There are a couple of small side effects that I am dealing with. I find that my eyes get dry sometimes, and I’m a bit more sensitive to light than I remember being before the surgery. Dryness is easily remedied with a couple of eye drops. At most, I’ve had to put in eye drops two or three times a day, which is tolerable and not a big deal to me. Most days I don’t have any issues, but if I’m tired or working on the computer for an extended period without taking a break, I notice the dry eyes gets worse.

As for light sensitivity, I’ve noticed sunlight seems excessively bright at times, and I have to squint when I’m outdoors as a result. I wear sunglasses a lot when I’m out on a sunny day, or when driving, but I think it’s a good idea for most people to wear sunglasses anyway, to protect one’s eyes from UV rays. Plus, I got to pick out some stylish sunglasses for the first time in my life, instead of wearing those geeky clip-on shades that go over your regular glasses.

Overall, I’m very happy with the results of my LASIK procedure. If I knew it would be this good, I would have done it years ago.

I went to the TLC centre in Toronto last Thursday morning and had a great experience. I was there for about two hours, with most of that time spent going over paperwork, finalizing details and prepping for surgery. The staff were all friendly and assuring, easing most of the stress I had about the procedure. My surgeon, Dr. Nick Nianiaris, was very straightforward, very skilled, and kept me calm during my time under the laser.

Here’s a basic recap of what happened: I sat in a waiting room with two other people awaiting surgery. A nurse came in and explained what we’d be going through, and talked about aftercare and recovery. She cleaned my eyes a couple times, put in a bunch of different eye drops and gave me an ativan to help with the nerves.

When my time came, I went into the surgery room, laid down and Dr. Nick started the process by putting some more numbing drops in my eyes. First, he put a suction ring on my eye, which felt weird and pretty uncomfortable, but didn’t really hurt. At this point, my vision went black, which was pretty scary, but I knew it was coming, so I was somewhat prepared for it. The Intralase laser then cut a flap in my cornea, which took about 30 seconds per eye.

Dr. Nick then removed the suction ring and my vision came back, although it was pretty blurry. He used a little metal instrument to gently lift up the flap that was created, and then positioned another laser above my eye to do the actual correction on my cornea. He told me I would smell the laser gases, which I did, in addition to the smell of burning cornea tissue. The laser made a weird clicking sound and one of the two nurses in the room gave me a countdown every 5 seconds, telling me how much time was left and telling me how great I was doing. I think it took 23 seconds of laser time for each eye.

I’ve watched tons of videos of lasik surgeries, so I knew exactly what steps would be taken and what to expect, but it was still really weird to watch it from the other side. I could actually see the flap being lifted off my eye, which was a little disturbing. While the laser was doing its work, I could see little purple circles of light pulsing randomly around, which was kinda neat.

Overall, I’m very happy with the results. I have a bit of dryness in my eyes, especially in the mornings, and I use lubricating drops 4 or 5 times per day, but it’s not unbearable. I still sometimes go to adjust my glasses and I still reach for them first thing in the morning, until I realize that I can see without them. I guess those habits will fade over time.

As I said, I’m really happy with how things turned out, and I’d recommend Lasik surgery to anyone who is a candidate and can afford it.

I’m scheduled for tomorrow morning at 9:40am at TLC in Toronto. The actual procedure only takes about 15 minutes, but it is a bit scary, since they are going to be cutting and touching my eyes and a big laser is gonna shoot rays at me. Recovery is usually pretty quick, and a lot of people report seeing clearly almost immediately after the surgery. I’ll have to use various eye drops for the first few days, but I should be able to return to most normal activities within a week.

I’m pretty excited and a bit nervous, but I’m really looking forward to life without glasses. Wish me luck!

I recently read an article about tea’s healthy benefits, with all the flavonoids and antioxidants and stuff, so I decided I would try it out. The only tea I’ve ever really had was iced tea. At my work, we have this fancy Flavia machine that makes single serving coffee and tea. I don’t really think the drinks it makes are great quality, since it’s pretty much just instant coffee/tea. But it’s decent enough to get by.

While I was cleaning my room the other day, I found a bunch of fancy teas I got from this crazy girl I know. I’ve decided I’m going to do a little experiment and try a different tea on different days to see if I like any of them. The teas I have are all jasmine green teas and fancy stuff like that. They are produced by Choice Organic Teas, and they look expensive, so they are probably fancy, proper teas.

Over the next little while, I’ll try out these fancy teas, and we’ll see if I become a tea connoisseur.

In each dream, there was some invisible force or something that was keeping me held down in my bed. It was one of those weird cases where I woke up in my dream, but I was really still sleeping in real life. I thought I was awake, but I was paralyzed and couldn’t untangle myself from my sheets or get up out of bed. The whole time, there was this feeling of impending doom and a sense that I was facing my death.

My very last nightmare of the night started out the same way, but this time I was able to sit up, only to see the Grim Reaper sitting at the foot of my bed, with his long, bony finger pointing at me. I recall trying to punch him and yell, but I was paralyzed, just looking at this dark figure pointing at me and not saying a word.

When I awoke, I was freaked out, but I had a sense of relief that I wasn’t dead. I’m counting on it just being my imagination going crazy while I slept, but is there a hidden meaning? Was I visited by Death himself?

Obviously, this isn’t new, and I’m sure this has been going on for years and years without the attention it is now getting in the news. This really makes me wonder how much lead and other dangerous chemicals I came into contact with playing with toys as a kid. I’m sure the rules have become stricter over the years, but as we’re seeing, the toys of today are being recalled for safety reasons, so I believe the toys of the past were even more dangerous.

I don’t really know what else to say about this, except I hope I don’t die an early death because I used to play with lead-infested toys…

This afternoon at work, we had flu shots. My doctor assured me there wouldn’t be any problems getting two vaccines in one day, but he said it would be best to get the needles in opposite arms. Both injections were no problem.

So far, my left arm hurts quite a bit. That’s the arm I got my flu shot in. The other arm feels fine. I feel pretty invincible right now, being double-vaccinated.

Update: It’s now the next day, and both of my shoulders really hurt a lot.

I understand some people have weight problems and may have trouble losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight. However, I find it hard to justify spending millions of dollars in taxpayer money on surgeries for people who are morbidly obese. I know these people must lose weight in order to improve their health or even to survive in some cases, but I don’t think surgery is necessarily the solution.

The way I see it, fat people are fat for a reason or combination of reasons. But, they have at least some control over this. Sure, some people are genetically predisposed to gaining weight, but I highly doubt somebody weighing in at 350lbs got that way by eating a healthy, balanced diet and exercising regularly.

I think what really gets to me is the fact that I have a ‘real disease‘ that cannot be cured, and can only be controlled through the use of medication. Without daily insulin injections, I would die. OHIP doesn’t cover the cost of my insulin or my testing supplies. A morbidly obese person could probably lose weight the old-fashioned way, through diet and lifestyle changes, yet they are able to get their weight-loss surgeries paid for. Food for thought…

In total, they got $55 back. There were about 270 beer bottles, 20 empty 40s (1.14L) and 60 empty 26ers (750mL) and a handful of mickeys. By my quick math, that’s over 90 litres of beer, and 70 litres of liquor. In total, it was an estimated $2300 worth of alcohol.

If Alan had been wearing a helmet when he crashed last weekend, his head might not look like this right now:

Moral of the story: helmets are cool, not dorky.