I had Wavefront Lasik treatment at Accuvision on the 17th of October. My prescription was quite small, mostly astigmatism.

Re: +0.25 / -1.50
Le: 0.00 / -1.50

I used to suffer from migraine headaches at school as no-one diagnosed my eye sight as a potential cause. Even then, I had multiple prescription changes between optical providers and rather lost confidence in the opticians who saw me. Contact lenses have never been on the cards as I could not bear to go near my eyes, let alone have pieces of plastic in them. I had become quite comfortable with my glasses but they made life difficult in some areas such as photography, golf, kite surfing, rugby etc.

I had been associated with laser vision correction for many years as my brother worked in the industry. He had worked at other clinics prior to Accuvision but never felt completely comfortable in having anyone treat me until now. After he had been there for a while he felt that I was going to be in safe hands, not only for the procedure, but if anything were to go wrong I could be safe in the knowledge that Accuvision would look after me.

Treatment itself was supposed to be quite simple, I was told told exactly what to expect so I should have been fine. Nevertheless, after they had finished treating my first eye, I went rather pale and clammy and they decided to give me a few minutes to relax and calm down before proceeding with the second eye. Not that I had any reason to be nervous, there was no pain although some discomfort when they applied suction to the eye to cut the flap. Second eye went fine largely due to the fact that I knew what was coming. Not being in control is what made me apprehensive I think, all in the head. Treatment was quick - given that I took a 5 minute rest, I was in theatre for no more than 15 minutes.

Vision recovered very quickly, quite foggy afterwards – but through the fog I could read the scrolling news bar at the bottom of their television when I came out of theatre. Anyone who has astigmatism can appreciate how your vision blurs when trying to read or see definition. I took the drops as instructed and got on with my life quite comfortably. I was advised not to cycle to work for the first week or go to the gym etc, but am back to doing things as before. I was advised that due to my large pupils etc, that there was a risk my night vision might suffer initially. I have had no such issues during these dark evenings while cycling home.

The one area of my life where I have always had to compromise is photography and wildlife observation. I found it impossible to get a good level of clarity through a pair of binoculars with glasses on and so did without. A week after surgery I went bird-watching in the New Forest, it was only at this stage that I realised how my colleagues were able to see so much more definition than I could.