First step

Within hours of deciding to get the Lasik procedure done, we called up the Aggarwal Eye Institute (AIE). We chose them because AIE is pretty famous all over India for their Lasik procedure. They have been in this field for a very long time and I was confident about trusting my eyes to them.

When we called them, we were told that Zyoptix was the latest in Lasik technology and they use Zyoptix technology in their hospital(though, throughout this blog, I will be using Lasik to refer to this procedure because the term Lasik is more well-known).

We were told that I would have to be without contact lenses for a minimum of ten days - this had something to do with allowing the cornea to come back to its original non-contact-lens shape. After those 10 days, I had to go in for evaluation.

They would then conduct a series of tests on my eyes after which they would let me know if a) I had to be without contact lenses for a few more days and come back for re-evaluation or b) if I was good to go for lasik. If option (b) was the result of the evaluation, I could have the Lasik surgery done the very next day.

The next ten days, I was back to my nerdy look of old with glasses and everything. But that of course, did not interrupt anything (I was on vacation and my days were of course, packed!). In the mean time I located friends and family who had undergone the lasik procedure to get opinions from them.

The feedback was unanimous - irrespective of which hospital they had got their lasik surgery done, ALL of them were extremely thrilled with the results. They all also said that the surgery itself was pretty painless and nothing to worry about (ha and double ha, more about that later). Most of them did say that I would have to be good to my eyes a couple of weeks after the surgery. But they all added that they did not think that going back to the U.S. two weeks after the surgery would not be a problem at all. This was pretty much what the eye professional had said over the phone too.

Nevertheless, I started doing my own research on google too. My biggest worry was that I might go blind in case of some surgical failure - I usually tend to worry about the worst case scenario first. But try as I would, I could not find anything on the Web that said that Lasik can lead to blindness - it could read to really bad sight in case of rare complications, but not blindness. Okaaay - one worry crossed.

Actually that was my only worry. Since everyone I knew who had undergone this process
before me assured me it was a piece of cake, undergoing the actual surgery did not worry me too much (in retrospect, I am glad it was that way).

So with my glasses on, I waited for ten days to pass before I could go for the eye tests.