I can still remember that fateful day. I lay in bed, ready to get into my favorite book and it appeared that someone put a dimmer bulb in the bed lamp. Nope! Turns out that the head lamps were going dim a lot longer than I was aware of. It is fact of life that affects many of us and for me; it was around my 40th birthday. It wasn't enough that I was going over the hill, its out I was having a hard time even seeing the hill.

So why Lasik and why is it so popular? LASIK has advantages over other procedures, including a relative lack of pain afterward and the fact that good vision is usually achieved by the very next day.

LASIK is the most commonly performed refractive surgery procedure. You may hear people calling it "LASIX," but the name is actually short for "laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis."

An instrument called a microkeratome is used in LASIK eye surgery to create a thin, circular flap in the cornea. Another, newer way of making the flap is with a laser. Read more about the recently developed IntraLase laser that is used for this purpose.

The way the procedure works is that the surgeon folds the flap back out of the way, and then removes some corneal tissue underneath using an excimer laser. The excimer laser uses a cool ultraviolet light beam to precisely remove ("ablate") very tiny bits of tissue from the cornea to reshape it. When the cornea is reshaped in the right way, it works better to focus light into the eye and onto the retina, providing clearer vision than before. The flap is then laid back in place, covering the area where the corneal tissue was removed.

Both nearsighted and farsighted people can benefit from the LASIK procedure. With nearsighted people, the goal is to flatten the too-steep cornea; with farsighted people, a steeper cornea is desired. While this is not widely recognized by consumers, excimer lasers also can correct astigmatism by smoothing an irregular cornea into a more normal shape.

California Lasik eye surgery, which can cost thousands of dollars and will not be covered by most insurance companies, grew in popularity during the 1990s but slowed amid the 2001 recession. The numbers are slowly rising again, but some patients are squeamish about having blades inserted into their eyes, experts say.

The bottom line is LASIK surgery is becoming more common place. The number of surgeries performed each year is in the thousands and has become an extremely safe procedure. The best bet is to contact your personal physician, have him connect you with an eye specialist that will examine you and give the best possible advice to see if LASIK is right for you.