I had LASEK/Epiflap performed on me at the Finchley Road branch by Dr. Almasri on the 14th January 2004 - and here's my little story.

My old prescription was -4 and -4.5 with about 1.5D of astigmatism in each eye - enough to mean the floor was a useless blur and losing my glasses rendered me mostly helpless. I'm 27 now and had been wearing them since about age 10 and contact lenses for the last few years. The contacts became less and less comfortable and eventually I was back on glasses - then I broke them last year and decided the time had come to do something about this.

I went to a free consultation at Accuvision first, where it was confirmed that I had few 'higher order abberations' so there was little reason for me to persue Wavefront correction, and then onto Optimax as they offered LASEK, Accuvision didn't, and at £495 an eye - bargain! Even got the 2-4-1 offer with a friend so only £495 for both eyes... unbelievable, but there are good reasons Optimax can offer it so cheaply - best you ask them if you're wondering.

I'll skip the consultation process, it's been described many times here, and the details of the op - it was quick and painless and made me laugh "oh my god I can see the roof!" No hitches and within five minuites my now-useless glasses were handed back to me and I'm back in the waiting room feeling lost. Took a good ten minuites before someone came over and said "that's it you know, you can go now" and off to home.

Unlike some here I had quite a bit of pain, but that's a person-to-person thing and nothing Optimax did wrong. Was gone overnight leaving only an ache, and it took about five days before both eyes were good enough to use together without strain/ache - I'm very glad I had a friend around to take care of me as I would have been helpless without them. The vision at that point was crazy - in focus, but many many images causing a lot of blur and confusion. Those slowly faded out and moved together and it took about a month to reach 'nice' vision, and I was back at work a week after the op.

It's now almost two months and my left eye is spot on - beautifully clear all the way to the horizon, tests as -0.25D and can read the 20/15 line no problem. The right has been more stubborn - tests at -0.5D and after mostly clearing got worse again, but continues to improve in the same way (shrinking multiple images) day by day - it's 20/30 now, but sometimes clears completely so that it's as clear as my left - I figure it'll just be taking a bit longer to heal clear as it's still changing and I'm fully confident it'll reach 20/20 or better, but thought I'd better get this posting done before I forget!

All in all - ecstatic and doubly so for not having a LASIK flap to worry about! Thankyou Optimax, best £495 I ever spent. EVER.