I had my eyes treated at the Solihull clinic on 16 January. Before surgery my eyes were -5.25 and -4.50 with some astigmatism in my left eye. I don't know what my eyes were in terms of 6/6 or 20/20 type figures but I couldn't read the largest letter at the top of the eye chart. I'd been wearing glasses for 18 years and occasionally wore soft contact lenses.

Chad Rostron did my surgery and I'm very pleased with the results. The procedure itself was very quick (I estimate about one minute per eye) and it was completely painless. You just look at a green light which gradually disappears and then comes back at various points during the procedure. As soon as I sat up I could see MUCH better than I could before and I was quite overwhelmed.

I was very anxious on the day and one of my biggest fears was the clamp which holds the eye open. This is nothing like as bad as you imagine - it's not held really wide open like you see in some procedures on the internet. It's more the kind of openness that's required to put a contact lens in. Also, because your eye is anaesthetised you have no desire to blink. It's really not so bad at all.

As many people have said on here already the staff at Accuvision are very professional, gentle and knowledgable. I was a big baby on the day and Nick (the rather nice chap who did my initial consultation) held my hand during the procedure. Also, the other staff who were present (I think Vik and another chap) were very reassuring and did their best to reduce my anxiety.

Now for the nitty gritty of this procedure: I am now 17 days post-op and I can almost see 20/20. My vision is very likely to improve further over the next couple of weeks but I am delighted with my vision already. I don't need glasses for anything and I don't struggle to see anything. I also have excellent night vision.

The downside of all this is that for approximately 21 hours after the procedure I was in dreadful pain. My eyes felt like they were burning and I couldn't open them. About 30 minutes after the surgery the anaesthetic wears off and it's then constant pain until the next morning. The co-codamol doesn't even make a dent in it. The second day is a lot better. There is still discomfort and I couldn't open my eyes for long periods of time, but it's much better. On the third day I went out walking the dog with my Mum and my eyes were fine. I could see very clearly and my eyes were good for most of the day. Day four was great and I went back to the clinic to have the contact lenses removed. This made my eyes gritty and degraded my vision quite a lot. On day five the grittyness had gone but my vision stayed slightly blurry for about a week.

The day after tomorrow I'm going for a check-up and I expect good news. I can see very well indeed and I've had no pain, dryness or grittyness since the day the lenses were removed. Overall I would definitely recommend Accuvision both for price and service. The staff are lovely and there is no pressure or harassment like some companies. I enquired with two other laser eye surgery providers in October and I'm still getting e-mails. I also had four phone calls from one place and they wanted to charge me £4,500!

If you're going to do this then go to Accuvision - they're great.