This morning for the first time since Tuesday I woke up without my eyes feeling like they were full of grit. Even when they did over the past few days the myriad bottles of eyedrops helped. I felt physically tired all last week, though, so I’m hoping that will improve as well.

As my man friday so insightfully points out, today is Wednesday, the day by which I promised to debrief my loyal readers should I have survived unscathed my date with destiny.

I have.

The operation itself was mostly painless. They stick a suction cup in your eye to hold it in place while the laser cuts open your cornea. The surgeon kept telling me to relax and look at the microscope while this was going on but my eye, quite involuntarily, wanted to blink and spasm when this happened. So he’s saying "relax, don’t blink" and I’m thinking "I’m not doing it deliberately" a few times over. No doubt they are used to the routine by now.

I could feel the laser cutting through but with the anaesthetic it wasn’t painful. More irritating, like being poked with a blunt stick. After that I felt nothing for the actual correction procedure. And saw very little. At first I thought that cutting open the cornea had perhaps blocked light from entering the eye at all as I literally couldn’t see anything but blackness. This was just the drops forcing my lids closed. When the nurse yanked them open for the second part of the procedure I could see well enough.

My vision was blurry afterwards but even walking (slowly) home the world around me just felt like it might be clearer if I hadn’t had a concoction of eyedrops floating around. As instructed I went straight to bed with my goggles on but I couldn’t sleep. An hour or so later I started to experience a fairly painful sensation in my eyes, as though I had been drinking all night and started rubbing my eyes with sandpaper. I’d been told to expect this and eventually it passed. My eyes were still very sensitive to light, though, and I wore my shades for the rest of the evening with all the lights off and Rebecca banished to the bedroom to study.

The biggest problem was boredom. I couldn’t watch TV. Of course I couldn’t read or go on the Wii. I tried going out for a walk but even with the shades on and keeping to the streets with the fewest lights it was still too bright so I decided to come home.

Finally I did sleep and I woke yesterday morning feeling very tired. My eyes felt very dry and it was a relief to apply some drops to them. Even then there were sensitive to light. I wore the shades most of the day, shedding them at last in the evening when this time I was able to venture outside.

It was a similar story today. A dry and unpleasant sensation in the morning which was relieved with the application of the drops. I walked to work with the shades safely tucked in my pocket and I was able to work although when six o’clock came round I was glad to be able to look away from the screen and head home. My pupils are still dilated but nowhere near as sensitive to light as over the past two days. The recovery is proceeding nicely, thank you very much.

I’m booked in for LASIK surgery tomorrow to correct my vision. This prompted Andy, the office joker, to crack wise throughout the week, calling me a variety of playground names such as Speccy and Four Eyes. This was on the basis that he only had six days left to do so. Of course neither he nor anyone else had felt the need to make such comments up until now but the old saying goes that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

Needless to say it’s all in good humour and in fact Andy wears glasses himself. For now. He too is planning on having the treatment in the near future.

Assuming everything goes well I will be able to report on the procedure next week. If you don’t hear from me by Wednesday you are free to assume that it went horribly wrong, that I am now quite blind and this will have been my final journal entry.