Anthony - LASIK

As a firefighter, Anthony found it difficult to wear glasses on the job. In this clip, Anthony talks about his LASIK eye surgery with Dr. Stainer at Southwest Eye Care and Laser in Bakersfield, CA.

MR. ANTHONY FADIA: My name is Anthony Fadia [phonetic]. I had LASIK about a month and a half ago now. I had it with Dr. Stainer. I had been looking around for a couple years and asked around for several people and I heard only good things of Dr. Stainer. I was seeing one of the doctors who is underneath him, Dr. Marsh, and she said good things also. So I ended up coming over here, talking to him. He said that I was a really good client for the surgery. I had it done about a month and a half ago. I was really happy with all the nurses. Everybody was really helpful, very knowledgeable, made sure that I knew the surgery in and out, and also all the pamphlets and visual aids and things they gave me. The surgery itself, I was actually quite surprised how relatively painless it was for what I was having done. It was a lot quicker than I thought. The prep time was more then the actual surgery. The surgery went really quick. Recovery time was very quick. I had it on a Tuesday, had a Wednesday off, went and saw Dr. Stainer for a follow-up, and then I was back to work on Thursday, so I was really happy with it. It’s definitely been beneficial to me being a fireman with just the obstacles that wearing glasses or contacts kind of throws in there. One of the major things for me is that I drive fire engines, so if we get a call at three or four in the morning, without my glasses I really wouldn’t be able to see to read street signs or see someone in dark clothing. So I definitely would need contacts or glasses, and contacts, even though it only takes a couple minutes to put them in, that’s too long in the middle of the night. Then glasses, obviously are a little better as far as speed, but the problem is that, especially with the job, they get scratched up quite a bit and I just can’t afford to get new glasses every six months. Obviously, if I forget them or loose them, then I’m in trouble there, so I always have to have a couple of pair. Then with the different gear that we have, sometimes I can’t wear my glasses. If we have a mask on, I can’t wear the glasses and if I don’t have contacts on me, then my vision is just going to be lower. So right now, even when I get up in the middle of the night and reach to the bed stand there to try to put my glasses on and then I don’t. So it’s definitely a nice thing to have, especially when I’m wearing the mask and we’re on an incident, I don’t have to worry about glasses or contacts and as its smoky and everything, already in dark now, I can see that much better without the glasses on. Before the surgery I saw, I believe her name was Debbie and she was very helpful. She gave me all the introductory speeches and everything. I think I asked a lot of questions 'cause, you know, it’s a surgery and I know it’s not, you know too invasive, but it is a surgery and I was worried about it. Then with my job, if I loose my vision or my vision decreases, then I’m kind of out of luck, so I wanted to make sure that I knew the surgery in and out. Then once she had me good with all the ground rules and all the basic workings of the surgery, I saw Dr. Stainer and then he just answered any of the final little questions that I had. I was really happy. I was impressed with how informative and forthcoming with the information they were.