I drove to Mexico to get LASIK eye surgery

This is a follow up post about my research for LASIK vision correction. You can read it here.

Why Mexico?

Based on the technology advantages of the AMARIS 1050RS laser system that is widely available in Europe, Latin America, Canada but not in the United States I ended up deciding to get my vision corrected using the latest technology.

The Doctor & Clinic

After some research I found a clinic in Tijuana (Clinica de Ojos de Tijuana) which is about 3 hour drive from Los Angeles, the clinic’s history spans almost 30 years and it is a family business started by Enrique Rodriguez who still works there as a director and doctor.

His son Juan Pablo Rodriguez is my doctor who performed my surgery this past Friday, May 5th on both my eyes.

The day of the surgery

As I showed up for my appointment and went into the prep room, the doctor was already on the surgery room and got started with a few other patients. I was joining about 8 more people that were waiting to get LASIK done that same day. Overall each of us took about 5-10 minutes for both eyes each, you were given a pill to calm your nerves and the nurses cleaned your eyes and face with alcohol before you sat on the laser machine.

The procedure & my experience under the laser

Once it was my turn I was escorted into the surgery room, lay myself on the table with the laser on top of my face. The doctor covers one of your eyes while preparing the second eye for surgery, he places some eye drops and uses a tool to keep your eye from blinking. Once you are prepped, he cuts open the flap in your eye which causes a few seconds of total darkness (kinda scary) once you regain your vision he asks you to look at the blinking green light and try to focus on it until the laser finishes the correction.

My first eye (right) was not a problem and the procedure seems to have gone smoothly, on my second eye (left) I had the most astigmatism and correction but when he cut the flap open and I faced total darkness it took longer than my other eye for me to be able to see again so I kinda freaked out that I could not see where the green blinking light was at to focus. I was only able to focus on the green light for 4 seconds or so… technically the AMARIS 1050RS has 7 dimensional eye tracking technology and should have continued to correct my eye even if I wasn’t focusing steadily on the green light.

Once the procedure was completed on both my eyes (about 5-10 minutes), the doctor said it was over. You can barely see once you walk up from the machine, everything is blurry as if you were in a room full of fog, this is because the eye inflammation due to laser and flap. I was told that tomorrow when I came for my 24 hour post-op check up my vision should be mostly normal. To go home and rest in a dark room with my eyes shut as much as possible, avoid using electronics before the doctor said it was okay to do so. Read more on the next page.