POLL: 20/20, eyeglasses, contacts, Lasik?

[$tevie]

I don't really mind wearing glasses, maybe because I can get along without them if need be such as when I'm swimming. If I had $5k set aside for Lasik I honestly think that instead I'd spend it on an array of cool glasses to suit my various moods and outfits.

[Acer]

Contacts...but just recently I picked up a pair of drugstore reading glasses for fine print late at night. Guess I better start saving for retirement.

[Rolando]

Been wearing glasses since the 4th grade. Broke many a pair just being a boy. Got a job and got contacts at 16. They were "hard" flexible but rigid contacts, the floated on a layer of liquid on my cornea, but when that dried...pain! When all was good...fantastic vision, esp at night.

Switched to softies in my 20s, doc said I was getting a callus on my cornea.

Got lasered about 5 years ago. It's been fantastic. My right eye is now 20/20, first time I can remember. My left eye he never got it so sharp, due to the cornea being "very thin" he didn't want to go and do it 4 times to get it perfect. He said in the next 10 years, the near sighted leftie will become monovision, built in bifocals

[John B.]

Lasik in late 2001. Went from 20/400 to 20/15 in 10 minutes. Drove myself to the follow-up appointment the next day without any corrective lenses. I did the math and figured out at the time that the Lasik paid for itself after 7-8 years of not having to pay for contacts, solutions, and a backups set of glasses.

Best money I have ever spent. I went to a clinic that did/does a lot of eye surgery research, and they said I was a good candidate. Even with that, your heart tends to skip a beat in the pre-surgery meeting with the surgeon when he says "well, if we need to we can go back after six months to do any touch-ups."

If you have a well-regarded surgeon based on personal recommendations from people who have had the surgery, and that surgeon says you aren't a good candidate for Lasik, don't press forward. The only people I know who have had issues had pre-existing issues with dry eyes or thin corneas and wanted the surgery too badly.

[NewtonMP2100]

.....my work insurance will pay the full amount for laser correction.....I have been reluctant to take advantage 'cause I think something will go wrong....99% of the people at work who had it done are happy with it.....

.....I might just give it a go before they stop paying for the full amount.....will see if I even qualify....

[GeneH]

Have needed glasses for the last 20 years and reading glasses for 15 years prior to that. Didn't mind the reading glasses but I HATE the regular progressives. Vanity, pure and simple and I'm 75! I'm the only one of six siblings that needs them.

I use cheap reading glasses ($1 at the .99 cent store) for reading and the computer and like them better than my progressives.

Do any of you recall some Australian researchers who were experimenting some 5-6 years ago with restoring glasses-free vision? I believe they were replacing the lens fluid with an oil of some sort, exposing it to UV or IR radiation, and voila! - no need for glasses.

Yeah, that smacks a bit of the miracle cures that eventually amount to nothing. Anybody recall that story and/or know what became of that effort?