I had mine done at Mann Eye in Houston near the med center 2 or three years ago. The procedure corrected my nearsightedness, myopia, and astigmatism. It was expensive, I think $2k per eye, but in my mind worth it. You can shop for deals and find places or ads offering to do it for $400 / eye, but I didn't want to bargain shop for someone to shoot lasers into my eyes.
As far as the procedure goes, here is what I recall from my day of surgery and recovery. You go in to the office in the morning, they perform another eye exam and rerun the tests and measurements on your cornea to validate the procedure they have programmed. After that they give you some numbing drops in your eyes and offer you a valium. About 5 minutes later once the drops have taken effect you walk into the surgical suite which has two chairs and machines. They sit you down in the first chair and prep you for the lasers. This process gets some device set up to hold your eyelids open and also has some kind of aparatus that the laser ties into. It's kind of uncomfortable, but they are continually putting drops in your eyes so they don't dry out. Then they put the laser into position which basically means they lower it onto you, you feel quite a bit of pressure on your eye socket, but its not painful. Next thing they do is shoot the laser to cut the flap on your eyeball. When they shoot the laser you feel a quick pinch, but really is no big deal, in fact the only part bad about that is hearing them do a countdown while the laser powers up and runs diagnostics. Ohh, also I remembered that there is a ring of lights that you are supposed to try and focus on while they shoot the laser. Mann Eye uses some really expensive German laser system, and its awesome. Next they repeat the procedure on the other eye (if you are having it done). AFter they have cut the flaps they stand you up and walk you over to the next chair. The doctor uses some kind of metal pick to peel the eye flaps back, this doesn't hurt. They then place the cornea shaping laser in position in the same kind of process like the eye flap cutting laser. You look at a ring of lights and the laser fires. I remember being able to smell burning flesh, but not really feeling anything while this one worked for what seemed to be 3-5 seconds. Then they move the flap back into its original position with the metal pick. They switch over and do the next eye the same way. At this point your vision is mostly blurry but I recall being able to see out of a few spots in my field of vision that were crystal clear. After the surgery they do another eye exam to make sure the flaps are smooth and in place, they give you some eye shields some pain medicine (I think) and send you home. I slept for most of the rest of the day. The next morning (A Saturday) I went back in still with the eyeshields in place, they took them off to do another eye exam and my vision at that point was probably as good as it had been in 15 years. There are halos around lights especially at night for a while, and it takes a day or two for all of your vision to clear up, but it is amazing waking up for the first time, opening your eyes and not needing to reach to the bedside for glasses so that you can see across the room. You have to use anitbiotic and steroid drops for about a week while your eyes heal and you shouldn't do any strenuous physical activity. I recall the drops being absurdly expensive.
TLDR, it's expensive, worth it, and the procedure takes ~ 10 minutes total with a day to recover. I think I went from 20/400 to 20/15.
