These eyedrops taste terrible...

I've been saving this most excellent post because I just had to be sure that my dream was real. I had LASIK last Thursday, and for the past 4 days, I've been able to see without contacts or glasses. It's just amazing!

I knew a while ago I wanted to have LASIK. My vision was not absolutely terrible, about -3.5 and one eye and -4.5 in the other, but it was bad enough that I couldn't drive without glasses, see the alarm clock in the morning, or read shampoo ingredients. It was also particularly embarrassing trying to balance on the bathroom scale while squatting low enough to read the weight.

Putting in contacts was such a hassle, and from what I understand, contacts also run a relatively high risk of complications (eye infections, etc.) as compared to glasses. They also dry out at night well before you're ready to take them out, so you do this awkward one-eyed wink like a lounge singer with Tourette's.

Since I hate glasses too (I hate how they fog up every time I walk into the gym from the cold outdoors or when I open the dishwasher), I decided that LASIK would be the way to go. It's not quite cost effective from a purely economic standpoint, as I usually spend about 60-100 dollars per year on the eye doctor and contacts/glasses -- while LASIK was about 20 times that amount, and it's unlikely that my LASIK will remain effective for 20 years. Even so, it was worth every penny. Even if I didn't have a health care cafeteria plan through work, I think I would have done it.

The procedure itself wasn't a big deal; I was "under the knife" (or laser, as the case may be) for less than 2 minutes, all told. I was in the operating room for maybe 15 minutes. That said, if I were to describe the whole procedure step by step, you might think it was some alien torture scene out of the X-Files. (I just had a vision of a drill going into an eye ). But thankfully, it was NOTHING like that ... as long as you don't think about it too hard.

My only gripe so far, and this is a very minor thing, is that one of my eye drops taste terrible. No, I have not been drinking my eye drops. You just have to remember that your tear ducts are connected to your sinuses, which empty into the back of your throat. I don't know what it is about these antibiotic drops, but they're very bitter. Taking a drink just serves to swish the taste around even more. Blech. You'd think a hundred dollar tiny bottle of anti-biotic could at least taste better than tire sidewall.

Oh, and in case you missed it, I can see now! You know what I noticed first? That I need to vacuum.