Blog post by: Eye Physicians of Long Beach
It may be temperate and warm in Long Beach right now, but before you know it, allergy season will be here again. Is anyone really looking forward to sneezing, watery eyes, congestion, and swollen eyes?
The answer is almost certainly a no! But what can you do? The allergy season isn’t going anywhere.
If you wear glasses or contacts, there is something you can do and it’s pretty simple. Keep reading for 4 reasons why you should get LASIK before allergy season!
1. Say goodbye to fingers in your eyes putting in contacts
When you wear contact lenses and have allergies, you’re stuck in a chain of pollen reactivity. Even if you put expensive air filters in your home, you’re still going to come into contact with pollen.
If you wear contacts, you have to touch your eyes. You touch your eyes at least twice a day to put in your contacts and take them out.
That’s two times that you’re almost guaranteed to come into contact with pollen somewhere if it’s during allergy season. Pollen has this habit of clinging to everything.
Your hair, your clothes, even your shoes, and your pets! Anything you touch throughout the day you run the risk of then getting in your eyes, including pollen. If you do get pollen in your eyes, you’re looking at irritation, swollen eyes, and general discomfort.
If you get LASIK, you don’t have any reason to put your fingers in your eyes, especially during allergy season. Sure, you’ll probably still have allergy symptoms, but it’s likely they won’t affect your eyes as badly after LASIK.
2. Getting LASIK now gives you plenty of time to recover
Another reason to consider getting LASIK now is you’ll have plenty of time to recover. One of the things that are so great about LASIK is it has a relatively short recovery time.
But LASIK is still a surgical procedure and that means you need to leave time to recover from it. On average, most patients take anywhere from 3-6 months to finish recovering after having LASIK.
This is on average though, and it does vary from patient to patient. Regardless of how long it will take you to recover, the point is, you need to realize LASIK takes time to recover from.
During your initial recovery, you shouldn’t overexert yourself. Your eyes might be more sensitive to light, or they may be more dry than normal.
This is not the time to make big plans. Instead, play it by ear and see how you feel. Most people feel almost back to normal after a few days.
3. You’re prepared for fall allergy season as well
One of the problems with allergies is you can’t really say there is only one allergy season. For some people, they may need to take allergy medication year-round.
They may be allergic to trees, dust, pollen, or other things outside, no matter what time of year it is. The good news is, when you get LASIK, your symptoms with any allergies are sure to get better.
Even if you wear glasses, you run the risk of pollen going from your lenses into your eyes. The less chance you have of rubbing your eyes or touching them throughout the day, the better.
If you know that you have allergies in the fall as well as the spring, getting LASIK in the winter makes a lot of sense. It gives your eyes more than enough time to heal and for your vision to acclimate.
4. Your vision has time to adjust and be clear by summer
Something that a lot of people may not know about LASIK is it can be a bit of a waiting game. Sure, there are patients that get LASIK and their vision improves right away.
But more often, you may get LASIK and realize that your vision needs some time. After you have LASIK, your vision may be a little smoky, hazy, or even blurry. This is all normal!
These are the kinds of things that you learn during a LASIK consultation but we’re telling you now so you’re ahead. As your vision stabilizes after you have LASIK, it continues to improve.
Most patients who get LASIK end up with 20/20 vision, if not better. Some patients even see with 20/40 vision! It all depends on how severe your refractive errors were before you had LASIK.
In other words, refractive errors mean if you were nearsighted, farsighted, or had astigmatism. This is what LASIK permanently corrects. But know that you may want to get LASIK earlier on so your vision has time to stabilize.
If you get LASIK in the winter, it’ll be in great shape by the time summer comes around! That’s a good thing because for the first month after you have LASIK, you can’t go into any bodies of water to go swimming.
That means no pools, no hot tubs, no oceans, and no lakes. That’s not ideal when it’s the summer!
The point is, if you are considering a vision correction procedure like LASIK, you should plan for it. This isn’t something you should ever get in the spur of the moment.
Whether you have allergies or not, winter may be the best time of year to get LASIK and recover! After all, who wants to spend their summer recovering and unable to do the things they love?
Ready to find out if LASIK could be right for you? Want to give your eyes relief before allergy season comes back around?
Schedule a LASIK consultation at Eye Physicians of Long Beach in Long Beach, CA now!