It’s almost that time again! I absolutely love Christmas. All holidays, really… I love an entire season devoted to “jollyness” and giving and family. I haven’t started my shopping yet, but I can usually get that all done pretty quickly. Need to get some pretty soon, though, so that I can mail them out to get there in time! Tomorrow will be our first “Christmas Shopping” day. That’s half the fun for me, really, picking out presents. Seems like everyone veers more and more toward gift certificates each year, and while they’re a really good idea for a gift (heck, I love em), I really like to get something more personal at Christmas if I can. So we’ll see what I can find.

Keep your
Christmas decor in mind when planning the festivities.

Finally finished up the Holiday Brushes set! It has both Christmas and Hanukkah elements in it. Click on the image/text below to go to the downloads/info page on my site!

  On a sidenote, regarding that whole LASIK vs ICL decision that I had to make… I’ve decided to go with ICL. After a WHOLE LOT of research, it seems like a better option for me. ICL is basically a lens that goes inside your eye, just on top of your cornea. LASIK, as most know, is a laser surgery that actually alters/cuts away your cornea to make it shaped correctly in order for your vision to be “corrected”. Now, for me, “corrected” had a decent chance of not being 20/20. Because I am -8 and -8.75 in my eyes, I wouldn’t necessarily have enough of my cornea left to go in for a second “enhancement” LASIK operation, if the first one didn’t get me all the way to 20/20. If I was even -7 instead of -8, I would have had much better chances with LASIK.

Originally, I was thinking that it made more sense to actually “fix” my eye with LASIK then to put in a lens that was “temporary”, since the ICL lens has to come out when you get cataracts. But here’s the thing: if I get cataracts, I will very likely have surgery to remove them anyway. Regardless of whether I had LASIK or ICL. This way, they can take out the ICL lens, fix the cataracts, and then put in the new lens that’s a part of the cataract surgery. So, LASIK and ICL should theoretically last the same amount of time for me.

Also, I’m really coming to like the thought that this is both reversible AND isn’t cutting away at part of my eye (the cornea).

If some “miracle” procedure comes out 5 years from now, and I decide I want to get it, I could get the ICL lens taken out and have the “miracle” procedure done, no problem. If I had LASIK, there’s a chance that I wouldn’t be eligible for this “miracle” procedure simply because my eyes had been “messed with” and part of my cornea was gone.

The risks for both procedures are very similar. LASIK had some that ICL didn’t, and vice versa. For those of you interested in learning more about ICL and what I’ll be having done, check out this website:http://www.visianinfo.com/index.html

There’s videos there that show exactly how the procedure is done, as well as testimonials from some people. The ONLY downside for me about ICL is that it’s a relatively new procedure, and it costs more than LASIK does. But, if I’m going to get this done, I’m not going to choose the cheaper procedure when it’s not as good for me. I mean, these are my EYES. ICL was only approved by the FDA 1 year ago, although it’s been done in various parts of the globe for about 15 years. I will be the very first procedure done at this particular clinic in Dothan, AL… but the doctor doing it has done the surgery before elsewhere. The procedure is also VERY similar to cataract surgery, and my doctor apparently does about 20 of those a day!

It took me several months to switch from being gung-ho about LASIK to realizing that ICL is the better alternative for me. I did a lot of research, but what finally made up my mind was having several people tell me that I would be much more likely to have better vision afterwards with ICL. Even if I was seeing 20/40 with LASIK, and I could read those numbers on the chart, that doesn’t mean that it’s a “crisp” 20/40. With ICL, I can reasonably expect to see 20/20, and I can reasonably expect it to be a crisp 20/20. There were other little things that influenced it, too, but that was the bottom line. I mean, after all, why else am I getting this surgery if not so that I don’t have to wear glasses anymore and to have perfect vision without them?

I’ll be having the surgery done sometime in January, if all goes right. They want to find a second candidate and do two of the ICL operations around the same time period, so that’s all I’m waiting on… other than the fact that I wanted to wait until after the holidays to have it done.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 16th, 2006 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Art, Ramblings, Photoshop Brushes, Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.