I live in Birmingham, England, and had PRK performed on my eyes between 1995 and 1996. At that time my prescription was:-

Right eye : Sphere -4.50, Cylinder -1.50, Axis 160°
Left eye : Sphere -5.25, Cylinder -1.25, Axis 10°

I had worn glasses since the age of 11, and was generally content to wear them. There were times for instance, whilst swimming or playing football, when they were a distinct disadvantage, but I would often develop strategies to cope with these situations.
Whilst at University between 1975 and 1978 I used soft contact lenses with a fair amount of success, but as time went on the increasing astigmatism in my right eye made soft contact lenses (at that time) unsuitable. I tried hard contacts but found that they would not stay centred on my cornea. Years later I tried toric soft contact lenses which had a straight edge which enable them to maintain their orientation and therefore correct for astigmatism. However, they were rather uncomfortable and eventually I lost one whilst swimming in them! After all this I had pretty much resigned myself to wearing glasses for the rest of my life.
However by 1995 two things had happened. First of all, my eyesight had deteriorated so much that the weight of the lenses meant that the frames were continually cutting into my nose. Secondly, a colleague at work had had what appeared then (and still appears), to be a successful correction of her very myopic eyesight, with PRK. I therefore decided that I would find out as much as I could about the procedure with the possibility of having it done.
I spoke to various opticians. Some preferred to offer more conventional correction, some were ambivalent, and others said to wait until the technology was more proven. However, none were completely against it. I decided that after all of the problems I had had with conventional correction, I would at least look into this a bit further.
I booked an appointment with the laser clinic. To be fair to the clinic, I feel in retrospect, that the pre-operative counselling was pretty thorough. All of the common problems (pain, haze and star-burst effect, eye droop and over/under correction) were explained. To cut a long story short, I had the surgery, and the results were reasonably satisfactory. However, six years later, there still remains a number of issues about the procedure which lead me to regret having had it performed, and which have motivated me to write this letter in order, hopefully, to avoid other people suffering the same fate.
The first problem involves the use of spectacles to correct for over/under correction of the surgery. I distinctly remember asking at the counselling session, if the final result obtained was not perfect could I correct this with spectacles. The answer came back as yes.
I am afraid from my experience, this is not strictly speaking the case. My prescription is currently:-
Left: Sphere +1.25, Cyl -0.25, Axis 10.0 Right: Sphere +0.50, Cyl -0.50, Axis 5.0
Reading addition +1.00
I therefore, have a degree of long-sightedness to correct.
In order to achieve this, I have tried reading glasses, bifocals, varifocals, and contact lenses. In all cases I have not achieved a satisfactory result. I have frequent headaches, uneasy feelings in my head (when looking at people nearby), and difficulty thinking, (because of the eye strain). The laser clinic tends to wash their hands of this type of problem saying it is the responsibility of my optician to sort out. However, I never had problems obtaining a suitable prescription before the laser surgery! Furthermore, as laser clinics in the UK tend to be independent of conventional opticians, this tendency of “passing the buck” is quite likely to occur.
The second issue is the permanence of the procedure. Whatever problems you do incur, at best will be difficult to reverse, at worst it will be with you for the rest of your life! Whatever problems you may have encountered with conventional correction, they will never be as final as with surgery. Furthermore, technology is always coming up with new innovations (such as soft toric contact lenses), which may solve your eye problem less drastically.
So, all in all, please heed my advice, and if you still want to consider surgery, find out as much as you can before the procedure. It could be the biggest decision you ever make!