Ocean Kayaking Easier for Doug Fuller

Without Glasses After Surgery

I’m a very active person. I do a lot of kayaking, often on the ocean. The problem was reading maps and particularly my GPS [global positioning system]. I go as much as 10 miles offshore, and you can get fog and bad weather. The GPS becomes very important sometimes. But they have very small screens with small lettering and fine details. If your near vision isn’t very, very good, the GPS is useless.

I started using reading glasses about four years ago, so I had no choice but to take them when I was kayaking. When you’re on the ocean, you often have very windy conditions, rough seas, and water breaking over your bow spraying you with salt spray. If you’re wearing reading glasses, you’ve got to constantly rinse them off. Plus, there’s a high risk of losing them and thus your near sight. This could be life-threatening in certain circumstances.

I’ve always had fairly good eyes, but my near vision had been getting progressively worse. My prescription kept changing, and I was using my reading glasses more and more. I needed them to work at the computer as well. It got to be a real hassle.

My eyes had deteriorated somewhat for long distance. I hadn’t realized this, but they picked it up at Horsley Eye Center. Apparently my eyes were struggling to focus. Their natural focus wasn’t where it was supposed to be, so my eyes were correcting all the time.

The first thing that really impressed me at Horsley Eye Center was that I spent almost an hour one-on-one with Dr. Nilesh M. Sheth the first day I was there. They took a closer look at me and were far more personalized and gave a lot more thought to the whole procedure. Plus, Dr. Sheth refused to use anything but the best machine. He said you want the best vision you can have with the lowest risk. That also impressed me.

Dr. Sheth suggested doing LASIK for the far vision on my right eye and CK [conductive keratoplasty] on the other eye so I could see both near and far. My vision now is very, very good. I’m very happy I did it, and I’m glad I did what Dr. Sheth suggested. It brought me something that just doing LASIK on both eyes wouldn’t have.

Dr. Sheth is great. He’s clearly knowledgeable. He’s very skilled and experienced, and obviously, he has a very steady hand.

The laser surgery, which I had about a year ago, came out great. My far vision is 20/15, bordering on 20/10, and you don’t get any better than that. With the CK, I needed two touch-ups. This is not unusual with CK and Dr. Sheth informed me in the initial evaluation prior to the CK procedure that he might have to tweak things to optimize my results. Dr. Sheth knew exactly what had to be done, he saw it through, and we got it right.

I haven’t used glasses since the initial surgery. With CK, your eyesight changes a lot in the first year. I’m perfectly happy already – and it’s still improving.

Doug Fuller, Mechanical Engineer
Hopkinton, New Hampshire