Patient
Stories
Meet Bridgette
Bonilla
Bridgette Bonilla knows what it’s like
to open her eyes and see for the first time. That’s
how she describes her experience after receiving
LASIK surgery at Loyola. “I couldn’t
remember ever looking at a clock without my glasses
and being able to read it,” says Bonilla,
a medical technologist.
 Her
history with vision problems started at an early
age. By sixth grade, she told her mother that
she couldn’t read the blackboards clearly,
and soon she was prescribed glasses.
Years later as an adult, Bonilla was prompted
by her coworkers’ success stories to go
the Loyola Laser Vision Center for a consultation.
She was tested for the severity of her vision
and the topography of her eyes to confirm that
she was a viable candidate. She scheduled her
surgery for the following week, and the procedure
went smoothly for both eyes. “All in all,
it was over in about 25 minutes. I remember thinking
to myself, ‘Why have I waited this long
to do this?’”
Two years after the procedure, her vision remains
20/20, her days of squinting a distant memory.
“I tell people my story and encourage others
to have this done,” she says, “because
the impact it can have is tremendous.”
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Meet Dyann Cotton
Shortly after Dyann Cotton turned 30, she noticed
that she had a hard time seeing the road signs
while driving. She was tested and prescribed glasses,
which she found to be heavy and uncomfortable.
 “I
was nearsighted,” Cotton explains. “I
could read books, but I couldn’t watch TV.
I definitely couldn’t drive or even really
see the clock. And throughout my childhood I had
been able to, so I knew what I was missing!”
As a nurse, she spent a lot of the time in the
dry air of operating suites, so contacts were
not a practical option for her. “My eyes
would just tear up horribly if I wore contacts,
and my glasses felt heavier every hour of the
day” she said. “I thought if I could
do something to not have to deal with either,
I would jump at the chance.”
The chance came when she saw a flyer for the
new LASIK service at the Loyola Outpatient Center,
and then she spoke to a nurse who had had the
procedure done recently and had loved it. When
she met with Dr. Charles Bouchard, she was sold.
She scheduled the LASIK procedure right away.
“Dr. Bouchard is one of the most caring,
professional doctors I had ever worked with,”
she said.
Cotton was surprised how quickly the procedure
went. “The whole procedure was short, sweet
and to the point. It took maybe 15 minutes for
the whole thing to be finished,” she said.
“I think I was there a grand total of not
even two hours.”
She had the procedure done on a Friday. At her
Saturday check-up, Dr. Bouchard informed Cotton
everything had gone perfectly. And she loves to
share her story. “My biggest thrill was
going into Marshall Field’s and buying a
cute pair of sunglasses. I didn’t have to
pay an arm and leg for them, I didn’t have
to get a prescription. They were just CUTE sunglasses,”
she marvels.
To this day, Cotton remains a major advocate
of LASIK surgery, even volunteering to speak to
patients who might be hesitant to have the procedure
done. “I am 100 percent sure people will
be pleased if they go ahead and have it done,”
she says. “The people at Loyola make it
a very positive experience, all the way around.”
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Meet Reverend
Gino Donatelli, SJ
Gino Donatelli, SJ, is a familiar, friendly
face to the patients at Loyola University Health
System. As the chaplain in the Pastoral Care and
Education Department, he brings cheer and support
to patients and their loved ones at the medical
center.
 When
he’s not roaming the halls of the hospital,
“Father Gino” (as he’s known
to his friends at Loyola) accompanies the medical
students on their immersion trips to Latin America.
It was the hassle of traveling with spare glasses,
contact lenses and all the accessories that made
him consider laser vision correction surgery.
“When you’re in a third-world country,
it really slows you down to have to worry about
all that,” he said. “On one trip to
a remote area of the Dominican Republic, I broke
my glasses, and it was nearly impossible to find
a replacement pair.”
After meeting with the Loyola Laser Vision Center
team, Donatelli was ready to say goodbye to glasses
forever. After the procedure, he recalls, “The
experience was amazingly easy.”
The improvement to his vision also was a surprise.
“I expected to still have to wear reading
glasses to see the fine print in the sports pages,”
he said. “But since the procedure, I can
see everything just fine with monovision.”
Donatelli marvels at the convenience laser vision
correction surgery has afforded him. “I’ll
never have to worry about packing a suitcase full
of saline solution again,” he says with
a big smile. Since undergoing laser vision correction
at Loyola, he has the luxury of packing light.
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Meet Amy Haara
Since she was a grade schooler squinting to
see the chalkboard, Amy Haara has had issues with
her vision. “It’s not that my eyes
are terrible – but they’re bad enough
that it became a hassle.”
 She
first started considering LASIK surgery shortly
after she turned 40 years old. While reading a
book at an airport, she paused to take off her
glasses and realized she could read better without
them. “This was bad,” she immediately
thought. “I thought of ‘the B word’
– bifocals – and that scared me. I
was too young for that!”
Since she was willing to do “anything”
to avoid bifocals, she started asking about laser
vision correction. Several co-workers and family
members had undergone the LASIK procedure and
were very pleased with the results. “When
I went to do my own research,” she says,
“I found out it was possible to tune the
eyes differently, so that I might have a ‘reading
eye’ and a ‘distance eye.’”
The decision wasn’t difficult for Amy to
make. “Everyone I spoke to who had it done
asked me ‘Why haven’t you done it
sooner?’” And when she went in for
the consultations and tests, Dr. Bruce Larson
found she was an ideal candidate, because her
prescription was stable and consistent.
Amy’s only problem in preparing for the
surgery was that she sprained her knee at a White
Sox baseball game the night before. “It
was funny. When I limped in, I think the other
patients thought I was in the wrong part of the
hospital!” she jokes.
Her knee caused her more pain that day than her
laser vision procedure. “It was totally
painless.” Adjusting at home took a bit
of time – because her life was too easy.
“I kept thinking I had forgotten to take
my contacts out,” she muses. “Luckily
I got used to that quickly.”
Shortly after she had her procedure, she recommended
it to her brother-in-law, who followed her advice.
“It really made my life easier, and I told
him to go for it. It prevented me from feeling
‘old,’ and for that alone, it was
worth it.”
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