Being the super observant and lightening fast social commentator that I am a penny has recently dropped, and for some reason picking my money up gave me an idea. Having undergone corrective surgery on my eyes to help deal with my bad myopia (short-sightedness) people tend to be a little curious about the procedure and such. As I've had pretty good results I am very happy about how my surgery went, however when people ask I'm pretty careful to avoid actually recommending it.

The thing is that all surgery is a big strain on your body, and I tend to believe non-essential surgery is something no-one but yourself can decide to undergo. To that extent I'm reluctant to sound too encouraging, instead trying to just be informative. Not always easy since I'm so happy with my results.

I am lucky in that respect, my eyesight is near perfect. On my final post-op check-up the optician actually said I had perfect vision in my right eye and a mere -0.25 in my left which means I'm probably going to postpone the need for reading glasses by about 10 years. Before I had my operation i talked with a couple of people who'd already undergone it and they'd had similarly impressive results so to be honest I did take the warnings that the results may not be perfect with a little pinch of salt. After seeing my results my mum decided she would also get treated. With one eye the laser was set a little weak and it barely made any difference to her vision. She then got retreated and now both her eyes are around -2. She's actually very happy with this because it's a vast improvement but seeing less than perfect results also reminded me how lucky I was.

Anyway, the main point of this little piece is to talk about the actual surgery. Everyone else seems to talk about the results and such so it's not hard for you to find those stories out, but it's very rare to find information about what the actual procedure feels like. Hopefully this will be of some use to a couple of people. Before you go too far though a warning:

This really is an account of laser eye surgery. It contains things that you may not want to read.

For all the tales of scary things that follow I have to say one thing; I'd still do it all again. Okay, time to make a start.

I wonder if the reason you don't find stories about the surgery very often has anything to do with the fact they they come round beforehand and offer you some magic pills. Now maybe the nurse was just a little too sexy and I wanted to be all manly or maybe I was just confused, but I actually said no. This made it all really quite interesting. The other thing I did which seemed to make me a little different to most patients was that I went completely alone. I did chat with a couple in the waiting room but basically I was alone.

Anyway, my turn came and I was called in. My manly attempts to impress the sexy nurse were soon brought to a halt when she handed me the surgical gown. It was just one of those plastic sheets you wear on top of your clothes but the paper ones with the slit up the back and no clothes underneath but it does kind of detract from any sex appeal I may pretend to possess. The final nails in that particular coffin came when I had to put the little plastic bags over my shoes and a showercap to control my flowing mane of hair. (Yes, I know it's short too but I'm claiming a certain artistic licence here folks!)

Laying down on the chair/table was quite fun. I'm now without my glasses and trying to manoeuvre myself between the paper towel on the table and the giant lump of machinery just above it. I had to get on halfway down and slide up without rucking up the paper and if I even gently breathed on the laser I was convinced it would destroy the whole thing, I'd go blind and they'd sue me for millions. In reality it would've probably just meant a small cut on my head and surgery being delayed a little bit, but I was starting to get a little anxious about it all now.

I expected to be positioned carefully and then kind of clamped into place at this point and much to my disappointment it didn't happen. The grand safety measure they have in place to keep your head still is someone saying "Okay, now keep your eye still." It's about this point that my jaw clamped so tightly I actually split the water molecules in my rapidly vanishing saliva. I suddenly understood why you're offered drugs. Just so the doctor won't be put off by your look of fear they drape one of those surgical things with the small hole they operate through over your face. It's pretty reassuring to know your other eye is safely hidden behind that bit of paper in case the laser starts acting like all good cartoon Sci-Fi lasers and shoots blindly around the room.

Now the literature I'd been shown about LASIK before hand explained that they cut a small flap in your eye with a snazzy laser then they point the laser at the bit just underneath it and reshape your eyeball so you can. Put the flap back and you're done. This is basically what does happen, but here's a few more details.

First you get a dose of eyedrops that do all that preparatory work like cleaning and numbing. Then out comes the clamp. This is a nice metal thing that keeps your eyelids apart for the whole time. Now I'm not sure if they didn't numb me enough or whether it's just that damn uncomfortable but suddenly I've got these metal things poking into the underside o my eyelids and it was a little less pleasant than an unpleasant thing.

Onto the main event and the laser kicks into live. This is your moment of relaxation as you're just looking at a small flashing light. It's a little fuzzy because you still have a small fishtanks worth of eyedrops swishing about but basically it's a bit dull. Until you see the thin, quite probably metal, spike/hook come into view. Now the aforementioned eyedrops meant I was a little unsure about what was going on and without my left eye depth perception was never going to be my strong point. Luckily the doctor told me he was just about to move the flap back a little before I realised it was coming straight for me.

Now because this is your eye you really are watching what goes on. It's not like this is done on some lower body part where you can see it all but you have the option of looking away. You're suddenly watching a man drag the surface of your eye away and you can't do anything about it.

Life goes pretty strange about this point. Basically you're still looking at the world but suddenly it's all swirly, like looking through a layer of oil on water. You can vaguely make out shapes, and you start to see a couple of spots flashing. This actually happens in perfect sync with a slight clicking noise. You got it, they're burning your eyeball off with a laser. Now I guess after the flap I started to relax anyway, sure the clamp was a bit uncomfortable but everything else had stopped. Once I realised they'd moved on to this stage already I was able to shrug it off. They'd started and it wasn't that bad. Strange I'll admit, but it was actually quite relaxing in many respects. I realised that hey, it doesn't hurt and frankly I had a bit more faith in lasers than metal sticks.

It's actually at this stage that a lot of people say they can smell burning flesh. Now apparently this is an olfactory hallucination and even if it wasn't how do they know what burning flesh smells like? I didn't notice any smells at all so I was happy.

In truth once they've got the flap off in the first place everything gets a little boring. You just watch some flashing lights through a swirly pattern and that's it. Of course they go and spoil it all but wanting to put the flap back again. This involves the spike thing coming back and flipping the flap down again, pretty harmless really but I can think of better ways to spend my time. Then they have to align it all. It looks and feels a bit like they do a kind of rolling pin action on your eye to smooth it all down and get rid of bubbles or something. I have to say that although this isn't great fun it's actually a bit better than when they pull the flap back. I guess it's because I knew it was nearly over and all that. I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing to be honest.

Once the doctor is happy it's the usual kind of post op stuff. Few more eyedrops to make things better. Take the clamp out (at last!) Finally comes the strapping up stuff. A big transparent dome with holes in got strapped to my head and I was allowed to take the plastic outfit off. This can be done with the marvelous co-ordination of someone not wearing their glasses and with one eye covered, or next to none.

A few eyebrows were raised when I said I was going home alone. In truth I'd recommend taking someone, or at least arranging for someone to stop by and take you home. It wasn't horrendous or anything but dealing with the London Underground during rush hour isn't quite as easy when you've got a giant plastic thing over one eye and you can't wear your glasses to help the other.

I actually went back a week later to get the other eye done so it couldn't have been that bad. I'd also do it again if there was a need; I just wouldn't recommend people approach it quite so blindly, if you'll excuse the pun.

I think that's about all I have to say on the matter but I'm sure I'll be happy to change stuff as and when it comes to me. I'm also happy to answer questions on the matter if I can. I guess anything that gets asked enough will appear on here. Maybe a little FAQ section down the bottom here, dunno, maybe I should just stop typing out my thoughts for today.