Life in HD: My Lasik Eye Surgery Experience

Hi lovelies! Apologies for the slight lack of posts and videos over the last few days – I have been out of action due to having had Lasik laser eye surgery. It’s been a few days now and I’m pleased to say that the surgery was a success – my vision is now better than 20/20 and I could not be more thrilled. I am still healing though so it’s no makeup for me and only limited use of computers for another few days yet!

Since I’m currently out of action for filming (trust me, NO ONE wants to see me do a video sans makeup), I thought I would pass the time with a little blog post documenting my experience 🙂 I appreciate that this post won’t be of interest to everyone – rest assured I’ll be done with my ‘healing week’ in time for the weekend so will resume regular fashion and beauty-related posting then!

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For reference, my vision was -3.50 in both eyes. If you wear glasses, you’ll know that my prescription wasn’t crazy severe but was definitely substantial enough to need glasses or contacts at all times. I pretty much always wore my contact lenses both for vanity reasons and practicality – I don’t have a very big nose which made it beyond difficult to find cute eye glasses that didn’t constantly slip off!

I looked into getting the treatment done about a year ago but my prescription was too unstable, having recently dropped a significant amount. The fact that this was probably due to over wearing my contact lenses made me even more determined to get it done though so fast forward 12 months and I booked another appointment with the clinic. Fortunately, I was passed for treatment and promptly booked myself in for the following week.

The actual treatment

I’m going to be up front about this – by far, the worst part about the whole thing is the anticipation of what’s to come. The idea of my eyes being cut open freaked me out but there really was nothing to worry about. My treatment was 9 minutes in total – 4.5 minutes for each eye; everything else is just prep work. The two main parts of the treatment are the ‘pressure bit’ – where a cup like machine presses down on your eye for 20 seconds and the actual laser bit. The pressure bit is mildly uncomfortable but 100 times better than the dentist. The actual laser bit you don’t feel at all (they do give you anesthetic) but you will see some bright lights and you will probably smell something that seems suspiciously close to burning… which is disconcerting but not devastating.

This is repeated on each eye and that’s about it! The worst part (apart from the worrying and nerves) is actually the masking tape – they tape your lashes back to keep them from getting in the way and unfortunately haven’t come up with an alternative to unceremoniously ripping it off yet…

The aftermath

My vision was immediately better – everything was a little hazy but I could still see perfectly well even though my eyes were a little blood shot and red. I waited in a dark room for about 15 minutes but to be honest, I felt so good that I was eager to get going. I was instructed to avoid the tube due to dust so settled for the train. I was initially going to take a taxi to the train station but was feeling so good at this point, that I decided to walk – which, for the record, was an epic mistake.

The reason I was feeling so good was because my eyes were still numb from the anesthetic and unfortunately, this quickly wore off. I ended up giving up and calling an uber where I frantically tried to administer some eye drops (not an easy feat in a moving car). For treatment day, you’re allowed anesthetic drops every hour – they provided immediate relief but for the first few hours, I was counting down the minutes until I could put more drops in. I wouldn’t describe the sensation as pain so much as crazy extreme sensitivity – to the point where it was a huge struggle to open my eyes.

This got MUCH easier as the day went on though and after an early night, my eyes were a million times better in the morning. Fast forward a few days and my eyes are still definitely healing but every day is better. They still aren’t a fan of extreme light and wind/ air conditioning has become my worst enemy (to coincide with eye drops becoming my new best friend coincidentally) but I can now do most activities without any problems.

The result

I was really surprised by how immediate the results were – it’s difficult to say since my eyes were watering quite badly after the treatment, but I would say within a few hours my vision was close to perfect. My eye check-up the next day showed that I already had better than 20/20 vision even though it had been less than 24 hours.

You might hear lots of people tell you that you’ll look around the world in wonder at all of its HD glory. That, truth be told, isn’t the case for me – I’m so used to wearing my contact lenses that it’s literally just like I have them in. That said, I suspect I will feel the real benefit in the little moments – swimming underwater for the first time in years, going on a night out without worrying how my eyes will hold up or even just appreciating waking up, looking out the window and taking in the view without needing to scramble for my glasses.

The cost

This obviously varies hugely from clinic to clinic and of course, on the treatment and perhaps even the prescription of your eyes. I opted for a fairly high end clinic as I wanted the assurance of a 100% success rate and a friend had been to the same clinic and achieved similarly amazing results. The cost of mine was £3700 for both eyes and that included a £500 special offer discount (so the original price was £4200). I didn’t want this post to be a review so much as a documenting of my experience, but for those of you interested and within the London area, the clinic that I attended was the Focus clinic and I couldn’t recommend them highly enough (the surgeon and nurses are particularly wonderful).

I think the biggest obstacle for me was just getting over myself and biting the bullet – so many things like this I put off, waiting for the ‘right’ time. Turns out, there is no right time – life is short so it’s best to just do it… and do it now 🙂

Oh and in case you were wondering about the cherries – yup, they are completely random but it’s a nice HD-ish image and I don’t have any photos of me in glasses so I thought it would do 🙂