4 days post Lasik...

Today is Monday. I had intra-Lasik eye surgery 4 performed on both eyes 4 days ago. I had allot of concerns going in to the procedure and I blogged about them so I thought I would revisit those thoughts a few days post operatively.
If you have an ounce of sense in your body you would be at least slightly concerned going into a laser eye surgery procedure. I know I had mine. Here's what happened on my day under the laser:
Arrive at 6:45 am to fill out paper work and pay for the procedure.
Went to the exam room for a few tests before seeing an optometrist before the procedure. The nurse ran me through 3 tests to verify my prescription, perform a 3-d mapping of my corneal thickness, measure the diameter of my pupil and one other thing that I can't remember right now (but with the exception of the corneal 3-d mapping it was just like any other eye appointment).
Then they took me to the room with the eye charts on the wall and ran the exact test that the optometrist would do. After the eye exam the took some very tiny silicon plugs and inserted them into my punctal tear ducts (ducts in the lower corner of each eye by the nose where tears drain from your eyes) to help keep my eyes moist during the healing process. After this you go hang out in the waiting room until the nurse calls you again. If someone is there with you its probably a good thing to have them come sit in on this part. You go into a nurse’s office where she explains how and when to use the different types of eye drops that they'll send you home with. As a patient you're probably already hyped up too much to pay attention to this part...
They also give you a valium and something like demoral. After that they walked me across the hallway to the surgery center waiting room (4 big recliners and Ratatooie playing on a big screen tv. They put little booties over your shoes and head, put about 4 sets of drops in your eyes and the doctor comes and says something to you because you are about to pay him the equivalent of $30k/hour (not making this up. I did the math) to alleviate your complete dependence on prescription eyewear so the least he can do is say "howdy do"...
About 1 minute later they tell you to head back to the surgery room where you lay down on the table. Think about this room being a clock and you are laying on the minute hand with your head at the 6 and your feet at the 12. At the 9 there is the laser that will cut the corneal flaps first. At 3 is the laser that will reshape your corneas. First the table pivots to the 9. By this time your eyes are pretty much deadened. You can see as good as you ever could but you don't feel much. the nurse tries to give you the run down on what's about to take place but you really won't know until it happens. Next, the doctor comes in and opens your right eye and places a clamping device on the lids to keep it open. Everything is so close to you that you can't really see it and it doesn't hurt so you don't fight it. Next he tells you to look into the green light as the apparatus lowers slowly towards your eye. At the last second a little piece comes down, touching your eyeball and creates a very minor amount of suction that holds your eyeball in place so the flap can be cut. They tell you to watch the green light and but don't follow it. As you're watching the light a laser cuts the corneal flap.
Honestly, you feel nothing more than the slight suction of the device holding your eyeball in place. It takes about 20 seconds. You don’t hear anything, smell anything or feel anything. PERFECT!
The machine rises slightly, they tell you to close that eye when they remove the clamp and then they repeat the process on the left eye.
Once the cuts were done the surgeon steps out of the room for about one minute. He may be doing 2 patients at a time but he probably had to check in with his personal shopper(s) to make sure they could keep pace with his 30k/hr run rate.
The nurse swings you around from 9 to 3 and after a few seconds the doc comes back in and tells you to look directly into the red light. He folds back the corneal flap and this red light moves in very close. The amount and type of correction affects the amount of time that you're under the laser. For me, 3.1 diopters and slight astigmatism resulted in about 25 seconds on one eye and 15-18 seconds on the one without the astigmatism. At the end of the laser process you see that the red light was actually several red lights. Everything is crystal clear. They lay the flap back in place and squiggie's it down with a very small squiggie (not kidding). You don't feel a thing.
After both eyes are done the swing the table back to the six o'clock position. You sit up and walk into another room where the surgeon looks at each eye with a microscope. He proclaims perfection and goes about his business. They move you to another recliner and tell you to close your eyes for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes you put on some wrap around sun shades and they walk you back out to the waiting room to where you collect your driver and go home. In my case it was about 8:45.
Go home and sleep as long as you can.
When you wake up keep your eyes closed as much as possible. Stay in a dark room. Don't even have a tv on in the room.
You're eyes are going to be uncomfortable for a few days. They may even hurt some (but not bad). Use eye drops allot. You won't hurt yourself by using them too much.

Day 2:
I woke up to no pain in my right eye and slight scratchiness in my left. I had an appointment the day after with my eye dr. I was 20/20 in the scratchy left and 20/30 in the comfortable right.
By the end of the day I had no pain in either eye but had some light sensitivity issues and a headache after trying to read email that day.
Here are some random thoughts about this deal:
I can't say that the valium did much for me. I was as tight as a fiddle string for the entire procedure. I'm the same way at the dentist office. Maybe it hadn't kicked in.
Try to relax. Its an uncomfortable procedure at best but there was nothing painful about the procedure itself.
You will recover rapidly. I compared 4 hour blocks of time for discomfort/cloudy vision/trouble focusing. Each day everything continues to improve. I'm very optimistic that they will continue to improve over the next few weeks.
Use this time to unplug and relax. I couldn't really watch tv, read anything or surf the web. I couldn't work out with weights. All I could effectively do was some cardio (in the dark) and some house cleaning.
20/20 is WAY underrated! I don't know what my corrected vision has been in the past but 20/20 to me is like watching 1080p HD on tv compared to life with my glasses. If that's as good as it gets I'M FINE WITH IT! REALLY!
That's it for now. I'll update in about a week (after my next dr's appointment).