Firefighter Nathan is well acquainted with the inconvenience that glasses and contact lenses can cause. Working in ‘dusty, dirty sweaty’ conditions comes with many difficulties, like the other participants in our ‘Thanks a Million’ campaign, Nathan found it got in the way of his day-to-day work.

Emergencies come at all hours; finding himself working long nights, Nathan’s eyes were prone to being ‘dry and sore’ after wearing contact lenses.

Having considered the procedure previously, an advert for the Optical Express campaign offering free laser eye surgery to NHS and Emergency Service workers, was the perfect opportunity for Nathan to pursue the ‘better than perfect’ vision that he finally received.

Praising the communication throughout his Lasik IDesign journey, Nathan felt the instructions were ‘clear’ and ‘concise’. He acknowledges that whilst having a laser in your eye can be a scary prospect, he was offered lots of reassurance from out team and the procedure was over within a couple of minutes.

Nathan is looking forward to not having to make decisions between the small things, like swimming on holiday, and seeing clearly: “It’s having the freedom now to be able to go out and do whatever I like without having to worry about my vision”.

First launched in 2017, the ‘Thanks a Million’ campaign donated £1 million worth of free laser eye surgery to NHS and Emergency Service workers. The campaign relaunched in 2023 with Optical Express donating another £1 million worth of laser eye surgery. It’s our way of saying a massive thank you to the NHS and Emergency Service workers for the great work that they do.