Asian Eye Institute: My LASIK Experience (Part 2 of 3)

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After hearing that I was a candidate for LASIK with Asian Eye Institute (you can read about my screening here),  I decided to do more research to see (no pun intended) if LASIK was right for me. I discovered that there were two schools of thought when it came to this eye surgery designed to improve your vision by reshaping your cornea.

School of thought #1 (people who have not had LASIK):
“It just sounds so terrifying.”
“I could never imagine doing it.”
“Just the idea of a laser coming close to my eye freaks me out.”

School of thought #2 (people who have had LASIK):
“It was the best decision I ever made.”
“It’s life changing.”
“You should definitely do it.”
“My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.” 

Yes, having a laser slice your cornea open to create a flap that will allow another laser to reshape your eye sounds like the stuff horror movies are made of…initially. But when I interviewed people who had it done before me, including my mom, no one I met regretted their decision. This made me brave enough to take the step having LASIK a few weeks ago. Here was my experience:

Once you’re scheduled for LASIK surgery, they inform you not to wear your contacts for at least a week before since contacts apparently change the shape of your eyes. To play safe, I didn’t wear contacts for over two weeks to make sure my eyes were as ready as possible.

While in the pre-surgery suite, I chilled on padded leather chairs while the lovely nurses tried to calm my nerves by telling me how the whole experience was going to be quite fast. Above are my last pics with glasses.

Once the surgery room was ready, I was asked to enter and after some quick hellos with Dr. Ang and his team, I was asked to lie down, and anaesthetic eye drops were applied. Dr. Ang then guided me through each step very calmly, which made me feel relaxed throughout the whole experience. The pic above is right before lying down to begin the procedure, my nervous smile says it all.

The first step was to make a flap on my cornea, so Dr. Ang asked me to lie very still while they prepped my eye and had me look at a light. After lifting my eye with a gentle suction device (which caused my eyes to have some red rings around them), he prompted me to continue looking at a blinking light while the laser sliced my corneas at lighting fast speed.

My head was then promptly moved to the next laser which would reshape my cornea.  I was once again asked to lie perfectly still while the laser itself flashed for just a few seconds and there was a faint burning smell which promptly went away.

Throughout the whole experience I felt no pain. There was very minor discomfort, but it passed before I could even find the words for it. And before I knew it, the procedure was done and I was whisked back to the pre-surgery room for my post LASIK care instructions.

This picture with Dr. Ang was right after my LASIK procedure. My vision was a little hazy by this point, but everyone told me that the surgery had gone perfectly well. I was then advised to take a rest when I got home and be religious with wearing my goggles and using my medicated eye drops for the next week.

When I got home, I felt incredibly tired and had a bit of a headache, so I took a three hour nap. When I woke up, I was amazed by how clear my vision was. I had to keep reminding myself that the protective goggles weren’t graded. And the best part is that it just kept getting better and better from here on. I’ll be sharing information about all my post surgery checkups in my third blog entry about this life changing experience.