Police Officer, Patrick Sheahan

Reprinted with permission.

My name is Patrick Sheahan. I had lasik eye surgery at the age of 23. When I went in for a consultation at [redacted] they said I was a perfect candidate. I was only -1.25 in each eye and could almost make due without glasses. After the lasik surgery my left eye slowly started to deteriorate. I was getting dizzy spells and migraine headaches daily. I started taking pain killers. I went to my optometrist to see if I could get a pair of glasses because all I could see out of my left eye was light. She told me that my left cornea was severely damaged and it was shaped like a football. I immediately made an appointment to see Dr Gerald [redacted] of [redacted], the man who performed my lasik surgery. He made me and my grandfather wait for 5 hours in the waiting room. When I finally got in to see him he admitted there was a major complication and blamed the laser not himself. Dr [redacted] said that there may have been a malfunction in the laser and there was nothing he could do for me. Dr [redacted] was very rude to me and my grandfather. He rushed us out of his office before answering all of our questions. He told us he had a meeting to go and if we had any other questions we had to make another appointment. In the following weeks I consulted many corneal experts who came up with the same conclusion that I needed a corneal transplant. After a proper donor was found I had had my transplant done on July 10, 2003. A corneal transplant is not a pleasant procedure. They cut the cornea out of your eye, replace it with a donor’s cornea and in my case it took over 30 stitches in my eye. The removal of the stitches is done a few at a time, only when the stitch loosens with a needle like instrument while you are conscious, which resulted in numerous doctor visits. I had to pay 18,000 dollars for that surgery. I also paid 4,000 for a lens implant procedure done on October 14, 2005. My doctor has told me to prepare for many other future procedures and that my cornea can reject at any time. So far I have lost almost 2 years of income as a police officer and have depleted my entire savings including my 401K. I have since been able to return to work, however had to be assigned to a different division (because of my eyesight) with a lesser rate of pay. I will never be able to work the street again. I consulted a lawyer who paid experts to look over my files. In Illinois I was told you need an expert witness to testify on your behalf. After further investigation I found out that all of these experts were lasik eye doctors themselves and were very reluctant to testify against each other. I am not trying to scare people with my story I just don’t want this to happen to anyone else. My story is also on lasiksucks4u.com and [redacted]eye.com my other website. [redacted] continues to use false advertisement as the story below indicates. They made me believe that the worse complications would never lead to blindness. I went blind in my left eye and my only option was a corneal transplant. The worst part of my ordeal was the way [redacted] and Dr. Gerald [redacted] treated me after the complication. Dr. [redacted] offered me no options of how to correct my vision nor did he show any sympathy towards me. One corneal expert i saw before my transplant told me that [redacted] is known as as a fly by night large company that heavily advertises but does not deliver quality service. He said [redacted] is a huge company known not to attract the best doctors. To be fair to [redacted] he also said after looking at my files he saw nothing definitive that [redacted] did wrong. Many top corneal experts came up with that same conclusion. They said they were baffled by my outcome because i was a perfect candidate and it should of been an easy surgery. Its scary that something like this can happen and top experts in this field cant explain it. If anyone wants to contact me or has any other questions feel free to email me at Psheahan12@yahoo.com

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