While I’m reserving my all out enthusiasm and overwhelming support for it, I am quite happy the day after my lasik procedure.

This is not to say that it wasn’t shit-stain terrifying.

My appointment was for 10am, which meant of course that I didn’t actually go back to do anything until 11:15. At that point a woman gave me a valium and a vicodin and asked me to sign some paperwork. She also gave me some eyedrops she described as “like aspirin for your eyes”. She then took me to a room, presumably so that I could wait for the drugs to take hold. I sat there patiently, fiddling with a book and trying to relax, and a mustachioed man came in to say hello, and that he was the man who was going to slice open my eyes.

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond, but thankfully it was brief and he explained that everything looked great and it was an easy correction, a tech would be in soon.

A very cute young woman then wandered in to lead me, now slightly stoned, into room one.

She explained that all I would have to do is lay there and breathe. It did not help that this particular machine looked like a freezer with an armature ending in an orange juicer. I lay down, and after some scooting and fiddling, I was ready, presumably, to rock. They squirted some gunk in my eyes which was to numb them, and scrubbed my eyelids and lashes with high proof isopropyl alcohol to sanitize. The doctor came in and there was a general hubub of checked settings, and he put the clamps in. See, they start off with these spring loaded clockwork orange style eyelid clamps, to keep your eyes open. Then they go “OK, time to put on the vacuum clamps, your vision will grey out” and you’re like “What? What about my vision?” and suddenly there is this feeling like someone trying to pry your eye right the fuck out. Then you are aligned with the machine and they go “OK, this will take 20 seconds” and it begins.

No sound, just smells. And I felt it. Just slightly sub pain. So creepy. They finish and do the other eye, which I didn’t feel at all, thankfully, and we get ready to go to the next room. I open my eyes to a world covered in gauze and it’s the first moment that I really fear what I have done.