Good luck. Please let us know how it went!

Good luck, we're all counting on you.

REPORT BACK ANY SUPERPOWERS GAINED

Oh man! I hope it goes smoothly.

Good luck!

Good luck! Both my parents had it done in the early days when the tech was quite primitive - dad's recovery was painful, mum needed one eye doing again, and they both now need reading glasses anyway, but both are pleased with the outcome nonetheless.

I did it long ago in a cave with rocks, but the guy wielding those rocks had been doing it for years in other foreign caves before they allowed them to do it in this cave.
The results were so spectacular I kept getting the "wha?" face from people who read my stats.
Now that they have stopped using rocks and caves, I bet it is a piece of piss, but they probably still give you Valium to keep down the spaz factor.

Good luck! I'm far too squeamish to get it done. Despite everything I know to the contrary, in my lizard brain I KNOW it'd be exactly like this.

LUCK!

I so wish I could get it done, but my eyes are way to funky to have it done.

I hope it went well!

Totally jealous. I wanted to do this but my eyes are ineligible.

*Squinting at screen because most current reading glasses need an update*

In my feeble recollection, it started off with a half minute of Clockwork Orange eyelid clamps and ended with a half minute of staring at Hal in 2001. Zippity do dah, go home and take more Valium.

My prescription is unstable. Not a candidate. Sucks to be me.

My Mom's cousin is an optometrist. He had this done. He has prop glasses he wears to work so people will trust him.

Quick update: all is well; I'm lying on the couch listening to Mozart and the sounds of our new kitten playing with a toy mousie. It's oddly soothing but that's also likely the Valium. I'll wait and see tomorrow what amusing hash Siri makes of this post as I can see fine but should keep my eyes closed as much as possible.

DON'T. TOUCH. YOUR. EYES.
There is nothing quite as satisfying as a vigorous rubbing of the eyes.
DO NOT TOUCH THE EYES.
SLEEP.
KEEP THOSE SHIELDS IN PLACE.

I hope you got your complimentary wacky wraparound sunblinders. You can meld into groups of the elder with them, or alien hunters.

I love you eth, you are right on the mark! I totally got the alien hunter sunshields!

I'm pleased to report that as of this morning 16 hours post-op: OMG BIONIC VISION HOLY SHIT! Whelk, it is indeed a superpower! I woke up this morning at the usual time, stumbled into the bathroom to pull the shields off and apply drops (yes you have to keep putting an array of drops in your eyes, 2 of which are a steroid/antibiotic combo that's had a side benefit of apparently clearing out some sinus crap I've had going on, so yay for that).

So anyhow, obviously there's still a ways to go before I can say 100% success, cos it takes roughly a week to get to 90% and sure according to the scare-fest they give you on the consent forms, all sorts of Bad Things could happen.

The not-touching-my-eyes is strangely easy, only because it's right at the front of my mind that DUDE YOU JUST HAD YOUR EYEBALLS CUT OPEN OMG DON'T TOUCH THEM. Actually the shields are worse, only because the tape itches and bugs and gets caught in my hair, and I still have a week of wearing the damn thing while I sleep, but oh well.

Pain factor? Right now I can say I am in less discomfort than I would be from dry/dirty contacts. My eyes feel a tiny bit sticky or maybe just "swollen" but not really even that because if I put drops in it totally goes away. You contact lens wearers ever come home drunk or super tired and just said "fuckit" and left them in, or fallen asleep on the couch watching old Star Trek reruns and then woke up at 2AM feeling like the Gobi Desert invaded your skull? Yeah, it's considerably less uncomfortable than that. Way less uncomfortable than having an eyelash in your eye or anything like that.

As far as the surgery itself, the worst part of the entire process was the microsecond when they applied the Clockwork Orange bits and the suction kicked on. It was a "pinch" but not even as painful as getting a shot, because they take care to numb your eyeballs up pretty good with numbing drops. The ZAP ZAP ZAP was a little disconcerting but here's where the Valium really helps. I had never taken Momma's little helper before, but when they asked if I wanted it or not I was like OMG YES! Valium is great because you have zero fucks to give about what's going on, and then afterwards all you want to do is SLEEP which is the best thing you can do. I was a little bored and frustrated with the whole shield-wearing / sitting around with my eyes closed after the Valium wore off around 8PM and it did NOT help that my darling husband was watching Addams Family Values which I wanted to watch and couldn't, but oh well. He repented and put a good classical station on Pandora afterwards which was soothing and nice, and is when I decided to test the limits of Siri and update you lot.

So on my own personal interpretation of the Allie Brosh pain scale? Well, for the sake of controls and perspective I can definitely say I've experienced a 9 on that scale, and that was the time I had to ride my mountain bike from above the top of the Mary Jane lift at Winter Park, 6 miles down to the base lodge / medical center with a broken ankle because it was after 5PM and we couldn't find any resort staff to call the meat wagon for me. Yeah, that was a 9. By comparison the most uncomfortable / disturbing portion of getting the LASIK procedure done was maybe a 2.

hahah thats great, hubby just got an early onset cataract removed and when the bandages came off he was all HOLY CRAP COLORS. (also: HOL CRAP THE HOUSE IS FILTHY)

apparently the worst part about eye surgery is having to keep your eyes open the whole time and OH GOD YOU CAN SEE THE BLADE TOUCHING YOUR EYEBALL AAAAAAAAAAA

Whelk one of my colleagues had some pretty nasty cataracts developing (depressingly common for Colorado natives who spent their youth out working in the fields) and was TERRIFIED to get his eyes worked on but finally was facing the prospect of losing his driver's license and going on disability / being unable to continue working. He had a pretty radical surgery done, and as a side bonus they also fixed his severe myopia (he asked that it be done concurrently as apparently that's A Thing). Anyhoo, he went from being supremely skeptical / ooky about it and rightfully so (they had to remove his lenses and replace them with new ones) he was like, practically in tears of joy after the bandages came off. He was like HOLY SHIT I SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS YEARS AGO!!!

the "HOLY CRAP THE HOUSE IS FILTHY"? Oh hell yes omg. I took today off, and am planning to don shields and get to hoovering after I go in for my post-op in a bit.

The OH GOD YOU CAN SEE THE BLADE TOUCHING YOUR EYEBALL AAAAAA is not so much with LASIK as there's very little touching going on these days but ALSO ALSO like I said: Valium. Use it. Do so and by the time the surgeon is in there faffing about you will have zero fucks to give about any of that, I promise you.

Yay for seeing!

I have some more eye shit coming up - injections and laser. I really need to see if I can get a Valium prescription prior to having it done.

Oh, and both Mum and the mister had cataract surgery in the last year. They both had them done when their doctors said it was the right time, but really wish they could have had it done years earlier because they can see so much better now and only need reading glasses.

good news! post-op went well, eye doc says I'm doing great, already at 20/15 and will continue to improve over time so BIONIC EYESIGHT HELLZ YEAH. No problems and almost zero discomfort or dryness so far.

bad news (kinda) - the doc says NO HOOVERING and avoid carrying new kitty around for at least a week :( But god damn the house is filthy and OMG NEW KITTY IS SO KYOOT AND CUDDLY! How will I resist?