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Despite constant evidence that my eyesight is challenged, when the alarm clock sounds I inevitably squint and strain my eyes to make out the flashing digital numbers. I'm always giving my eyes another chance, hoping that they'll have made a miraculous recovery.

Last year, I made a misstep and felt my metal frames crumple beneath my feet. It was near 4 on a Sunday afternoon, and I had no idea if there were any eye doctors available. Luckily, I had a friend who offered to drive me to a nearby optical store. But what would have happened if I'd been alone? Do eye doctors have an ambulance service for emergencies like mine, for people so blind they can't find a bus stop?

Without my glasses, I felt completely vulnerable. But then I saw an advertisement for LASIK -- Laser Assisted In-Situ Keratomileusis. Could I really be 15 minutes and $3,000 away from 20/20 vision? In the ensuing months I saw many such ads in magazines, on TV and on billboards, but I still didn't believe the claims. It sounded too good to be true, so I decided to research it.

That's where I found Kirk Carver, who first had LASIK in September 1998. Kirk had always wanted to scuba dive with his wife, but he couldn't see well enough underwater without his glasses and prescription goggles were expensive. In fact, Kirk's lenses interfered with all of his athletic pursuits. When he fished, water got on his glasses and on the rugby field they weren't allowed at all. Like many athletes, Kirk tried wearing contact lenses but he got headaches if he wore them for longer than a couple of hours.

Kirk considered the earlier refractive eye surgeries, which have been an option for Americans for more than 20 years, most recently with photorefractive keratectomy (PRK). But he was hesitant about them because of their longer healing time and potential for infections. With PRK, the surgeon scrapes the epithelium off the cornea and then uses lasers to shape it.

But LASIK, which was introduced in July 1998, was touted as safe and quick -- surgery fast-food style. The surgeon could correct both eyes in less than 20 minutes. Kirk's ophthalmologist told him that people with similar astigmatisms had been having the surgery with no problems, and Kirk decided to give it a try.

But since the surgery, Kirk has become very familiar with terms like diopter, the standard measurement of vision, myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness) and astigmatism (which he has), a condition in which the eye is more oval than round. He's also learned much more about LASIK than the average person should ever have to know. He's consulted with doctors, joined an organization where he talks with other LASIK patients, and even consulted a few lawyers. For Kirk, the surgery did not go well.

An estimated 700,000 people will get LASIK this year, and you can even have it done (or watch it being done) at shopping malls across the country.

When correcting nearsightedness, the surgeon performs a tiny cut in the cornea with a machine called a microkeratome to create a flap the width of a human hair, which he or she then lifts and shapes the cornea underneath with the laser. In essence, post-operative patients have a reshaped cornea that bends the light entering their eyes in much the same way that their glasses or contacts previously did.

In a recent study, 92 percent of eyes were corrected to 20/40 vision or better (the legal threshold for driving without corrective lenses) and 47 percent were corrected to 20/20 or better.

But 20/20 vision does not come cheaply. LASIK can cost from $1,000 to $2,500 per eye, and it's not likely to get cheaper anytime soon. The lasers cost nearly half a million dollars each and there are royalty fees paid to the manufacturer every time it's used. But with LASIK, you don't always get what you pay for.

"The places that charge the most market the most effectively, not provide the best service, necessarily," says Dr. Kerry Assil of the Sinskey Eye Institute. "They're your eyes, not a pair of tires."

Next page | Before surgery, Phil could spot a fly a block away