're certainly friendly and it sounds normal, but God, this sucks. Day five after PRK, going on a little jog in my backyard here, my eyes finally feel better. Last night I went to bed, I could barely see my phone. I haven't been able to edit video or even read emails for the past two days, but I woke up today and I can see. And I'm starting to see better. Like today I'm walking around with my friend. I'm like, wow, the world is so beautiful today. And it is a beautiful day, but I think my eyes are, they're getting better. Like they're not a hundred percent, but I'm starting to see much better. This is exciting. I am just walking out of my one week appointment here at the Lasik Center. They took off the little protective contact lens on my eye. It's really bright, so I'm gonna put these on, but yeah, I can definitely see better. And they say it's gonna continue improving for the next month, which is exciting. It's gonna get better and better, yes. All right, so it has been five weeks since my PRK surgery. And look, they're still blue. And my eyesight is definitely way better. I can see things I never saw before. Everything is crystal clear. As I ride my bike around town, I'm noticing things that I never noticed before. I can see like the silhouettes of trees on mountain ridges far away and stars. Stars are the coolest. I camped out in Moab recently and it was amazing. It was like sitting in a planetarium. And that is exactly what I wanted. I wanted my eyesight for distance to get better. But I certainly compromised my distance for close-up stuff like reading, looking at my phone. And they told me that I would lose a little bit of my vision here. And that is definitely true. It's not horrible, but I definitely need to hold my arm back when I'm reading a book or stuff like this now. And it's kind of like, oh, this is what my mom has to do. But I don't really mind that I've lost some near vision because now I get to wear cool reading glasses like these. Let's go back a little bit. I realized that I didn't really explain what happened when I was sitting in the chair and the lasers were going into my eyeballs. It was literally a matter of seconds. And I was freaked out going in there. The idea of having my eyes pried open really wasn't that comfortable. But in reality, it was fine. I was in and out. I think the volume definitely helped. But it was like painless. Nothing, I couldn't feel anything. And it felt almost like somebody was blowing on my eyeball. I realize that's a weird analogy. I don't think anybody's ever blown on my eyeball, but you get the idea, something very delicate touching your eye. The recovery process has been interesting. It was definitely the worst on days three and four. It felt like I had sand in my eyeballs even when they were opened or closed. Sleeping was uncomfortable, but then it got better. And then it got really bad about two and a half weeks after my eye surgery because I went to Canada and bought some moisturizing eye drops, but I didn't pay enough attention to the bottle because they had some preservatives in them. And for some reason my eyes really didn't like that. So I started using these new eye drops and it just made my eyes get very angry. And my eyes were so sensitive to light. Like I was one of those guys wearing sunglasses indoors at all times. I called the doctor, he said, hey, come on in. And he pinpointed the problem pretty quickly, gave me some eye drops that have no preservatives. And ever since that moment, I have been A-OK. So the big question is, was it worth it? Well, I'm still in the process of healing, but yeah, it's really cool. I can see a lot better. When I look out the window, I'm like, damn, I can see all the way across the Colorado Plains. Not exactly, but I can see things that I never saw before and it makes me very happy. I definitely lost some eyesight here, but that's okay. I traveled the world. I wanted to see all the beautiful sights around the world in perfect HD 4K awesome vision. So yes, it was worth it. It was a lot of money. I probably could have bought a rad bike for that $4,000, but you know what? It was a good investment. I'm excited about it. And yeah, that's my story about getting PRK surgery. I hope you enjoyed this video. I know it was very different than most of my videos. It wasn't really an adventure. Well, it was kind of an eyeball adventure, but stay tuned for more adventure videos. Like and subscribe and we will see you down the road. And don't forget, get off your couch and get out there.