They’ve probably blocked the memory.

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Laser eye surgery is like being abducted by aliens except they probe your eyes instead of your ass.

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I think if most people knew the trauma of the operation itself, they would not choose to do it. A lot are justifiably scared before the procedure and just as many are diehard evangelists afterwards.

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This leaves a fair bit of room to compensate for those not discussing the process itself, as I intend to briefly describe here. *

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During surgery, your fears cannot be separated from the physical procedure, simply because there is no way out of experiencing it. Besides dosing up on whatever prescription meds you can obtain, you must remain fully conscious during the entire operation.

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Not just that, but you are also compelled to look straight at it, your eyes being viced open throughout. You observe an operation at the closest distance your eyes can see – maybe even a little closer when they’re making the cuts – wondering whether these are the last scenes you will ever witness in your sadly short (sighted) existence.

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I would imagine very few people are devoid of fear when considering even the most basic conception of “laser eye surgery”. Lasers will be going into your eyes. This clearly does happen, but the fear is unfounded. You can’t see them, and you won’t feel them. However, upon further investigation, you may discover the word “surgery” isn’t just to make it sound clinical. They will be cutting your eyes open.

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Most people do not think about this, and it’s disgusting.

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It is so disgusting that I would have probably foregone the operation itself if I had given both words surrounding “eye” (my eyes!) equal consideration. Regrettably, I am genetically cursed with excruciatingly terrible vision (last tested at -6) and it felt like something I just had to suck up sooner rather than later.

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Perhaps one of the things that threw me over the edge was also The Threat of Nuclear War.

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It didn’t really. I only partially coincidentally got laser surgery after the invasion of Ukraine. I was one of the people to read this article years ago and found that the idea of laser eye surgery as preparation for Earth-wide annihilation resonated personally because I had been indulging as an environmental fanatic for a while, concerning myself readily with living in communes as a resort for all-hell-breaking-loose inevitably within our lifetimes.

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Whilst I am not so much into this way of thinking right now, I found it to be a mildly concerning vulnerability to have near blindness exposed upon me every night when I got eye-naked before bed. It was embarrassing if someone saw me in blind mole mode. Often I would feel cross eyed focusing on blurred objects without glasses. Friends also were grossed out if they ever saw my old contact lenses dried up like shrivelled eye raisins on a bedside table ..but they’re hard to see when you can’t see!

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Overall, I’d say in order of decreasing importance my motivations were the following:

1. I am vain, so glasses went against my wish to look un-four-eyed, despite later opposing trends in fashion.

2. Mortal boredom. The idea of fixing the same problem until you die is boring.

3. Nuclear war.

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The third makes even less sense thinking about it. It would be a world where I survived, but all corrective vision was destroyed.

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Barely more rational, in the eye surgery brochure, they encourage you to consider the environmental impact of contact lenses. Guilt-mongering you into a green solution that is highly profitable for them is as trivial as it is unconvincing. My social conscience does not extend to zapping lasers into my eyes to slow growth of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch a pair of contact lens a day, particularly as I could just wear glasses.

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So, despite having some vague reasons, they were not ‘laser focused’, and I found my main one on the day was:

1. I’ve already paid for this, so now I’ve got to.

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I’m pretty sure they make you pre-pay so you don’t run away. The prospect of losing £5000 to a tough cancellation policy makes one persevere.

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When you get to making an initial appointment, there is a certain internally generated pressure to commit after the first visit. Like when a sales assistant compliments you to excess on some okay-looking clothes, or the loo-side attendant helps you dry your hands. It’s not actually compulsory to hand over your money, but it’s just socially easier if you do.

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The day before surgery, my student recollected that a Kardashian (definitely Kim, maybe even Khloe?!) had completed laser eye surgery, so it couldn’t be that bad. Considering the family’s attitude towards elective medical procedures I felt wise to dismiss this teenager’s dismissal.

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Later that evening, a girl I sat next to at dinner brought up the same Kim reference. She mentioned Kim had had the whole thing filmed. Of course, the woman who presents her whole life, even has the camera see the inside of her eyes. This deep symbolism did not form the peak of our conversation, however. She proceed to add the surgery was so much grosser than you’d ever imagine. Nauseatingly bad. However, she’d still totally get it.

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I had little time to contemplate this before we somehow moved onto discussing pens. How I regret us not continuing on lacerated eyeballs as I sat back down with two pens I’d fetched – to prove once and for all that a biro was different to a rollerball – only for leg of my chair to splinter free from its frame, and carve a whole nine bloody inches up my side.

The first aider who bandaged me up moonlighted as an eye doctor. She found it deeply alarming I would consider such an invasive procedure when I was meant to be sober, well rested and in good health, and convinced me to cancel it tomorrow.

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I left the restaurant limping and confused about how I had acquired an injury so spontaneously before my scheduled one. Fortunately, within this setting of misfortune, I’d already designated a surgery chaperone for the next day. So, Amir, also my designated boyfriend, arrived at my flat to guide me to bed, him impressed and me depressed I had been incapacitated 12 hours ahead of time.

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The next day we cabbed to the surgery and I made a weak case for postponement to the woman at front desk, vaguely wincing and pointing at my side, uttering something about a chair.

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She eyebrowed me like the dumb child I was impersonating, “Doesn’t sound like the thing on your side will affect your eyes, then?” Debating club had a clear winner. I sat down, resigned to await my receptionist-confirmed fate.

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Though still bleeding, I also found my wound placed me in a better position for the big day itself. Being in sufficient throbbing pain, I had no energy for paranoia, as I was now freshly attuned to misfortune, exhaustion and physical distress.

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They took me through the standard checks to ensure I hadn’t sabotaged my eyeballs since our last meeting. I returned to the waiting room having stared satisfactorily at hot air balloons and the veiny reflected branches of my own retina, as well as having each eye puffed by a rather rude machine.

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I told Amir he could seek finer waiting pastures than the clinic reception. And so, for the next hour our lives diverged. He went off to get a reliably high-quality pastry around Harley Street and I was called into the laser room to have my corneas peeled off.

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[*THE PROCEDURE REALLY ONLY STARTS HERE:]

As I walked in wondering if this was finally the room it would happen, the nurse nearest the door held the horizontal patient’s chair down and prompted me to sit. She said it wobbled hence her stabilising it, and I did not feel better. With a clarity I had previously avoided, she gave me the full rundown of the procedure.

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Some eyedrops would numb me, before a sucker was attached to hold my eye in place to cause some discomfort. As pressure increased on my eyeball, I could expect some disturbed vision up to a total blacking out – not of my consciousness though, unfortunately.

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During this time, an incision would circle my cornea and then remove a transparent cap off the surface. I’d then stare at a ‘bright light’, and at this point the lasers would fire, without sensation. Seconds afterwards I would have my cornea replaced and that’s it. Great!

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It didn’t sound great, but I didn’t have it in me to run away. It was like that psychology study that says we’d mostly all electrocute strangers to death if someone in a lab coat told us, but not only was I letting people cut my own eyes open, I was paying them to do so.

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So, her unnecessarily courteous foretelling of events was over, meaning it was my turn to live it. I was told to shove up the chair as if I were avoiding the whole procedure by being a few inches lower down. Holding one of my hands in the other, I provided myself the closest thing to company in the situation.

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The most looming of the ophthalmologists said he was about to put some anaesthetic drops in. Not holding back, he indifferently recreated a miniature childhood paddling pool in each of my eyes. Whilst relieved to be rid of some clarity, I simultaneously calmed my nerves by saying this would be a curious experience so I should pay attention.

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After the drops came the eye clamps. It is a cultural phenomenon I’ve discovered that mentioning “eye clamps” to anyone immediately results in just one reaction: “Is it like Clockwork Orange?” The standard answer to which is no: it’s worse. I had to stare at doctors and tools operating into my eyes. Alex went to the cinema.

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My right eye was to start, drawing the first of a pack containing precisely two short straws. The other eye was covered with a white cup like the ones they might give children with a lazy eye, or a clean-looking Captain Hook.

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A clear plastic doughnut followed, fitting inside the clamps and contacting directly onto my eye. This doughnut was an eye-hoover. They told me to expect pressure as the device sucked up my eyeball. It applied itself perfectly onto my numb eye and my field of vision soon became one with the doughnut hole.

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As I looked only in one mandatory direction, I sensed some incisions being made along the rims of my vision. They were right, it wasn’t comfortable. My hands gripped together tighter, each controlling the other from moving.

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“The best thing you can do is nothing” I repeated in my head. There are no restraints or guarantees against people lashing out and pulling out all the equipment from their eyes. Fear alone keeps you deathly still, repressing even shivers. I couldn’t even shift my focus to check what was going on in case I jolted my eyeball to risk it being cut right open, though I doubted whether I could move my eyes anyway.

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Some female voice nearby me counted down “25.. 10.. 5.. and done.” I noted her atypical use of time but was happy it was shorter than the regular kind. Then a male voice, who I sexist-ly assumed was the doctor, told me I was doing well and the worst part was now over.

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Perhaps for them, that is. I next saw the inner circle of my doughnut vision shunt from left to right as they shifted my sliced cornea off my eyeball. As the cornea refracts light, the movement of this disc warped my entire sight, and my vision went totally blurry as they flapped it away altogether.

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The same process repeated in my left eye. God knows where they’d stored my right cornea, but this side was over quicker than before, or I perceived it so, being already familiarised with the harrowing process, somehow. With both eyes sliced, I found myself for the first time, much like a Roman centurion, Cornea-less.

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And then it was laser time. They dripped a load more analgesics into my eye and I was told to stare at the fuzzy orange light, like a remote alien sun, as I imagined it irradiating at some infernal temperature.

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Here was the moment I had been told to expect ‘smelling the burning flesh of my own eyeballs’ from my friend. This attempted fact had erupted one Optical Express staff member in laughter a few weeks back when I was asked if I had any questions. After composing herself, she let me know any smell would be emissions from the operating lasers, and whose nose can tell that difference?

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My flooded left eye looked towards the light, which was now accompanied with Geiger-counter type clicking. “Thirty” descended to zero in about 12 seconds and the clicks stopped. Voices congratulated me for the hardest doing nothing I had ever done.

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The next moment my not so long-lost corneal disc came back in view. Micro-curling brooms started to sweep across my eye, returning it to the groove of its previous home.

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Tools floating across your eye is a unique visual experience. You see that you see through 3D spheres. Tiny windscreen wipers sweeping across the surface delineate the invisible edge of your eye you’ve never noticed before. It also becomes very clear that we are seeing from the back, and not the front, of our eyeballs.

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Overwhelming exhaustion in my right eye by this point meant during the lasering I lost control of my focus. My procedure, iLasik, was bespoke so each ray corrected prescriptions as they varied across the cornea. If my focus veered off centre, might I be cursed with systematically incorrect vision?

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I couldn’t even tell if I was staring straight anymore but I was soon alerted by a serious “Look up!” I estimated my best look up and they didn’t need to tell me again before it was over.

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This time eyeball sliders were having a harder time rehoming my loose cornea. The flap was nudged back and forth for about double or triple the time before there was an unannounced sigh of relief. It had gone well, so they told me. Before I knew it, I was released from all eye-suckers and vices, free to sit up and leave the room.

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I was in shock. I said a trembling thankyou to everyone in the room, feeling intensely vulnerable, violated and mostly blind. The nurse assisted me to the door and clearly pitied me. Instinctively my eyes shut tight, but I could peep them open for brief moments, only to exude unstoppable tears before they abruptly closed again. In these crucial moments I saw I could see.

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With some blindly delivered instructions, I was set on my way home. Led to Amir’s arm I wanted to cry, but also just to get the hell out so I could sleep forever. It felt like the most overpowering tiredness, mixed with having experienced something deeply wrong and unnatural.

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We ordered a cab and after a never-ending squirming journey to mine, I manoeuvred via a lot of guidance and homely recognition into bed. The next five hours felt like I had detachable and scratchy bits of eye beneath my lids that in no uncertain terms must I touch. Every time I tried to open them, tears streamed out in a current and I replugged them shut.

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Any paranoid thoughts were now a luxury and I cared much less; I existed in the time after surgery. Five hours later, we went for dinner and I could see better than I had since I was 12.

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The next day I went for a check, and I had better than 20:20 vision already, but slight inflammation in my right eye. No doubt this was due to the extra window wiping. But essentially, I was in the clear, and so was my eyesight.

So, there it was, I had laser eye surgery and survived. I have no idea whether the process I just described represents what an ophthalmologist would agree with, but it’s all from my pierced eye view.

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If you want to check from the other side, there’s always the Kardashian video.

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A friend related to me that he found having laser eye surgery hands down the most traumatic thing he’s ever experienced, and I would agree it’s pretty high up there. It is like being the sorry protagonist of a dubious sci-fi movie. I honestly can’t believe so many people have had it.

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However, forgetting is a beautiful thing, and now my only worry is forgetting it’s ever happened so that I attempt to take out contact lenses that aren’t there. That’s what it feels like now, just like wearing contacts constantly. But I guess if I do accidentally gouge out my poor eyes, I at least have some pre-sliced corneas for the job.

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April 2022