This is what it looks like ...

You would think your cornea needs to be of a certain thickness in order to be polished off for the purpose correcting your vision without losing the integrity of the whole eye structure. Turns out you would be right.

The Doc numbs your eyeballs (details further down) and then uses a smallish object to prod your eye. Well, smallish compared to other htings in the room .. the Doc himself for instance. But incredibly large when you consider it in relation with your eyeball. So this Actually Small, Yet Relatively Large objectis brought unconfortabel close to your eye and before you know it, it's so close you can't even see it.

Imagine a piece of jello placed before your eye and then a knitting needle pressing it's surface. Visualise the surface of the jello as it gives way to the knitting needle. The jello surface indents reasonably, yet hte needle does not pierce it.

Now imagine your eyeball IS the jello.

You'll feel your vision kind of warp where the prod sinks in. Funnily (and disturbingly enough) you won't feel a thing, but will - instead - be taken over by an eerie calm.

A kind of "Look! Someone can poke me in the eyball and I can't feel a thing so bite me" kind of calm.

When it's over - if you're lucky - he'll tel you your cornea is thick enough to be polished off without risking the remainder being too flimsy to contain your eyeball fluid within.

Yuck. Imagine flimsy eyeball. Or don't. Mine - luckily - are thick enough to withstand a second procedure if needed as well. I knew there was some good to come from the way Me Eats Me Spinach!

After that, they need to get a good look at your retina. But things must be done before that.

They give you muscle relaxant eyedrops to dilate your pupils (to be able to look at your retina through them, apparently) so that everything appears super-bright and the 11ish sunlight seems like sunrise on ... whats that planet called where Riddick goes to fetch Jack in Chronicles of Riddick?

So yeah, once your pupils are dilated enough (apparently I have extremely energetic eye muscles that refuse to realx unless oyu give them a dozen dozes of the eye drops)the doctor takles you to his parlor and teases you with a syringe with a long needle attached to it.

When you hyperventilate and tell him that no one told you any part of LASIK involves NEEDLES and bloody long ones at that ... the doctor just sniggers devilishly and proceeds to fiddle with the syringe and a small drumlike contraption. He looks up at you and says "Hmm".

When the doctor say "Hmm", i always take it as a cue to shit in my pants.
"Hmm", he says. "If getting the gel out into this is so tough, imagine how tough it woudl be getting it out into your eye".

And you get visions of the doctor struggling to inject gel into your eyeballs with a syringe that just won't cooperate dammit.

And then he laughs and puts the syringe away. Dammit them docs.

So he puts some eye drops to numb your eyeballs. Yes, NUMB your eyeballs (not that I thought eye balls had any feelings to begin with) and once numbed, he screws you into the device pictured in the photo that looked like it would be very much at home in any self-respecting torture-chamber.



After that, he fixes the drumlike contraption over your eyeball. Yes, over your eyeball: lids parted, the drum just sucks itself onto your eyeball like a particularly ominous leeech of some medicinal variety. Once stuck to your eyeball, there is a funny sucking effect and you almost feel your eyball being sucked out ever so slightly but not quite .. actually .. only just. And then the doc looks at your RETINA.

Wow.

I thought that was some farway land in the nether regions of one's eyeballs.

Apparently, my retina is just fine too.

Doc tells me to return a day before the Op for antoher check-up. Maybe they want to check my pituitary glands next.

As I leave ... eyes shut tight against the too-bright sunlight, I feel glad I never read such a detailed accoutn of the procedure PRIOR.

I find out that the muscle relaxant takes time to wear off, so my eyes have been rendered unable to read. Heh.

The things people do to get the things they can't have.

More gory details to come ...