EYE EYE!!! It's not about Dermalogica but it makes the world a whole lot more beautiful!

This saturday just gone I took the plunge and had my eyes lasered so this picture of Lee and I at my brother's wedding on the 10th of October is now a thing of the past!

Both my husband and I got a really good (£300 off) voucher for Optical Express so we trundled off to their Laser Clinic for a free consultation thinking we wouldn't REALLY get them done... However after a really impressive (but not at all pushy) sales pitch we were both smitten by the idea. To be glasses-free, smear-free, opening-the-oven-misting-up-free - all just seemed too good to resist.

My prescription is lower than Lee's so mine worked out cheaper but even though i could have gone for the lowest price one (from £395 an eye) I plumped for Wavefront technology which deals with all the imperfections in your eyes (rather than correcting them in the same way as a lens) and promises you better vision than through your glasses or lenses! This all came in at £795 an eye, which although very expensive seems worth it to be free of glasses, have free eye care afterwards for life and better eyesight than I could hope for through my glasses! (My husband's came in at £995 an eye due to his higher prescription and we chose to take out a finance option through Optical Express over 2 years at a cost of 5ish%.)

I would love to tell you that the actual procedure was easy peesy, but after waking up on saturday morning with a few butterflies, getting to the clinic and being handed a very scary disclaimer form with all sorts of horrible possibilities outlined, being written down as patient number 13 (! - I am not usually superstitious but...!) then being rushed into the treatment room, by the time I sat on the edge of the treatment bed I was a panicking wreck! It was all so quick!

The whole procedure, although incredibly speedy was all a little petrifying. (In a way I would have liked it to be done slower with a bit more reassurance and explanation) The reality of the fact that they are cutting a flap off the front of your eye with a blade really hit home the moment I laid myself (by choice!!!) on the operating couch - but by then it was all a little too late!! Fist of all they put some anaesthetic drops into your eyes so you don't feel the blade, then they clamp your eye open... Now I have pretty small eyes so to make them big enough, it hurt quite a lot cranking them open! Then they put a suction cup over the eyeball to lift the surface of the eye to a point where they can make the dreaded slice! The suction hurt even more than the clamp! (being honest it probably didn't hurt that much but I was in such a state by this time!) When they suction your eye your vision goes dark for a few scary moments while they tell you to hold very still and a blade passes over your eye (yes really!). Then they release the suction and your vision returns but then the doctor whips off the flap and everything is blurry. Then comes the laser - a few seconds of clicking and whirring whilst you stare into a red dot, the the flap gets replaced and the blur is gone... Rinse and repeat...

Before you know it (literally no more than 5/6 minutes later), after this whirlwind of fear, you are sitting up having had both your eyes sliced, zapped and repositioned!

As I sat up, all the fear and anxiety truly hit me and to my shame I got a bit upset. I think it just hit me that as a healthy individual (albeit who wore glasses for distance) I had just put myself knowingly through a cosmetic procedure that could have permanent negative consequences. As an artist, the idea that I might have just paid to have my eyes screwed up freaked me out and sat on the edge of the bed, surrounded by care staff, I regretted having just done what I had done...What a big baby!

But all's well that ends well, despite the fear that I injected into the very quick operation, the few hours of stinging afterwards, and the embarrassment of wearing some very uncool goggles to bed for a week, here both of us sit with better-than-2020 vision and my artist's eyes are happy to be able to look at the beauty of the world without needing a lense...

Even though I found the whole thing petrifying the end is worth the means and I would definitely recommend it. Just maybe go in knowing exactly what to expect beacuse I think I got freaked out by the fact that it was more scary than I was expecting. Think on my story and it will probably be fine! You'll be wandering what all my fuss was about - I know now, I am!