Now, I am one of those (oops, sorry, was) one of those short sighted people who can never remember being able to see anything clearly unless it was less than 4" from my nose. In fact, when I first started school, I used to wonder what the man at the front was doing waving his arm around - I actually couldn't see the chalk on the board from the back of the class *1 and didn't realise that he was writing on a blackboard (how old-fashioned!)! I have never in my life been able to read a clock from in bed in the morning without shoving specs on first and I can't drive a car without them. Hell, I probably couldn't even find the car without them so driving was never on the agenda without help!
Over the years I have tried everything - hard lenses , soft lenses (the early ones were like inserting a small jellyfish into your eye), extended wear hard gas permeable (look 'em up - a truly hideous invention), monthly lenses, fortnightly lenses and what I ended up with, daily disposables for when I really didn't want to wear glasses. I still liked the lenses and live and die in them on holiday (I am a sunglasses tart and prescription Oakleys are out of my league so it's lenses and the regular Oakleys for me) but on the whole, for me, they are too much of a faff and too expensive to wear every day and so I simply wear specs the rest of the time.
For a variety of reasons, I decided to look into getting my eyes lasered - OK, I'll be truthful, there was a suggestion that I might get them done for nothing a while back under a scheme that nothing ever came of and it just sowed a seed for me. In the way that I do I started looking at the process and getting information and thought a consultation where I could ask loads of questions was the next step. The consultation went well - all my questions were answered, the price (although still requiring a sharp intake of breath and saying very quickly) was not as much as I feared and the success rate was quoted at 99.6%. So that was it, after a couple of weeks thinking and the offer of some interest free credit I signed on the dotted line.
Now I am not going to go into any gory details here (even though I know there are some of you who love a bit of gore), because I know some other people are a bit squeamish about eye things. All I will say is, to all of you who fit into this latter category, you are expressly forbidden to read any more footnotes on this entry…or if you do - don't say I didn't warn you…
That was how I found myself lying on a table and having my eyeball suctioned into place to hold it still while they create a corneal flap*2. It didn't hurt at all - anaesthetic is a wonderful thing and its all over in less than 20 seconds. They them moved me onto another machine which did the actual business of reshaping to correct my vision*3 and then the surgeon gently wiped over my eye*4 and it was all over. It took less than 10 minutes in total for both eyes and that was it. I was told that my vision would look pretty steamy until the following morning and that I was to go home and rest for a couple of hours while the anaesthetic wore off.
Now, if you want my advice at this stage what they should have said was this:
"Go home, take paracetamol, take Night Nurse, take Nytol, have a slug of whisky to wash it down and then maybe add some Natrasleep into the mix. If you have any harder drugs, heck take them too…for the next two hours you'll be in agony unless you sleep though it…go with the best cocktail you can!"
But they didn't.
What they said was:
"Go home and rest, take paracetamol and try to sleep. You may have a little discomfort"
Hmmm, I wonder if I can get them on trades descriptions?
Anyway, to be fair to them, 2 hours later and the pain had eased and my eyes had stopped streaming like Niagara Falls. I went to bed and slept and when I woke up the next morning my eyes only felt like I had been to a really wild party and had left my contact lenses in all night. I went for my first post op check and discovered that apart from looking like I was peering at the world though a steamy window, my vision was now 20/20 - in fact, better than that - I could even read the bottom line on the eye chart! 24 hours later, the steam started to clear and I felt like my lenses had been in for 14 hours and my eyes needed a rest; another 24 hours and I felt like I'd had my lenses in for about 8 hours, but in a hot dry climate and this was all having a rather Benjamin Button kind of ring to it… the longer it went on, the more my eyes felt like they still had lenses in, but for a shorter period of time. At this stage now though - I still can't get my head around the fact that this is a permanent change - I think because I still feel like there is something in my eyes - I assume it is lenses. Even now, I can't believe that this is it…once everything has all healed up, that will be it, no more glasses or 'artificially' corrected vision…I will just be able to see….
*1 I was always at the back of the class - much easier to misbehave when you are hiding behind everyone else….
*2 Which is a very polite way of saying they cut your the cornea around the top of eyeball almost in half with a laser and fold it back to get it out the way so they can get on with the next bit!
*3 OK, so they burn off the surface of your eye with another laser - and yes, it does smell of burning!
*4 Well, they have to replace your cornea at some stage!
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