That's enough Sandy. I am fed up with your whimpering and whining.

I have volunteered for years, since long before excimer laser evercame about and long before you decided to have LASIK, for the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). I have been a member of the President's Club since the mid 1980s. I can tell you that these fine people, who are functionally or totally blind and don't have options for vision restoration, would take you to task for even suggesting that they or someone who has functional but disrupted vision have "shattered" lives.

Your suggestion that someone who needs a corneal transplant to restore vision has a "shattered" life is offensive, rude, abusive, and mean spirited. Who the hell are you to tell these people their lives are shattered?

Look at yourself. You had a catastrophic LASIK outcome. By your description, you have gone through hell. You have decided not to have a corneal transplant that several doctors have suggest may be beneficial, but even without a transplant and by your own admission, your vision now is 20/20 corrected, functional, but not perfect.

You operate your own business, you have a family life, you have friends, you travel, you are able to communicate here and on your own website. There is no doubt that all of the things you do are limited or done with limited vision, but where do you get off calling your life "shattered". I don't know what you consider a "shattered" life, and everyone has his or her own opinion about what that would mean, but people with real problems would not consider your life "shattered". Not one bit.

Why don't you visit the NFB's convention this July and tell them how your life is so terribly shattered because your 20/20 vision is distorted and you won't have a transplant. How dare you insult these fine people by characterizing your wimpy-ass problems as "shattering" your life.

You just don't get it Sandy. You never have and you never will. The world doesn't give a damn about Sandy Keller and her little problems, because the world knows what real problems are. You are a mosquito in the Taj Mahal. You go on and on about how you had to do this and have to do that while there are people out the functioning perfectly well without a complaint who don't have any vision at all. Then you have the audacity to characterize them as having shattered" lives. You are the worst kind of zealot. You are so full of yourself and your "problems" that you don't see or give a damn about people who really do have difficulties and challenges.

The fact that you received over $250,000 dollars in a malpractice settlement indicates the severity of your difficulties, but "shattered" is not an adjective that anyone who has encountered real vision difficulties would use to describe you, the great anti-refractive surgery/surgeon/industry zealot whiner.

Not everyone who has a bad refractive surgery outcome - even catastrophic - considers the event "life shattering". Not everyone who experiences a corneal transplant (for whatever reason) will spend hours a day on the Internet trying to scare anyone foolish enough to listen. Just how "shattered" a life may be by a bad refractive surgery outcome is going to depend an awful lot on the personality and mental stability of the person involved. You obviously do not have the personality or mental stability to deal with your own problems without inflicting your misery on the rest of the world.

There are tens of thousands of corneal transplants performed every year due to natural causes and eye trauma that have nothing to do with refractive surgery. These people's lives are not "shattered". Their lives are challenged or disrupted, but not "shattered". Their vision is restored (probably not perfectly, but certainly functionally) with a surgical procedure. That is not exactly a "shattered" life, and at least they have the option of having some vision restoration with a transplant. Not everyone gets this opportunity.

I have said time and again that refractive surgery is not just about the physiology of the eye. It is about what the individual patient expects from refractive surgery. If someone is unable to accept the 3 in 100 possibility of any kind of unresolved problem and the 1 in 2,000 possibility of a catastrophic outcome that might even result in a transplant, then that person SHOULD NOT have refractive surgery. If someone is unable to emotionally handle the consequence of the potential adversity, then that person SHOULD NOT have refractive surgery - or any other elective surgery, for that matter.

Next time you are going to spread your bovine fertilizer here or anywhere, think about the white cane that YOU DO NOT USE and think about the people who you insult by claiming some sort of righteous indignation because you made a bad decision in your life.

Not only have you demonstrated time and again that you don't have the emotional ability to handle your own problems without vomiting your neurosis on the rest of the world, you have the unmitigated gall to tell people who have real problems that you have a "shattered" life. I, for one, have had enough of you. Take your sniveling whining to SurgicalEyes where it is appreciated and leave the rest of the sane world out of your self-perpetuated gloom.

Glenn Hagele
Executive Director
Council for Refractive Surgery Quality Assurance

Find one post. ONE. One post where I say my life is shattered, was
shattered, was partially shattered. Find a post where I am
complaining about my vision. Please, Glenn, find one. When asked, I
have presented facts about how I see, but I have never complained.

I have said over and over and over again on this newsgroup that I
feel lucky, blessed, happy that I ended up here, where I am, with my
vision. I never thought I'd be able to see 20/15 through a melted,
thinned, scarred, hazed up and wrinkled cornea with a stop-start
ridge in it. Well, I can. I thank God constantly for the vision I now
have, because I can hardly believe that I escaped without a transplant, at least so far.

I am not a whiner. Find a post where I have whined about my vision.
Why would I risk a transplant when I can see? Dr. Rabinowitz told me
that when I am ready to risk the immediate need for a transplant, it
would be worth trying custom ablation. Fat chance, as long as a
contact lens will correct my vision.

My sympathies are not for myself--they are with my friends who are
not having any success regaining their vision after botched LASIK with
top, and yes, even CRSQA-certified surgeons. Multiple transplants.
Months of waiting. Still no correctable vision, even with hard
contacts. What is going to happen to these people? Two doctors, out
of work, practices gone. A mom who will likely lose her driver's
license soon when she has to try to read the chart at the DMV.
People who can no longer work. People who cannot talk about what lasik did to them without breaking down and crying--even men.

Did you know that I had to intervene on the part of a LASIK patient
who was going to commit suicide the next day and arrange to get her
on a plane to California within 12 hours in order to save her life? I
paid for her airfare, a cornea transplant, strabismus surgery and
doctor visits, glasses, etc. because her LASIK "doctor" would not
take responsibility for how he had butchered her vision and she had no
medical insurance.

In the end, SE members reimbursed a big chunk of what I paid out,
because we are a family, more than you could ever understand. We are
left to pick up the pieces of each other's lives because the doctors
are too busy lasering more eyes and attending seminars on how to
avoid malpractice lawsuits.

YOU HAVE NO CLUE, GLENN, how LASIK has shattered lives.

The biggest hell I went through was not with my vision. It was
discovering the betrayal by a trusted doctor. A doctor who sold me
to the highest bidder. A doctor who had a financial interest in
determining where to refer me, and in telling me what a great
candidate I was. Women who've been raped said they understand how I
must feel---women who've contacted me via this newsgroup. I'm not
sure about that, but whatever I went through, I've emerged on the
other side and I want the world to know what I have learned. The
information is out there, but I didn't know to look for it. I will
continue to post articles, studies, case reports, etc. to my heart's
content and I don't care what you say about me, because I do not like
you. Your opinion of me means nothing to me.

Life is too short to waste talking any further to the likes of you.
Talk about me all you want. It actually serves no purpose other than
to make you look ugly. You are lower than low. I have nothing else
to say to you. Ever.

...IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE BELOW, YOU MAY WANT TO HAVE A 'HEART TO HEART' TALK WITH GLENN HAGELE: