Jul 06, 2018 • All articles LASIK & vision facts Sports

How figure skater Joannie Rochette achieved 20/20 vision

Take it from an Olympic medalist: LASIK can change your life. Not only will laser vision correction treat your eye conditions like myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness), or astigmatism, it’ll have an impact on your day-to-day living in many ways, no matter how small or significant these may be. Here’s how LASIK surgery helped change Joannie Rochette’s life.

Meet Joannie

Chances are you’re familiar with Joannie Rochette’s story. Joannie is an Olympic medalist figure skater, known for her bronze medal-winning performance at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. What makes her story so special, though, was that just a few days before she was slated to compete, her mother, Thérèse, passed away from a heart condition. Joannie made the difficult decision to go ahead with the competition, it was an unforgettable performance, filled with emotion. Although Joannie has since hung up her ice skates, she continues to thrive in other arenas of life, for example, working with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada to promote awareness about heart disease. Joannie regularly delivers talks at keynote events on the subject and is involved with several NGOs. Getting the message out continues: she was recently named spokesperson for the “iheartmom” campaign at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. In 2015, Joannie’s life took on a new challenge—she decided to head back to school, pursuing a medical degree at McGill University.

A story of ice skates and eyesight

Joannie always knew she wanted to be a skater, even lacing up her first pair of skates at just two years of age. Throughout her career, Joannie competed in numerous championship events, winning numerous prizes that helped pave the way to the Olympic games. She was named the Female Athlete of the Year by Canadian Press in 2010, and in 2017, was inducted into the Skate Canada Hall of Fame. And while she was always a successful skater, Joannie is the first to admit her eyesight never scored too high. “I started wearing glasses when I was just six years old,” Joannie says, in a conversation with LASIK MD. Although getting glasses helped her correct her eyesight, wearing them during figure skating sessions was a whole other issue, telling a story of securing her glasses to her head for skating competitions. Not only was this cumbersome and uncomfortable, but the look clashed with the aesthetic of dazzling, colourful skating costumes too. At eight years old, Joannie made the switch to contact lenses to avoid taping glasses to her head. But at such a young age, she had trouble putting them in herself and would often have to pay a visit to the eye doctor prior to a skating competition. Driving to and from the optometrist’s office before and after a competition was inconvenient and far from feasible. With age, Joannie was able to wear contacts more regularly but found this solution less than desirable. Cold air in arenas and long days of practice wound up drying out her eyes. On an average day, her eyes had a tough time tolerating contacts, lasting just a few hours before needing to remove them.

“Wearing contacts was becoming a serious problem.”

“As a figure skater, my vision [was] important to me. When jumping, I was able to rotate up to three times in the air, so everything went through my field of vision. It was critical for me to track and spot where I was exiting the jumps.”

LASIK MD to the rescue

One day, Joannie spotted an ad for LASIK MD and decided to find out if this procedure was the potential answer she was looking for. “I thought that if laser eye surgery could free me of my glasses and contacts, then my problems would be solved,” she says. Joannie did not hesitate to book a consultation. Once it was determined that she was a candidate, she scheduled her surgery as soon as she could. The result? Clear vision! “I’m happy I trusted my eyes to LASIK MD, and proud to say I’ve been seeing 20/20 ever since.” says Joannie. After her surgery, Joannie was able to stop worrying about her contacts while skating, a step that helped her confidence as a figure-skater to truly flourish. “My day-to-day life improved without the hassles of wearing glasses or contacts,” says Joannie.