Relying on both glasses and contact lenses to correct her vision, Charlotte found that the daily routine and upkeep became more and more of an inconvenience. With contact lenses generally leaving her eyes dry and irritated by the end of the day, she often made the switch to glasses but grew increasingly frustrated with the minor irritations that came with wearing them.

Spending a lot of time at the gym, she found that they tended to fall off while exercising, and during summer months she disliked how they prevented her from wearing sunglasses. “I wore glasses a lot but then when you’re driving you think ‘I just want to put my sunglasses on’. But I’ve got my glasses on so you can’t, it’s a bit of a pain really,” she explains.

Working as a dental nurse, Charlotte started wearing full PPE during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Finding that her glasses were preventing her from being able to wear her mask, goggles and visor properly, leaving her feeling uncomfortable, she decided that it was time to start looking into an alternative vision correction solution: “With hats and goggles and visors and masks, it was just, if I could get rid of the glasses it made everything sit on my face a lot easier.” As multiple of her friends had previously received laser eye surgery and highly recommended it, all wishing that they hadn’t waited so long to get it done, Charlotte decided to go for it and made an appointment at our clinic in Cambridge.

As she was apprehensive to receive surgery on her eyes, Charlotte was delighted to find that there was always someone on the other end of the line to answer her questions and calm her nerves: “They’ve been brilliant from the start, really reassuring as I was really frightened. When I’ve spoken to them over the phone and mentioned how nervous I am, everybody was really reassuring.” Glad that she put her apprehensions aside, she wouldn’t hesitate to make the decision to opt for treatment again. “Even though it was only done last night, I still feel like ‘Yeah, I would go for it again. It was worth it’. Even though I was terrified,” she explains.

Charlotte is now looking forward to experiencing complete visual freedom for the first time since she was 22 years old, and has already been daydreaming about a beach holiday. “I’m definitely looking forward to going on holiday, being on the beach without worrying that I’m going to lose a contact lens if we’re messing about in the sea,” she says.

Delighted with her results, Charlotte wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Optical Express to friends and family, commenting: “They are really going to look after you and they are really reassuring, you won’t feel like you’re under any pressure. It was very much my own decision and I just felt, even coming back today, everybody is still ‘Oh, how are you?’, very much caring, which is really nice.”