My first patient this morning at Miami Eye Center was a 50 year old executive who was “tired of wearing my glasses and I would like to be evaluated for LASIK.”  Seemed like he was in the right place until I asked him what he wanted to accomplish.  “I would like to be able to see far objects without my glasses.”  I then preceded to ask him what he did for his near work.  He told me that he took his glasses off to read.  This gentleman was telling me that he is nearsighted and has presbyopia.  I asked him what happens when he wears his glasses and attempts to read; answer: “I can’t see a thing.”  Major caution lights go off!  So if I do a LASIK procedure on this patient and correct his distance vision, he will have to wear glasses all of the time to read.  As it turned out, he did not see this as a reasonable alternative to his present condition.  I went on to tell him that the only other option was to apply the laser to his dominant eye and correct it for distance and leave untouched the fellow eye for near work.  This was also unacceptable at which time we shook hands and went on to other things. 

If the above tale sounds like it’s you then save yourself a LASIK evaluation.  I have written this blog because this scenerio plays out quite often in my office and hopefully this will help someone understand one of the LASIK dilemmas and be resigned to eyeglasses or faking it.