Penny Lewis at a post-Lasik check with Dr Justin Mora. Photo / Janna Dixon
After years of wondering, myopic Penny Lewis submits to laser eye surgery - and wishes she had done it sooner.
Sight was never my strong point. When I started high school, I needed glasses for shortsightedness but I was too self-conscious to wear them. Reluctantly I slipped my specs on in class, but would whip them off when lessons were over.
When I was 20, I got contact lenses and
they were a revelation. I remember staring out of the window for hours, seeing leaves on the trees clearly for the first time in more than a decade. Over the next few years, my eyesight worsened so much that I couldn't function without corrective lenses. The prescription for my right eye was minus 6.50 and my left was minus 5.50/-0.50 x 80. This was classified by the experts as a moderate degree of myopia.
I had been aware of laser eye surgery but didn't really consider it seriously, thinking it too risky, too painful and too expensive, although I have probably spent thousands on contact lenses, solutions, new glasses and optometrist appointments. At my annual eye-check, my optometrist, Wendy Hill at Gates Eyewear in Newmarket, suggested I consider laser eye surgery.
Not everyone can have this, so Wendy suggested a consultation at Auckland Eye to see if its vision Lasik would work for me. Dr Justin Mora, one of its Lasik refractive surgeons, is my daughter's ophthalmologist and I had met him a few times. He has done 1500 or more Lasik eye surgeries.
