The truth about laser eye surgery.

Day 1, weds 7th march.
I arrived at optimax in ipswich at just gone 10am, a little early for my appointment, but better to be early than late. I was seen pretty quickly which I was really pleased about, i was rather nervous so I wanted to get this over and done with. After the lady took a few pictures of the inside of my eye I was ushered back into to waiting room where I would "shortly have some more tests done" 1 and half hours later I was called for the next tests where I was told I would be suitable for epi-lasek and advised to have wavefront too.
"great", I thought, and couldn't wait till 4pm to get them done.

So, 4 pm came and went and I finally got called through at about 5.15pm. By this time I was getting bored of staring at the walls!

The surgery was pretty pain free, it was probably worse because I had read up on it and new exactly what the surgeon was doing. When I came out, my vision was ok, but things looked kind of milky.

Before I even had a chance to sit down the nurse came over and started to give me orders on when to take my drugs. There were 6 in total and I was a little too dizzy to take any of it in. Luckily my mum was there listening intently. I didn't realise then how lucky I was to have her there.

We left about 10 mins after the surgery and they seemed keen to say goodbye, (i guess they just wanted me gone before the pain kicked in), and boy did it kick in!

I got home and put the telly on, I could almost see it, and within about 20 mins the pain became so bad that I wouldn't keep my eyes open. I was expecting the pain, but no one told me I would need a white stick for 2 days!

My mum managed to give me a couple of sleeping tablets and I went to bed in agony. It felt like someone had pored acid into my eyes, and at this point i was regretting having the op.

Day 2, thurs 8th march

I woke up very early, as soon as the light started to come into my room. I managed to fumble my way down the stairs and into the kitchen. I stil lcouldn't open my eyes, mainly because they were so swollen. My mum said that it looked like someone had replaced my eyes with a couple of golf balls.

The light hurt so much that even though I couldn't open my eyes, I still had to wear sun glasses and my mum had to lead me round the house when I wanted to go anywhere. She was rather concerned so phoned the clinic and they advised her that "this was perfectly normal". I remeber thinking that if this was normal then why didn't they warn you about it?!!

I spent most of the day drifting in and out of sleep but each time I woke up I had to force my eyes open just to drain the fluid out of them.

Day 3, frid 9th march

This was the first day I could see! I was so relieved that I could go to the toilet on my own. My eyes were incredibly red and still swollen but at least I could open them. I had to go back to the clinic to have my bandage lens removed which was very quick and pain free, but going out in daylight was agony.

I managed to watch some telly that night and realised that my vision was pretty good.

Day 4, sat 10th march

I was supposed to go back to work on saturday, but although my long distance was pretty good, I still couldn't see things close up, which is a nuisance becuase I spend all day on a computer. It says in the aftercare leaflet that most people can be long sighted for 1-3 weeks after surgery. That's yet another thing they don't tell you before you have the surgery.

Day 7, tues 13th march (today)

Well here I am, almost a week later and still not back at work. It's taken me ages to write this diary, I keep having to take breaks because it hurts my eyes to concentrate on things too long. I'm losing 50 quid a day at work for not turning up, and I guess I'm a little annoyed becuase if I was warned about the long sightedness before surgery I could have booked more time off work.

I don't want to put anyone off having surgery, but I wanted people to know all the facts before going ahead with this.

If your having epi-lasek surgery then PLEASE make sure that you have someone to look after you 24/7 for the next few days. And if your job involves looking at anything close up then you're going to need at least a week off after the surgery.

Well, I'm almost pain free now and my vision is clearing, but if I had known the agony this surgery causes then I never would have had it done.

Just something for you all to think about.