Life is good without glasses, this has been an expensive, but good decision. Life is good without glasses, for the following incomplete set of reasons:

• When you travel, and break glasses - the waiter brings you another pair.
• When your friend at the pool says "Damn check out that hot chick in the red swim suit", you don't look at the fat guy in spiderman speedos and say .. Ooh yeah!!...
• When you go for a lapdance, you enjoy all of it, rather than the first 30 seconds after which your glasses are all smudged up.
• You don't step out of the shower and look at the clock and say "DAMN I'm LATE", you do that IN the shower instead :-).
• You turn your scanner on a cute chick, make a 3d bitmap and store it for afterwards use. If she complains, you just show her your prescription and pretend you're blind and feel her, err.. your way out.
• When the doc asks you to read the lowest line on a snellen chart, you say "Made in China", and laugh hysterically.
• When chick-picking, you never face the "Good from far, far from good" dilemma.
• Your friends/relatives bring you free food, and take care of you, when really the procedure isn't that bad!

There is plenty of negative propaganda regarding Lasik out there. People tend to bitch about stuff that went wrong, but not talk of stuff that went right. Well - my Lasik went great, and I wanted to get this one non-tech post out and share my experience with many of my 4-eyed friends considering the procedure. For more specific info - contact me directly.

The basics -

Prescription before surgery: -5.50 and -5.75, with some astigmatism.
Prescription 1 week after surgery: 20/15 and 20/20 - no astigmatism.
Date I got glasses: April 1989 at prescription -2.5, -2.5.
Date I got rid of glasses: Oct 4, 2007. :-)
Who did it? Dr. Mark Whitten - TLC Laser Eye Surgery. The guy looks like a toad, but is quite experienced and did a quick/good job.

Overall experience:

• The entire experience was less painful than a visit to the dentist (and I have zero cavities).
• The procedure itself was about 60 seconds per eye - maybe lesser.
• Right after the surgery, you see smoky/double/blurry/cloudy vision. Go home and sleep because in about 30 minutes your eyes will start burning. In about 60 minutes your eyes will burn uncomfortably. Personally speaking I ate an Egg McMuffin right after surgery, it helps me sleep better.
• How uncomfortable? Not as bad as cutting onions, but certainly noticeable. Definitely the same itchy burny feeling. Go cut onions for practice, divide that pain by 3 - that's lasik discomfort.
• You will want to keep your eyes closed ;-), it is more comfortable that way.
• Go home and sleep, 4 hours later, your eyes don't hurt anymore and your vision improves significantly, but not 100% there yet.
• What I did was - SLEEP AS MUCH AS I COULD! And I have a pretty good capacity to sleep, so I slept literally through the day and night waking every 2 hours to put drops in my eyes.
• Next day morning, my vision was 20/15 and 20/20, with significant halos.
• Next day I had to work, luckily much of it was meetings, and I could keep my eyes closed. I had to spend 60 mins on a computer though - which was tough because of halos, but I lowered the brightness of the monitor, and that helped.
• Day #3 and #4 - no computer, no tv, had enough sleep - my eyes were great, but my mind was going nuts because I didn't know WTF to do. I did write about 2 or 3 blogposts though.
• Started work on day #5 - Monday.  Monday, Tuesday, Wed, Thu - worked my usual long hours, but insisted on getting 8 hours of sleep.
• A week later
• Halos are gone during the day, and minimal at night.
• Vision is great
• Doc. checked my eyes and said "no antibiotics or steriods required, no eye sheild at night, I can go back to my regular life".
• Doc. said that I recovered crazy fast - heck, one day, I think I should just tell the world that I'm really superman.
• 1 week, 2 days later - writing this blogpost - eyes feel awesome, I keep putting in artificial tears, though if I didn't I wouldn't miss 'em. Doing that just as a precautionary thing.

What I did to ensure speedy recovery:

• Gave myself 4 days off (more or less)
• Slept as much as I could
• Ate copious amounts of protein, vit. c, and vit. a.
• Followed the doc's advice like crazy.

Of course, I was shitty nervous before I did it. There is an inherent risk in surgical anything. But if you choose to go for it - I wish you all the best!