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Comment by JustSomeNobody | Hacker News Reader

I have decided against LASIK due to the potential for halos. I am susceptible to optical migraines and when I have one I see halos and it drives my nuts. I would hate to have even a fraction of that experience every day.

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I have halos after LASIK and they don’t bother me. I understand how they would have a negative association because you experience them at the same time as a migraine, but they don’t cause me any suffering. They’re just... things that in my visual field that I don’t pay much attention do. When I notice them, they are a gentle reminder of how fascinating brains and eyes are.

Unrelated, but you're the first person I've ever heard who had optical migraines, which I have too. I experience them as shooting lights followed by essentially a shut down in vision in the affected eye. Never thought about Lasik making it worse but glad to never have done it if that's the same experience. It's miserable when it happens.

If you believe my conclusion, the halos after LASIK are not a real problem: there's actually no difference in experience between people who underwent LASIK and complain about halos and a healthy person: both see the same halos under the same conditions (e.g. night time and/or being tired). It is just that people after LASIK suddenly start paying attention to those halos.

I suspect it is a very mild form of post-surgery paranoia. I have a very similar thing after a minor surgery in the abdomen area: I started paying waaay more attention to what happens in my stomach.

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