CK Surgeon

in Nashville, Tennessee

SIGHT FOR SORE EYES: Woman's vision is renewed with CK
Byline: By Jan Rodak

Peninsula Daily News, 06/19/03
Published: 06/19/03
Peninsula Daily News

SEQUIM _ When Mary Lagerquist tells you she sees the world through new eyes, you can take that as gospel. In mid-May, just before her 70th birthday, the Sequim resident traveled to Nashville, Tenn., and underwent conductive keratoplasty _ a relatively new surgical technique that transformed her vision from a state of severe farsightedness to virtual perfection.

A mother of two and grandmother of four, Lagerquist left Gig Harbor in late 2001 and moved to Sequim to live near her sister, Lyla Stoike. Her husband, George, has Alzheimer's disease and lives in a care facility in Gig Harbor. She visits him once a week. Lagerquist said she had enjoyed exceptionally good vision until she turned 50. "At that point, I went in to see an ophthalmologist and said, 'I'm going blind!'" For someone who had since teen years played music _ the marimba _ on a professional basis, that was a problem, Lagerquist said. Reading music became more and more difficult.

But there were other issues coming into play: it brought home the reality of approaching middle-age. "What I had was old eyes," she said. After amassing a collection of reading glasses which increased in strength over time, Lagerquist said she'd finally had it. She studied a national database of eye surgeons and settled on Ming Wang, a Nashville physician and researcher with an extraordinary reputation, she said.

Lagerquist headed east in early May to be evaluated for a simplen cataract-removal procedure, but Dr. Wang had other plans for her. "Mary is a very unique patient," Wang said in a telephone interview. "She has a very positive and witty approach to life." Because she is unusually fit for her age, Wang said, he determined she qualified for conductive keratoplasty, a procedure recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration and is normally performed on patients from 40 to 65 years of age.

The 10-minute procedure requires no incisions or laser applications. Instead, it involves targeted releases of radio frequency energy to shrink tissue surrounding the eye's corneal center. Lagerquist said she felt no pain at all and, after a very short recovery period, noticed an immediate difference.

"Dr. Wang handed me his business card and asked me to read his e-mail address at the bottom, which was in very small print," she said. "I read it without a problem. That's when I knew I'd hit the jackpot."

Back in Sequim, Lagerquist finally enjoys a breathtaking 360-degree view of the Dungeness Valley from her log home in the hills above Carlsborg. Plays marimba She continues to play the marimba and reads her sheet music much more easily, she said. In fact, the flexibility of conductive keratoplasty allows practitioners to customize sharpness of vision in each eye, depending on the patient's needs. Lagerquist's right eye functions at 20/15 _ an ophthalmologist's gauge which translates to seeing at 20 feet what the average human views at 15 feet.

But her left eye was treated to see at "medium vision," something less sharp than 20/15, which is more beneficial for reading sheet music. Though farsightedness didn't put a damper on her newest passion _ ballroom dance lessons _ it's made a slight difference. "I can see my partner now," Lagerquist said.

The biggest difference of all, she said, is no longer relying on the numerous pairs of reading glasses she's purchased over the years. "I didn't throw them away," Lagerquist said. "I keep them in a drawer for when my sister comes over. She sometimes forgets hers."



The Wang Vision Institute in Nashville, provides CK laser vision correction & LASIK eye surgery to patients throughout Tennessee. This site is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be medical advice.