End of an Era part one

Since the age of 18 I’ve greeted every morning by sticking bits of plastic in my eyes. Tomorrow that is going to all end.

For I am about to have LASIK eye surgery.

Some background. I’m short sighted, not impossibly so, but enough so that without some sort of corrective lenses I do tend to walk into things. I also have slight astigmatism.

For the longest of times, I quite happily corrected this with soft contact lenses. Progressing from monthly, to weekly and finally daily lenses as my earnings permitted (ironically, the shorter the intended wear time, the more expensive the lenses work out)

Oh and I HATE wearing glasses. They drive me insane on my face.

Recently though, the minor astigmatism, made its presence known enough that I had to start wearing contacts that corrected for it, Toric lenses.

Toric lenses, even daily ones, suck.

They are thicker, and therefore less comfortable.

They are weighted and thus it is possible to put them in upside down and have really weird and grotty vision all day. Yes they are meant to have markings on them to show you which way they are weighted but these are tiny marks on a see through bit of plastic that you put in because you can’t damn well see properly in the first place. Spotting the issue here?

They are also approximately three times more expensive than standard lenses.

So when a friend had LASIK (something I’d considered but decided that I would do unless I couldn’t wear contacts anymore) and survived the experience. I was kind of curious.

I spent a couple of weeks bugging both my friend and the internet, amazed at how painless the whole thing seemed to be. I was astounded at how quickly she recovered.

Cunningly enough I was just coming up to the end of my latest batch of lenses and was due an eye exam anyways. I decided to have a chat with my optometrist about my options.

Although all the local LASIK clinics (yes I’m that lucky that I live in a large city that has multiple clinics!) offer free consultations, I wanted my initial chat to be with someone who didn’t have a vested interest in selling me anything.

And that’s how I find myself eagerly awaiting someone to zap my eyeballs with a laser beam. I thought I’d blog it, because I really don’t have much else going on at the moment

Next time, how I picked the clinic.