I met with three different people today:
- One (whose name I didn't get -- I'm guessing he was a technician who specialized in using the fancy gear) took measurements or pictures of my eyes, since that's what he did: took various pictures and measurements using two fancy pieces of equipment described below.
- Dr. Scott Lee, their on-staff optometrist. You can see his picture on the PVI Website. Dr. Lee performed a set of procedures similar to what my optometrist does during my annual checkups (e.g., "read the letters -- better with 1 or 2? 2 or 3?")
- Dr. Ella Faktorovich, the surgeon and director of the office.
Measurement #1 was made with a moden-looking device called the LADARWave Aberrometer.
The technicians has you stare at a blinking red light centered around a spinning black-and-white pinwheel pattern. Various flashes of light go off. I learned later that the device analyzes the reflections of those lights to make an accurate map of the cornea. The measurements will be used later to actually reshape the cornea so that it reflects that light in a way like a perfectly shaped cornea (belonging to someone with no glasses). Cool.
The technician said my pictures came out very clear and joked "not like you're going to be a model or anything." He must tell that one a lot.
Measurement #2 was made with a much bigger device that I later found out was the same one that would reshape the cornea. You lie down on it and stare at a pair of blinking red lights. I'm not sure what this device did that the other didn't, though part of what Dr. Faktorovich was very interested in (given my extreme nearsightedness) was whether I had enough cornea for the procedure. So maybe this machine made that measurement?
The Eye Tests
After these measurements, I did the a series of standard eye tests. At Pacific Vision Institute, they don't use a wall chart or project using a hand-cranked set of letters. Instead, they project a computer-generated set of letters. Fancy.
The staff was very impressed with how near-sighted I was -- worth a chuckle, but it's not exactly my goal to wow the staff. :-)
The Moment of Truth
After they completed all their tests and measurements, Dr. Factorvich glanced through the results and declared me an acceptable candidate for surgery. "Congratulations!" she said, "you have a healthy and good amount of cornea." As I mentioned, you need a lot of cornea to correct vision as near-sighted as mine. (Translation: they need to burn away a good amount of it...gulp!)
I scheduled three meetings for the first week in January: one for my "pre-op", one day for the procedure itself, and a followup meeting for the day after. Following these three meetings, I would meet with my normal optometrist one week after the procedure and then agan with PVI three months after the prcedure.
