Lasers and Their Uses

About 10 years ago, I had my vision corrected via LASIK laser surgery. Although I stayed in the same chair, they charged me per eye as though I had gone in twice. That was the facility. The doctor's charge per eye sounds reasonable to me. Prior to having the surgery, I had visited one of the offices of the physician. We discussed at length what was involved, and I was also given a free eye exam with a machine that measured the shape and all in my eye. It was a very pretty color picture. I had medium astigmatism and some small vision problems, and we went over that as well. I had the same glasses prescription since I was a child, never changing. Contacts were a pain (Hard lenses gave me dry eye and the TORIC contact lenses made me have to open my eye to what seemed like twice the ability I was able to. Back to the LASIK surgery. I was given VALIUM (thankfully) to relax before the surgery. I opted to have both eyes corrected (they will do one at a time in case there is an "oopsie" apparently) at the same time. I was taken to the operating room and seated in a chair. The doctor greeted me and put drops in my eye. Then they put a sort of speculum in my eye (looks worse than it is). then, as memory serves, it seemed like they pulled my eye up to what felt to me like Pluto. All the while I was focusing on a dot that dimmed out. They cut the cornea I believe (painless - totally) and made a flap. Then they went zap with the laser - which was NOT guided by human hands but was guided with a machine. Thankfully there were no power surges (joking). That was done for booth eyes. LITERALLY a 20 second procedure for each eye. They put the corneal flap back and I could see immediately at 20/20 no astigmatism (except for a slight halo/blurriness) that did not last long. I never missed contacts or glasses. Since I had gone my whole life with glasses, the irises of my eyes were not used to focusing. I got an occasional headache from that. I also had to wear protective lenses over my eyes for a week, and could not swim or get water in them. I was given antibiotic and anti inflammatory eye drops along with artificial tears to use for a week. 6 months later my vision was as as good as it was going to get - 20/20. 10 years later I still have 20/20 vision, no night blindness issues or anything. I would recommend this or the modern equivalent of this surgery to anyone who can have it done. It is worth the money. I have also purchased various lasers that are non medical for business purposes. One I got recently was from Wicked Lasers. They may seem like fun but they can hurt people or may be illegal (felony) if you shine them on a plane or other things. The website has some examples of people who found that out the hard way. The company is in China, but I got my pointer within 3 days of ordering.