Eye am warning you now...

... the following pics are not for the faint of heart. I thought the whole process was fascinating, but many people get grossed out too. What process you ask? Why, LASIK!  Here is my last day wearing glasses.  Before the surgery I had to wear them for 10 stinkin, ankle-twisting days.  I had to take a final picture with Cloudburst with both of us sporting our specs.

And then it was off to Hoopes!  They gave me some Valium to calm my nerves and led me in to the cold procedure room.  They first used a laser to cut a thin flap of corneal tissue from my eye.  They applied suction (yes to my EYE BALL, thank goodness for that Valium).

Then they fired the IntraLase laser to create thousands of tiny air bubbles beneath the surface of my cornea.  Here, it is about half way done.  Over the next couple of minutes those air bubbles congealed together to form one layer of air just below the surface of the cornea.

Then I moved over to a second machine, the Allegretto laser.  Dr. Hoopes cut the flap away and folded it down.  You can see it folded back at the bottom.  Then the laser did its magic for 6 seconds.  See that cloudy part in the middle?  That's where the laser burned away parts of my eye, and yes I could smell something funky.

Then Dr. Hoopes smoothed back the flap.  Then he did the other eye of course.  They put all sorts of eye drops in my eyes.  Then I got to lay in the most amazing massage chairs for several minutes to let my eyes rest.  I still dream about those chairs.

Once Thunder drove me home, I put on my fancy new eyewear and slept pretty much all day.  But guess what?  When I woke up from sleeping I COULD SEE!!!!!

It is still weird to not take care of contacts at night.  It is so nice to wake up with Sunrise in the night.  Wait, it's nice to be able to SEE at night when I MUST wake up with Sunrise (the darn kid is not a good sleeper).  And being able to wake up at 5:30 AM for a run and NOT have to fiddle with contacts?  Oh wait.  I don't have to do that any more (see upcoming post on the medical drama....)