If you’ve struggled all your life with glasses and contact lenses, then Lasik eye laser correction surgery may be just the thing you need to free your face of frames and start seeing the world the way you want to. Lasik eye treatment is fast, simple, and has very few negative symptoms and side effects. Here’s what you can expect.
The first step is stopping into a Lasik eye center and finding out if you’re a good candidate for the procedure. Your correction, your age, and any astigmatisms must be within a certain range in order to proceed. If you do fall within those ranges, your Lasik eye doctors will plot out a treatment to correct your vision, and schedule the procedure. This is also a good time to schedule a ride home from the procedure, as you will not be allowed to drive yourself.
Immediately before the procedure, you will be given drops to numb your eyes. For the initial incision, a pressurized hose will be placed over each eye, which will slowly make everything fade to black in that eye (similar to when you rub your eyes for a long time and eventually see those colorful patterns). The hose is removed, and when your vision returns it is noticeably duller and more blurry. This is because a flap of your cornea has been peeled painlessly back. In different types of Lasik eye surgery, this flap is created by a laser incision or by a manual incision with a surgical tool.
Now the actual Lasik eye laser corrective surgery begins. Through your blurred vision, you see small bursts of flashing red lights. And with each burst, your vision gets clearer and clearer. The procedure is repeated on the other eye, and you are done. The entire surgery takes less time that it took to fill out your information when you first arrived.
After your surgery it’s recommended you sleep for at least four hours. This is not for any specific healing purpose, but rather to have you be unconscious during the most uncomfortable phase of recovery. You can expect your eyes to feel very itchy and extremely dry (many patients have said their eyes feel “like they’re made of sandpaper”). You will be given protective goggles to wear while you sleep (so you don’t unintentionally rub your eyes before they’re fully healed), as well as doctor-approved sunglasses and moisturizing eye drops.
And those things are helpful, to be sure. But most importantly, your Lasik eye laser correction surgery will have given you the gift of vision, and a freedom from every having to wear glasses again. Find out more about this topic here.