The Fear of LASIK and the Dream of Vision

On Friday, my friend Eireann got her eyeballs lasered. Her perscription used to be worse than mine (mine being a rather wimpy prescription) but now she can see without her contacts and she says her eyesight is getting better every day. I'm so jealous.

It isn't that I'm blind or anything. I can see stuff without my glasses, except everything looks like a post-impressionist painting. If I hold a book a few inches from my nose, I can even read without them. But the dependancy on glasses and contacts is a constant irritant.

Contacts dry out my eyeballs. And glasses? Well, it's about as easy for me to keep them clean for more than three seconds as it would be for me to single handedly repair the hole in the ozone layer.

Unfortunately, despite it's apparent benefits, laser eye surgery deals with two of my worst fears: 1. spending large quantities of money and 2. blindness (in that order).

The more you try to appease fear #1 by going to the discount quack doctor who advertises using Bob Marley songs on K Lite fm, the less paranoid and unlikely fear #2 becomes. Now you're thinking, come on now, blindness? But you forget I watch Star Trek. I've seen phasers (which rhyme with and look like lasers) vaporize people, blow up large starships, and even destroy cities. There's also the voice of some random elementary school teacher in my head yelling "Don't aim that laser pointer at your eye or you'll go blind!"

The other thing that sucks is that you could go, pay your sheckles, laser your peepers, and end up still needing glasses! Only this time you'll have a whole different prescription and so you'll need to buy all new eyewear. How lame is that?

From what I've read I'd be a good candidate for the procedure, being only mildly myopic. So there's a good chance I could see good enough after without my glasses. For now I'll just keep dreaming about it.