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In Cleveland, Tenn., Kim Hybarger, 44, a nurse, developed debilitating visual distortions after lasik surgery Dec. 21, 2006. She tried to walk into traffic, cut her throat and starve herself.

"I was filled with anger," she said. "I felt so hopeless and helpless. I just wanted to die. The way I saw was so frightening."

Her vision was blurry. The moon had six to eight overlapping copies, a distortion called ghosting. Bright lights erupted into irregular star bursts in the shape of chicken feet.

Hybarger compared her vision to looking through glass that is cracked and smeared with grease. She stopped driving, exercising, working and going to the grocery store. She couldn't read a book or watch television.

Hybarger said she had never had problems with depression before her lasik surgery. Afterward she felt so bad, she said, she told her husband to "load a gun with a bullet and give it to me. I'm not going to live the rest of my life like this."

Hybarger's mental state didn't improve until Ed Boshnick, a Miami optometrist, offered to fit her with special contact lenses. Sales of the special lenses have increased with the rising number of Americans who had lasik since 2000. The lenses can restore the cornea's shape and correct visual distortions.

New lenses help

Boshnick is one of a handful of specialists who have had considerable success fitting the lenses. Hybarger is one of about 250 patients with complications from lasik who regularly see Boshnick. About half of them suffer symptoms of depression, Boshnick said.

The new lenses can clear up more than vision.

Hybarger left Miami remembering the moment she first looked through them.

"It was indescribable," Hybarger said. "It was like the first time I smiled in a year."

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