| d a n i e l m c k i n n o n . c o m | |
| Saturday December 17, 2005 A Sight Unseen I remember when I first realized that I had trouble seeing. I remember sitting in my 4th grade class, being asked to read something off the projector, unable to do so, kids laughing at me in the background. Whether I cried or not I really don’t recall, but I am sure I at least had tears in my eyes. No child enjoys being laughed at. Being a kid and being different are just two things which do not mesh very well together. I do remember that no one else had glasses in my class though; it was just territory that most children (at least in North Andover) didn’t have to traverse at 9 years old. What are essential things for most people? Water, food, clothing, shelter, these are the basic answers that most people would give (no, an iPod is not an essential item). Ever since that day in 1984, it was essential that I have some man-made device to bend light in such a way that enabled me to see. I know people (many people) that have no such needs. They get up out of bed, and like magic they are just able to see clearly. For anyone that has said perfect vision and reads this sentence their response would probably be something like "yeah so what, what’s the big deal?" Oh it’s a big deal. After that day in school, I was taken to an eye doctor in North Reading (I still know the place) and was fitted with what would be my first of many pairs of glasses. I remember returning to school and again getting laughed at by my fellow students but at least I could read the board now! Heck I could read everything now, this was great! I didn’t realize how much I couldn’t see before. Besides, my glasses were really thin, no big deal. They didn’t stay thin for long. As the years went on, my eyes got worse and worse. For whatever reason, my mother decided that I needed to wear glasses that were huge and covered my face, no doubt not helping girls ever take notice of me. They sure did attract the boys though! Being bullied throughout most of my childhood, called a dork, nerd, loser, and my all-time "favorite" Myron throughout all of 5th grade, the glasses were a magnet for people to be mean to me. You always hear that kids are cruel, well there’s a reason that saying came about... it’s true!! Ahh yes, happy days indeed. Not only was my eyesight getting worse every year, I had aviator-sized glasses to rest on my face every day and a new nickname to remind me that I wasn’t one of the cool kids. The life of an outsider, anyone that has been there knows how awful it is. For the next 8 years glasses were just a part of my every day existence. Anyone that knows me and my life story knows I had lots more to worry about then glasses, so I never gave it much thought. I needed to be able to see, so I had to wear my glasses, end of story. Besides, when you are ignorant you don’t know any better so it is what it is (one of my favorite sayings now). During that fateful trip in summer 1991 when I went to visit my Grandmother in Florida, I remember Nana taking me to an eye doctor’s office to be fit for contact lenses. Obviously my Grandmother knew that the gigantor glasses on my face weren’t doing much for my self-esteem and she was trying to improve my quality of life. I remember trying the contacts on but for anyone that has worn contacts, having something rest on your eyeballs is something that takes getting used to. At 16 years old I didn’t have a whole lot of patience for getting over this new sensation of having something in my eyes, so I quickly decided that contacts were not for me. When I moved in with my father and stepmother after that summer in Boca Raton, I was styling in my jean jacket, earring and tinted huge glasses. It was time for a change. For whatever reason, only 4-5 months after I tried out contact lenses in Florida, I was now back in an eye doctor’s office in Salem, New Hampshire (Leahey Eye Clinic), ready to try out contacts again. I am guessing that my stepmother probably had something to do with this. She probably told me that I couldn’t keep looking like I had been, and probably forced me to go in for an appointment (If this was the case I am glad that she did). However it happened, I exited the office that day in November 1991 with my first pair of contact lenses. Aside from the fact that my prescription would keep going up, contacts would be the primary way I would see for the next 13 years. For anyone that wears glasses and pays attention to their prescription, you might find the following table interesting. Taken straight from my medical records, here is an analysis of how my eyes have changed over the past 16 years. For the purpose of keeping things simple, I have only listed the strength of refraction for each eye, ignoring any measurements related to stigmatism and so forth. For individuals that don’t understand what this table means, and to put things in perspective, a "normal" prescription for someone that needs glasses would be a refraction level somewhere between -0.50 and -2.00 per eye (the kind of glasses you could pick up at CVS off the rack). It can easily seen that my major problems starting occurring from the ages of 14-17 where I nearly doubled my script. Ahh the joys of puberty... hair growing, voice changing, going absolutely blind...
And I do mean blind. Just because I can "see" this does not in any way shape or form mean that I can function like a regular person does. What I see is colors, plain and simple. If there is a white wall with a green picture on it, unless the picture stands out I see white. If there is a group of people I’ll see blobs of peach and brown (depending on who is there). If there is even the smallest little LED I don’t see a small little dot. I see a glowing orb whatever color is glowing. Lights are the biggest problem. Whatever I see becomes a round orb, the more lights the more orbs, the more problems exist. Without my glasses or contacts I am beyond legally blind. I don’t know what my script is, but instead of 20/20 I am more like 20/40,000 (perhaps worse). Throughout my life I haven’t even met someone in person with a script worse than mine. I have heard of them but I have never met them face to face. My closest candidate is Mark Sedleski who I believe is a -10.00. Close, but no cigar. Of course when you get past a certain level it really doesn’t make much of a difference. Not seeing is not seeing is not seeing. In my life, a new year meant another trip to see Dr. Harney (my eye doctor for the past 10+ years). Again, I didn’t think much of it; I just knew that it was part of being Daniel McKinnon. At times I figured it would just keep getting worse until I went blind so I tried not to think much about it. As my prescription got worse my contacts got more and more expensive, and I had to keep switching to different brands until I was fitted with the Coast/Cooper lenses in the mid 90s. From not wanting to try contacts and having trouble even touching my eyeball (every contact wearer goes through this), I loved my contacts and for 99% of the day (I wore my contacts much longer than I was supposed to) I could see like everyone else. I would put my glasses on at night before I went to bed, but that was about it. Cleaning my contacts at night was as much a ritual as taking my medication, brushing my teeth, or washing my face, it was just something that I did. While I had to keep trying different contacts and was never a candidate for disposable contacts due to my high script and fairly dry eyes, I never noticed any major problems until early 2004 that my eyes just were no longer happy with the contacts I had been wearing for so long. I figured that all I needed was a new set of contacts or perhaps a new material, but every problem had been fixed before, so I wasn’t really concerned. After going to 1 appointment and having new contacts ordered, I found that this wasn’t fixing my problems at hand. My lenses were not horribly dry, and the vision in the left eye was horrendous. I would put the lenses in, and then 20 minutes later I wouldn’t be able to see well at all. The vision was there, but it was no longer crisp like in the past. Crisp was always the word that I would use to describe my difficulties with my contacts. At this point I started to go see my eye doctor on a regular basis, keeping in mind that every time I had to go see my eye doctor this was a process in itself. I had to make the appointment, take personal time off from work, and of course that’s not even mentioning the costs of going again and again and again. We don’t have vision insurance so I would have to keep opening my wallet every time. Over the next year and a half I estimate that I was in different doctors offices over 30 times. What exactly was I doing when I made all these appointments? Follow my steps...
After having 2 IOL (Intra-Ocular Lens) or ICL (Insertable Contact Lens) evaluations, I was found to be an excellent candidate for the procedure. I have extreme myopia (nearsightedness) which means my script was higher than -10.00, good cell counts, and my eyes were in relatively good health. While the doctor at MEEI and the one that went off to start his own practice from MEEI are geniuses in their field, the # of IOL procedures that they had done could be counted on one hand. I now had a choice to make. I had new glasses made in 2004 when I started to become more dependent on them and I had to wear them for extended periods of time when I had the LASIK and IOL evaluations done, but after having worn contacts for such a long period of time and having such a high script, it was a hard thing to stomach (life with glasses forever). What exactly is phakic IOL surgery? Of all the research I have done on the subject (and I done an exorbitant amount), the best teaching tool I have found on the procedure online is located here. Set my prescription to -11 and select the "Verisyse" lens on the 2nd part of the demonstration to enjoy the show. To put it simply, IOL surgery implants a contact lens inside the eye. Instead of riding on the surface where the patient’s eyes can dry out, by residing inside the eye the patient never has a problem with dry eye or a burning irritation. Where cataract IOL surgery removes the natural lens of the eye, the word phakic means that the original lens is kept intact and an artificial lens is placed in front of the pupil. Like LASIK, phakic IOL surgery is not covered by insurance because it is deemed cosmetic by the insurance companies. IOL surgery is not cheap either. MEEI was running $4,500 per eye and the other surgeon in Boston was $4,000 per eye. So at the minimum we are talking $8,000 just to have a surgeon slice your eyeball open and put these lenses in. For a procedure that takes around 20 minutes per eye that’s a steep price to pay. As I learned more about the procedure, I decided that I had to decide on a surgeon first before I finalized my decision. No matter how smart the surgeons in Boston are, I couldn’t have someone cut my eyeball open that had done so few procedures. Since the FDA had only approved the surgery in the fall of 2004, I had 2 options, get the surgery done outside of the US where it had been done for nearly 20 years (Canada as an example), or go somewhere in the USA where FDA trials had taken place. Continually researching the surgery on the Internet had become a daily ritual (and still is many days of the week even now) and I contacted surgeons in Washington, DC and Los Angeles online and also a place in Canada but none of these places responded to my e-mail inquiries. Professionalism meant a lot to me then and now so I continued my search... While doing a search on IOL procedures, I read an article about the cleanliness of the operating room for IOL procedures by Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler out of Los Angeles, California. I thought the article was very well-written and went to his web site. After sending out the same basic "Hello my name is Dan, I’m interested in finding out more about IOLs" from their web site I expected maybe a response in days and got one in about 20 minutes. I was instantly impressed by how quickly this place made me feel like an important person, not just another #. At this point I read up more about the accomplishments that Dr. Boxer Wachler has made in the field of eye surgery and saw his long list of well-known clientele. More than the athletes, rock stars, and other celebrities that he performed surgery for, I was most taken aback by another super-surgeon who went to Dr. Boxer Wachler for his own LASIK surgery! I said to myself that if other eye surgeons are going to him for their surgery this guy must be one of the best in the country if not the world. My experience with the office and his spotless resume (plus having performed over 1,000 phakic IOL surgeries himself) made me decide that if I was going to have the surgery, I was going to have it in Los Angeles. After much soul searching, running the financials, and getting the OK from my job, I made the decision that will hopefully change my life forever. Phakic IOL surgery isn’t a cure-all and aside from the fact that there are risks of infection and possibly the need for glasses still (albeit a much thinner pair) or needing a LASIK touch-up surgery in the future, I decided that the pros heavily outweighed the cons. My stepmother Betty (sounding like a gambler) said herself that in order to reap great rewards in life, sometimes you have to take risks. From learning all that I have, the risk really isn’t that high. What I probably can expect is not 20/20 vision but more like 20/30 or 20/40, but even at those levels I would at least be able to function without having my glasses on. I am not looking to have eagle eyes, I am just looking to improve my standard of living. In 1 months time on January 17, 2006 I will be having my phakic IOL surgery done in Los Angeles, California. When it involves having a scalpel against my eye I don’t see any problem in going to see the best doctor available and that’s exactly what I am doing. To pay for this surgery I had to take out a home equity loan in the amount of $10,000 and after paying for 2 weeks of hotels plus airplane tickets for Mellisa and myself, the cost is much more than even that amount. But if this works like it can... Dictionary.com defines miracle as "An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God: ‘Miracles are spontaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themselves’" It would be a miracle. I have pictured the moment in my mind numerous times but I try not to get my hopes up. After the surgery is done, I hug the surgeon and I cry. Even at 20/30 or 20/40 would bring me to tears. I try not to get my hopes up and I know that these are the upper end of the results and the more likely cases, but I don’t want to get my hopes up, only to have them come crashing down all around me. Am I scared? Sure I’m scared. The idea of someone cutting my eye open and putting something inside of it frightens me but this is how I was born. These are the cards I have been dealt and I am just trying to make the best hand out of them that I can. Beyond the medical fears that I have, there are huge financial fears associated with the entire procedure. I will be paying off these loans for the next half decade, and that’s not even taking into account how much it will cost for me to eat for the 2 weeks that I am out in Los Angeles (the surgeon requires that anyone who have both eyes done on the same day come back for the 1 week post-op; add on the # of days required for the lenses to be made and that’s where the total of 2 weeks time comes from). I hate leaving Isabella for even a couple of hours, so 2 weeks will be brutal, but I know that this sacrifice will make for a lifetime of freedoms so it has to be done. One month from today my life will be forever changed in one of the defining moments of my entire life. It’s been long road and one that I look forward to reaching the end of as I continue on this amazing journey that is my life. |