The Preamble

So after years of thinking about it, months of dithering and a few weeks of additional check ups I have finally made the appointment for lasik eye surgery.
Gulp! Firstly the stats, I have a high level of myopia (-7 in each eye) which is either severe myopia or bordering on severe depending on who you ask. Basically it means I'm blind as a bat without my contact lenses or glasses. Those of you with perfect or near perfect vision (damn you!) will have no clue what this is actually like - the rest of you you will! I've been wearing glasses for 25 years and contacts for 24 so it's pretty much normal for me. During that time I have lost countless numbers of contact lenses at all sorts of inopportune moments (just before being a bridesmaid at my brother's wedding being one of the more notable ones) and inadvertently destroyed several pairs of glasses. I have even resorted to watching an end of the pier show in Blackpool through a hole in a Rich Tea biscuit (apologies to non-Brits who have no idea what I am talking about!). A few years ago I started developing problems with wearing contact lenses which meant I had to radically reduce the amount of wearing time and purchase extremely expensive new lenses. This was really the final push I needed to start looking into Lasik.

Prior to the initial appointment I was instructed to leave my contact lenses out for 48 hours. This is to allow the eye to return to its natural shape - however it had the added effect of reminding me how hideous life without contacts is (those of you who've read my duathlon blog will know how much time I spend in the gym - glasses just drive me crazy they steam up, interfere with my headphone clips when I'm running and generally bounce around!!).

So on to the initial appointment, this involved watching a video which explained all of the many possible adverse side effects and also showed the actual procedure. If the video doesn't put you off (and to be honest it's not pleasant viewing despite all the beautiful people snorkelling and running along beaches in the sun) you then get your eyes measured. This involves looking into a machine which photographs your eye and measures things like corneal thickness. After that it's time to visit the surgeon for a sight test and to ask any questions. To be honest I was pretty unimpressed by the guy I saw, he was very uncommunicative. After testing my vision he then did and eye exam, after which he said he'd like to refer me to an eye doctor to have my retinas examined prior to continuing any discussions about lasik. He said very little about why other than there were some abnormalities he would like to get checked out. In fact I've had my retinas examined some years previously for the same reason (8 years ago in fact while I was still in London) so I wasn't too phased by this as last time it turned out to be nothing. So that was pretty much the end of the first visit, I still had unanswered questions but as the whole thing had now been taken out of my hands until I'd seen someone else about my retinas there seemed little point in pursuing it.