Koreans love their lasers. Laser up the skin, laser away the hair, laser off the marks and scars and spider veins, laser shows, laser night club lights...surprisingly the kids don't walk around with laser pens.
A laser usage favorite is the double-eyelid surgery. Heaps of Koreans (especially the women) get this particular laser operation to make their eyelids wider. "Big eyes!" They are very much into those beautifying surgeries that go even beyond lasers. It's definitely the "in" thing to do. Liposuction, face lifts, rhinoplasty, fat injection, face reshaping...it's cheap and easy and everybody does it!
I did a little surgery myself here in Korea. But rather than changing the way others view me, I changed the way I view others via LASEK surgery; the more painful and expensive version of LASIK, but apparently the safer way to go. I went to Yonsei Eye Clinic (연세안과) in Uijeongbu. I spent 1,300,000 KRW ($1,500). They had me dress in a hospital gown, your typical Korean house slippers, and put a paper shower cap over my head. I laid down on the table, propped my head up, opened my eyes wide and let them laser me up.
With a wire speculum keeping my eyes open, the nurse keeping my eyes moist with drops, the doctor hovering over my face while cutting a layer off my cornea, and the laser pounding its light deep into my soul, all I needed was Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 blaring in my eardrums and Alex's voice from Clockwork Orange...
"Where I was taken to, brothers, was like no sinny I ever viddied before. I was bound up in a straitjacket and my gulliver was strapped to a headrest with like wires running away from it. Then they clamped like lidlocks on my eyes so that I could not shut them no matter how hard I tried. It seemed a bit crazy to me, but I let them get on with what they wanted to get on with....I began to feel really sick. But I could not shut my glazzies. And even if I tried to move my glazz-balls about, I still could not get out of the line of fire of this picture."
That describes how I felt!
The next 24 hours were hellacious. I couldn't open my eyes without light and pain shooting into them. It felt like razors were slicing my eyeballs with every movement. 24 hours of pure painful hell, and the medicine acted as nothing more than sugar pills. I called my doctor bawling on the phone. He picked me up, gave me numbing drops, took me to the office and drove me back home. Only in Korea would a doctor do that!
As horrific as those hours were, the pain eventually cleared up and I opened my eyes to find a perfect world around me. Placing glasses on your nose for the first time is like upgrading from a disposable camera to a digital. Laser surgery is like upgrading from digital to professional. And experiencing this in Korea was an adventure in itself!
wow that sounds pretty crazy. Of course your doctor did that for you. So cool.
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