A clockwork orange meets Salvador Dali

That was my experience yesterday at the eye clinic. I had Lasik surgery done about 4 years ago to get rid of my glasses. It was great except that I was left with the dreaded night glare. At the beginning of this year, a new technology emerged called Wavefront which is much more precise. I had that done in February to get rid of the glare and it worked. Unfortunately I developed another problem a month ago - I started to see double. Not the "I've had too many martinis and now I see two of you" kind of double, but more of a ghosting effect when I was trying to read. Not fun.

When they do the laser surgery, they open a flap on your eye, zap it and then close the flap. Sometimes however, the flap doesn't seal completely and cells from the outside membrane of your eye accumulate underneath it. That's what happened to me so I had to go under the knife for a third time.

This time they had to open the flap and scrape away the cells. It was very surreal and very disturbing. They place a speculum under your eyelids so that you can't blink (a la Clockwork Orange). Then they peel away the flap, at which point the light you are staring at gets very blurry. Then the doctor takes an instrument and starts scraping your exposed eye. It's very, very, very disturbing (did I mention that already?). This thing is poking at your eye and distorting your already distorted vision and pulling it in different directions. It's also a little nauseating. All this stuff is happening and all you want to do is close your eye so you can't see it, and it's the one thing that you aren't able to do. It reminded me of a Salvador Dali film I saw once where a knife was going into an eye (or something like that). It's as horrible as it sounds.

Thankfully you don't feel a thing during the whole procedure and it only takes a couple of minutes. Plus you get a valium beforehand. My eye stung like a son of a bitch afterwards though. Thank god for the Tylenol 3's. After a few of those, plus the valium, I was feeling better. I don't want to do it again though. It was much worse than having the laser surgery in the first place. Unfortunately, it may happen again, and if it does, the flap in my eye will have to be glued. I always thought that you weren't supposed to put glue in your eyes.

After all that, was the laser surgery worth it to get rid of glasses??

Absolutely.