I had it done many years ago....freak tennis ball meets eyeball accident. I would get bright strobe flashes in my peripheral and that's how I knew something was wrong. It actually took a few months after the accident before the flashes started.
I had the surgery done and was terrified when I woke up and couldn't see ANYTHING out of that eye. Come to find out, I had a patch over it. Derr.
There was some eyeball tenderness for a few days after the surgery. My vision afterwards was double the legally blind limit (20/200 I believe)...sorry for unsettling news. This was before contacts were comfortable and/or common ~1985 so I had glasses, one clear lense and one freakin' huge coke bottle over the other eye. Come to find out that the magnification distortion in only one eye was a cause for major headaches. I went for probably 10 years not wearing any corrective glasses because of the headaches. Since that eye can't focus on anything it eventually started to wander. That's when I finally got contacts. That corrected the vision in that eye considerably to somewhere around 20/60 I think.
Last time I was at the doctor I asked if Lasik would help and he told me that it would correct my vision to the same degree as the contact, no more. I may still eventually go for it. I believe that he told me that they had a new method of fixing the retina that doesn't involve a buckle. Maybe you should ask to see...maybe my memory is broke.
I don't know very much about other people's retina surgeries so it is quite likely that most people recover their site better than I did. I hope that is the case for you. I do know that ol' Mike Tyson had the surgery done.
The buckle does change the shape of your eye slightly too.
Just let me know if you have any more questions that I can bring doom and gloom to. j/k On the bright side, the surgery has nothing to do with your taste buds.
