This account of my experience covers everything before and including my actual lasek procedure. If you would like to read about the lasek recovery, please view my post procedure blog page.

• Pre Lasek : The procedure day I was told on arrival they wanted to give me an extra test so my appointment would be delayed by 30mins. Nearly an hour went by, and I was getting more and more stressed.
• Lasek procedure: When I went into the room there was a chair that resembled a dentists chair, but it was angled backwards. Anesthetic drops were put into my eyes. After only a few minutes the procedure started. I was concerned that the drops would not work, and I would be feeling what was happening. The first thing to happen was the mechanism was applied to keep my eyes open. I told the surgeon I was scared the drops didn’t work and he said, “if they had not worked you would not have tolerated the mechanism”. This made me feel a bit better. But I felt terrified during the whole procedure, wishing it would be over as quickly as possible. In reality I didn’t really have a reason to feel that way. Each eye took, maybe 10 minutes at most, probably less.
• Eye feeling: During the procedure, I saw what looked like something in a circular motion, wiping my eye. You can’t see it clearly, it’s like a blurry shape. You can’t really feel it either and it certainly doesn’t hurt. This happened twice, once earlier in the procedure and once later. Twice during the procedure cold water is used to flush the eye. This is not comfortable and feels extremely cold, but not painful. The laser part just looks like a light. I felt like my eye kept moving but maybe it was just the laser. Once the surgeon moved onto the second eye, the experience didn’t feel as bad. I felt like it was over more quickly and somehow felt like it went more smoothly. I can’t explain but I was sure my eye kept shifting focus or moving with the first eye. But with the second eye I felt like it didn’t. I felt such relief once it was over.
• Distance vision pre Lasek: My prescription was –6.5 in one eye and –6 in the other. Without glasses I could not see anything clearly unless it was close to my face. I had to wear glasses constantly (or contact lenses). After the procedure, I could see more clearly straight away and could move around without glasses. Everything was far from clear, but I’d guess I’d gone to –2 maybe?
• Close up vision pre lasek: Before the procedure my reading vision was perfect. Now following the procedure, I could not see my phone at all. Vision was as expected really, although I had not thought about the impact on my close up, considering this was not an issue before.
• Post Lasek, hour 1-5: As I was heading home, it was a 1 hours drive (I wasn’t driving myself by the way!) The anesthetic started to wear off, within about 30 minutes I’d say. Slowly I was feeling as if something was in my eye, but I had no temptation to rub or touch my eye. I started to get some pain but I would say it was tolerable until the next day…..