Everyone seems to be different. When I wake up, my eyes feel pretty dry, so I throw a drop in each eye and I'm good to go within 10 seconds. I've been using drops less and less as the days go by. I use them as needed now, which is 3-4x a day, and as my Dr. said, that's because we are in the desert SW and it's just a fact of life with it being so dry.

The military had some concerns with this, used to be no-go for pilots and special ops, but the Navy at least allows it for both today. Seems like the flap sticks pretty good.

I opted for PRK due to flap concerns when I got my vision corrected last year (best thing I’ve ever done). I had mine done at a surgical practice with two doctors. The doc who did my consult and performed my procedure sold me on the PRK due to my concerns about the flap and what it could mean to my career if something happened.

At one of my follow ups I had to see my surgeon’s partner. He was an older doc and had been doing vision correction surgery for nearly 20 years. He asked why I had chosen the longer recovery of PRK over lasik. I explained that I was a pilot and concerned about eye/vision damage if the flap came loose. He said that in 20 years he had seen it actually happen twice and he was able to replace the flap both times. One was a result of a screwdriver to the eye. The other was from a dog attack. Both patients went on to continue to have great vision after he repaired the damage. He said the moral of the story is that if you have a career that is highly vision dependent (like a pilot), the flap isn’t really a concern. He said that if a person sustained enough trauma to the eye to dislodge the flap to the point of disrepair, that person would have sustained heavy and permanent eye and vision damage regardless of the lasik flap. At that point a loose flap would be the least of the persons concerns - their vision would be jacked either way.

Here is what I did, for PRK (similar to LASIK) but PRK (years ago...) was recommended for special ops, pilots, etc categories

1. Told my AME about my PRK plans. got him to "bless it" (not needed, but..
2. got PRK done
3. got PRK doctor to complete Form 8500-7
4. went to AME with 8500-7. He nodded
5. got an entirely "fresh" FAA medical (probably not needed, but this issuance of a fresh medical made me feel good about the entire thing)

done