Eye,
Thank you so much for this list. Someone had referred to to Jack T. Holloday and I was going to refer him to someone else. I think not! You are doing a tremendous service to the public and I wish I could do more but I am so tired so much of the time because of my eyes. What I would give to never have had this surgery.
Elvira Texan

Hi Brent! Long time no see. Oh, no, that pun was not intended!

After my disasterous lasik I had no idea where to turn for help and didn't know the ropes in any of this. I contacted CRSQA for help, and they helped me get an appointment with Dr. Holladay. At the first appointment everyone at the doctor's office was kind, helpful, and understanding. Dr. Holliday indicated that he thought he could help me but the time for further surgery had not yet arrived. At subsequent appointments the staff treated me with increasing irritation, and finally Dr. Holliday asked me about my referral source. When I told him, he replied, "Oh, THAT bunch." When I tried to get an appointment after that I was told, "Dr. Holladay doesn't do that kind of work."

Interesting... but I still can't see worth a darn.

I like your alias - I have starbursts, too.

That's certainly a funny story about CRSQA & Dr. Holladay. So... are you a large pupil victim, dry eye sufferer, off-the-charts higher order aberrations recipient? Flap problems? Haze? A combination of multiple stuff?

Have you found any decent adaptation over time... eg. glasses that work OK, some RGPs that improve your vision... a dry eye regiment that's terrific? We'd love to hear some of your accumulated wisdom.

Do you EVER get used to those starbursts? I was driving home around Christmastime after dark and nearly had a car wreck because I saw a house with an enormous number of outdoor lights. It looked like the grand finale of the Chinese new Year fireworks. I was absolutely shocked and aghast and slammed on my brakes rather suddenly. I just had to gape. I couldn't believe my corneas were screwed up so much that they'd produce such a ghastly vision.

Some day I'd like to do a simulation of what I saw.

Would love to hear more about you & your vision. Who screwed up your eyes initially?

Hi Eye! It has been a long time since I participated in any online forums on this topic. It's been a long time since anyone expressed an interest in what happened to me. This is a breath of fresh air. Thank you, Eye.

Lasik gave me irregular astigmatism. I wear glasses to sharpen up my focus, but they don't take away the problem. The haze was so bad for the first six months I can't begin to tell you. My correction did not accomodate the size of my pupils, and that is weird because my pupils are not unusually large. The cut was done in an oval shape, not round, and that is also weird. I had epithelial ingrowth which was painful beyond belief and required a second surgery to remove the ingrowth. At that time I was given assurances that the ingrowth had caused distortion in my vision and the distortion would go away in six months. It has been six years, and still when I look at the moon I see multiple moons, overlapping. It was over a year before I could distinguish two separate headlights in approaching cars because of the brilliant light show they produced. The dry eye has been painful and miserable. At one point I developed corneal erosions from the dry eye. I twisted my optometrist's arm to prescribe Restasis, and it has helped with the dry-eye, and also with the glare and starbursts.

I was having too much trouble with pain and dry-eye before starting the Restasis, but after a year on Restasis I was thinking I was about ready to try contacts. Then I couldn't get in to see my regular optometrist to renew my Restasis prescription and had to see his associate, a young woman who scoffed at my reports of distorted vision because I could actually read the eye charts very well (never mind how many letters I saw in each cluster). "Maybe your vision is not quite as sharp as you would like," she said in a tone of voice as if she was telling me "oh grow up." I yelled at her, and frankly I wanted to die. I so much felt that I was back at square one.

As to what worked, TheraTears has been the best eyedrop for me and with the help of Restasis I am down to using it about four times a day.

I can really relate to your story about slamming on the brakes when you saw the light show your corneas were producing, Eye. That was the hardest thing for me when I started driving again, to not get distracted by the totally bizarre things I was seeing.

I salute you!

I'm really surprised you had haze after LASIK... haze is more of a problem with surface treatments. Haze after LASIK can mean that you had some DLK. Did you? Did a doctor suddenly put you on steroids at any point? Do you have any mention of DLK in your charts?

Your treatment zone may have been oval because of correction for pre-existing astigmatism. Did you have pre-op astigmatism? I had astigmatism in my right eye, and they gave me the stanard oval optical zone to 'treat' it. Now I have induced astigmatism on a different axis. The axis is very unstable and shifts. The narrow oval zone is a real problem with my large pupils. How nice.

The fact that your zone is oval may have made your zone narrow enough to cause problems with your not-so-large pupils. If your pupils expand into a zone that is not FULLY (YES, *FULLY* CORRECTED) you see garbage. Period.

I'm glad the restasis helped. You likely got flak for wanting it because prescribing it for post-refractive surgery patients is an off-label use of the drug.

Perhaps you should consider having a vision simulation made at [url]visionsimulations.com[/url] . Dr. Roger Davis is a LASIK dry eye sufferer himself, and will do a nice job for you. That way you can carry a picture with you when you visit a doctor to show them what distorted 20/20 vision looks like. Wrapping saran wrap over their eyes and asking them how much they would like it if that were there permanent vision COULD be considered assault...not recommended.

Starburst, I hope you never want to die over any of this. Staying alive and telling everyone in your community... posting on the internet...communicating about your experiences in any way possible is such a valuable contribution.

We all appreciate that you're here!

BTW, have you tried Panoptyx goggles yet?

I wonder if Dr. Jack Holladay gave consent to be featured on the front page of the patient hate site owned by cyber-terrorist Glenn Hagele of CRSQA/USAEyes.org.

www dot glennhagele dot com

I just wanted to add, that someone told me to go to dr. Holladay, and when i asked someone in the business about him , they said, "STay Away from Dr. Jack Holladay!".. I didn't need to ask another thing, I took their word for it.
sadeyes

What is DLK?

At my one week visit, my Dr. told me that I had dry eye...dry eye specks at that, which she tried to remove using a metal tool. She referred to it with some 3 letter acronym, and I can't remember exactly what the letters were, I thought I remembered there being a 'P' in it. I've been trying to look online to see if I can figure out what she was talking about, and what those 3 letters meant. Maybe DLK is it??? More likely that it was all BS though.

I had DLk in both eyes one day after intralase lasik, that is bad stuff. It was treated with Pred Forte,, nothing scraped.. epithelial ingrowth I think they lift the flap and scrape. You should find out what it is, as it could be bad stuff.. Call there and ask them for copy of your records, they should have noted there.. or call your dr. personally and ask what it is/was. I believe mine came back and possibly caused corneal haze, not caught in time and now I have permanent vision loss of seeing no dimension in anything and a glow around people. It's not fixable.. he treated me again with pred forte, but by then the damage was done.
Find out would be my suggestion. p.s. I'm no expert, just talking from experience.
sadeyes

There is a new website, Jackholladay.com which features LASIK surgeon Dr. Holladay's involvement with a 'fake patient advocacy' organization run by Mr. Glenn Hagele of Sacramento, California out of his private home. Mr. Hagele, with only a high school diploma and a single college course in marketing as credentials... 'certifies' LASIK surgeons. Yes, it's incredible that this is allowed, and even more incredible that over 30 surgeons have paid money to be 'certified' in such a manner.

Surgeons receive certificates from CRSQA that they can hang on the wall, and membership, apparently, is intended to imply that CRSQA surgeons are somehow 'better' than other surgeons, and that the worst surgeons can be avoided by choosing a CRSQA surgeon. If the number of malpractice lawsuits is any indication, some of the worst surgeons have been members of CRSQA!

I'm really puzzled that Dr. Holladay would have anything to do with CRSQA. He seems like an intelligent man, and has published some of the best medical research out there on LASIK.