Just had my lasik done two days ago at the Hong Kong Sanatorium.

A friend of mine did his Lasik about 10 years ago and proclaims as one of his best decisions he made in life and after listening to him and doing a lot of research online I decided to go for it. He went through a private doctor 10 years ago by the name of Ian McRobert, after extensive searching it seems that he is no longer in Hong Kong. I read a lot of forums Geoexpat and Asiaxpat and others and decided to investigate the services at the Hong Kong Sanatorium.

I scheduled an examination which costed about HK$ 800 to assess whether my eyes were suitable for Lasik; this exam took about 3 hours and the doctor (Dr Chan) whom I saw said I was suitable; he seemed quite busy that day. I asked him whether he had ever had an operation which went wrong and what happened. He mentioned that for all the operations he carried out in the past 8 years they were all successful with no post-operation complications which did allay my fears that I had.

They conduct all of their Lasik operations on Wednesdays; so the earliest operation I could schedule was 9 September, 2015. They briefed me in detail about the operation being divided in 2 parts and that I must not wear contact lenses 3 days before the operation and that I must sign a consent form that effectively exonerates them from anything that may go wrong. The operation itself costed HK$ 22,000 and when I paid on the day, I found out that I could pay in installments with no extra interest so I said why not.

In preparation for the operation, they administered various eye-drops e.g. such as anaesthetic and antibiotics; no intravenous injections or general anaesthesia. They allow you to listen to headphones during the operation which would have been a great thing had my phone not died before it managed to reach the operating theatre. The waiting part was the most apprehensive, I imagined that is how death row must be like. When it came to my turn to go into the operating theatre; I was first placed on one bed that created the corneal flap in your eyes. Although the only thing I felt was a bit of pressure on my eye when this part took place, the actual creation of the corneal flap did not hurt at all. To the best of my knowledge, the creation of the corneal flap is basically a tiny cut in your cornea where the actual cut is done by a machine rather than a human being. This part of the operation literally took 30 seconds for each eye and once done I was ready for the next part of the operation whereby they flip back the cornea and do the zapping and then flip back the cornea. They will move you to a separate bed for the second part of the operation and the surgeon will put some eye-drops on your eye; the “zapping” part took about 5 seconds per eye and both eyes were done in about 3 minutes and virtually no pain.  The whole operation including the 2 parts felt like it only lasted 5 minutes in total.

For me, because I only have a prescription of only +2.75 in each eye, I was a perfect candidate for Lasik. Immediately after, you will be able to see clearly without glasses even through squinting.

I had to be escorted home by a friend and then basically wearing eye shields the whole day, I just rested. However, it is important to note that once the local anaesthesia wears off, you will feel a fair bit of pain in your eyes (much more than during the operation). They placed 3 pain killers in a pouch that they gave me after my operation, I thought I could get away with not taking them but at the end I ended up taking one because the pain was too much.

The next day I woke up and my sight was perfect and did a check-up in the hospital and the nurse said that I had 20/20 vision now and they gave me some more drops and told me to wear sunglasses for the next 7 days, no swimming for 3 months, no boxing, no rubbing of the eyes for 7 days, etc. They did mention that the eyes would settle over the next 3-6 months; hopefully this 20/20 vision would still stay.

Touch wood, if everything stays as is then I am a very happy bunny!