Hi, Gypsea...remember me? We met at the 331 when Dread Clampitt played during the Christmas holidays. I had lasik surgery on both eyes (at once) over five years ago. It was the best thing I have ever done for myself. Someone asked why I had both eyes done at once and I am so glad that I did it that way. I mean, if you needed a double bypass, would you have one done, then go back later for the second part?
I had complete faith in my surgeon, who was with U. of CA San Francisco Goodman Eye Center and was one of the docs who developed the procedure. Insurance doesn't pay and mine was just under $5K, for which I used a charge card and received frequent flyer ponts...paid it off in 30 days.
As for the procedure, there was absolutely no discomfort before (eye drops only as aenesthesia), during the procedure (less than 90 seconds per eye), or afterwards. You sit up with 20/20 (in my case 15/15) vision and they put some goo on to help seal the flap quicker. Next morning, you are walking around with perfect vision. I stayed overnight with friends in San Francisco the day of the surgery. We walked down their street and had dinner at a Thai Restaurant that night, no problem. I actually went to a business meeting in San Francisco the next day, took the ferry back up to the Napa Valley. That morning, I woke up and saw a sailboat on SF Bay, outside my guest room window, and burst into tears. I have not had good vision in the mornings since childhood.
The only thing with recovery is that you have to wear these perforated aluminum oval eyepads that attach with surgical tape when sleeping at night. This keeps you from rubbing your eyes and possibly disturbing the flap as it heals. You wear them for two weeks. I must say they don't do much for one's love life (you look like a high-tech version of "The Fly"). But it's not uncomfortable.
My girlfriend opted for the other treatment and had discomfort and some recidivision in the year afterwards. I think she eventually settled down at 60/20 or something along those lines. I am still 15/15 in one eye and 20/15 in the other. But she did say that she had discomfort for about six weeks after the procedure, in the form of itching and headaches. The other thing is that nearsighted people who didn't wear reading glasses before automatically go into them after the procedure. This is because a middle-aged person with perfect vision would naturally require reading glasses, due to the decreased ability of the eye (with age) to adapt and readapt readily to distances vs. near print. It was more than a fair trade to me and I love my collection of reading glasses, including a pair of sunshade readers that I bought at The Zoo Gallery at Grayton.
Finally, the most important thing is to go to a teaching hospital, where the surgeons are up to date on all the latest technology and have done enough of these procedures to know what they are doing. The price for this surgery varies wildly, with some of the less expensive in-and-out clinics doing the procedure without the proper advance appointments and post-surgery checkups. People with diabetes should not consider this surgery.
Good luck to your daughter-in-law. She will never regret this if she is a candidate for the procedure. There is a lot of information, including diaries of people who had this surgery, available on the Internet.
They didn't put Vaseline on those old movie camera lenses for no good reason!