bobquasit | Letter to Salon

I wrote this as a response to an article on Salon about someone who had LASIK surgery and ended up with terrible problems.

I have to admit that this letter fascinated me. My wife has been urging me to get LASIK for quite a while now, and I've always flatly refused.

Why? Because even though I'd never heard a word about problems with LASIK surgery until I read this letter, I suspected that it ran a risk of causing serious problems.

If you look at the history of modern medical treatments, you'll notice something pretty quickly: it takes decades to perfect the techniques, or to be sure that the medications are safe.

Knee replacement, for example. Early versions of the procedure weakened the surrounding bone so that no additional replacements could be made, and the replacements themselves had a limited lifespan. When they wore out, no new ones could be installed, and the patient was stuck in a wheelchair for life.

Victorian doctors used to surgically remove large quantities of intestine for almost any reason at all.

Tonsillectomies used to be incredibly common. Now they're rather rare. Why? We've learned that they're usually unnecessary.

Circumcision is yet another procedure which is now seen as of questionable use by many doctors, although of course that's hardly a new procedure.

And don't get me started on the medications: Fen-phen. Vioxx. Thalidomide. Diethystilbesterol (DES). All of them clear lessons that it's a bad idea to trust ANYTHING new in medicine unless you have no other choice. Wait until it's been practiced or prescribed for at least ten years, unless you're dying.

While I'm at it, I have to mention surgery in general. TV has fostered a completely ridiculous impression of what surgery is - it's like a child's view of what it's like to be shot, which was wonderfully portrayed in Steve Martin's "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" when the heroine sucked the bullet out of Steve's bicep and put a band-aid over the neat little hole that was left.

Childbirth, surgery...on TV it's all over and recovered from within five minutes, because the show is only 30 or 60 minutes long. One minute the patient is under the knife, the next they're up and smiling, fully recovered.

But the truth is that when you undergo surgery your body is cut open, and you'll feel that for months if not years. Too often, people don't understand how serious surgery is until it's too late.

The LW made a natural mistake. Now s/he has to live with the consequences. But one benefit s/he can take from this experience is to be much more suspicious of new medical procedures, and to investigate thoroughly. I hate to say it, but ten seconds spent on Google looking for "LASIK problems" would have spared him or her a lifetime of discomfort and disability.

As for the friend...of course he didn't mean for this to happen. And it wouldn't be fair to punish him because the surgery went bad. But a friend who bullies and belittles, for whatever reason, doesn't sound like a great friend to me. I've been there, and I know that sometimes that sort of thing is done out of friendship, but even so I think it's out of place.