First off, I want to preface this by saying that my company gave me a nice benefit package which allowed me to get $500 off my operation. If you find yourself in a similar scenario, I strongly urge you to consider this as a safe and hassle-free alternative to wearing glasses or contact lenses.
The first thing that the specialist told me when I went in for my initial consultation was that I should probably stop wearing my contact lenses for about a week before surgery. I asked him if this was an absolute necessity and he said that I could probably get away with a bit less because I've been wearing soft contact lenses for not too long a period of time. He did however mention that I was lucky because had I been wearing hard contact lenses that I'll have to wait it out for a much longer period time. He said this would be roughly 3 months on top of three months for every year I've been wearing them! If you fall in this boat, you might want to consider getting a consultation as early as possible if you're interested!
During my next visit, they put me in front of some sort of machine that measured the thickness of my corneas and the contour of my eye. The light that circled my eye was fairly bright so I asked the doctor what it was. He told me that they were low-power lasers that would not affect my vision at all. This makes sense or otherwise why would they do such a device? During this visit I was also given a prescription for antibiotics so that during the procedure and after the procedure my risk for infection would be decreased significantly.
I came in a week later and got the operation taken care of. They definitely gave me some sort of anesthesia for my eyes because I couldn't feel lasers at all. Yes, I was still awake. I was actually surprised at how quick the process was! when it was all over the specialist gave me a sweet pair of Terminator sunglasses (a.k.a. old granny cataract sunglasses) to wear around for the next couple of weeks. He also told me that I should sleep much more to which I had no problem agreeing to!
He said that I'd keep my eyes well moisturized and gave me a pair of protective goggles to prevent me from rubbing them while sleeping. The last thing I wanted to do is go back for postsurgical complications! Doing some research of my own I found that this was estimated at about three to 6% of the population that undergoes LASIK eye surgery.
All in all, I'm glad that I went through the operation but I'm glad I waited long enough for my eyes to finally solidifying such as states that they were growing so the prescription doesn't change as often. It's a big change from waking up and not being able to even read the alarm clock! should be no surprise I'm satisfied that because 90 to 98% of all patients undergo LASIK and found to be very satisfied with their operations which pretty much seems to correspond to the inverse percentage of patients that undergo complications! I did a little research and found out that over the course of the last 10 years only roughly 140 negative reports were Received by the FDA.
I would recommend it for everyone interested!
Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/992058/how_lasik_eye_surgery_ch...