I got my first pair of glasses in 7th grade and I've been wearing contacts since college. At first I was worried that when I did whitewater my contacts would fall out, and maybe I was just lucky or I have good reflexes, but there was only one time in the last five years that I've actually had a contact come loose and I had to re-insert it while on the water. I started really getting tired of dealing with the contacts, them sometimes slipping around, getting blurry, having to clean them all the time, my eyes getting really tired at the end of the night, and the occasional minor irritation.
I've had a number of friends get LASIK procedures over the last few years and I've really been looking into getting it done for a while, but the timing was never right. Barbara and I did some research, and found out that I would be out of paddling for at least a month: two weeks prior to the surgery where I couldn't wear contacts at all, and at least two weeks for the eyes to heal enough so I could submerge my head under water. So after we got back from our honeymoon at the end of November, I scheduled the surgery for December 15th, took my contacts out, and waited.
I got the procedure done at a place in Tyson's Corner, the LASIK Vision Institute, and they really took good care of me. So now that it's more than three months later I can honestly say that I really enjoy looking at the world with my own eyes. The side effects were relatively minor, mostly a severe case of dry eye that required me to apply eye drops and eye gel for the last three months, but that seems to have gone away. I still get minor halos around light sources, but that may be because I opted for traditional LASIK instead of the new custom LASIK. I don't know if the results would have been any different, but it really doesn't bother me at all. No double vision though. Considering how bad my eyesight was (-5.50 in the left eye and -5.0 in the right) the procedure really fixed me up to 20/20 or better.
So if you're a paddler and you're been holding off on a LASIK procedure wondering whether it would work for you, consider me as one more voice encouraging you to do the research among the available options and take the plunge. You will be happy you left your contacts or glasses behind.
