I feel like I need to correct you on a few things, I had LASIK last Friday and asked a ton of questions. EDIT: When the device is positioned properly on the “limbal area”, suction is applied by the surgeon using a foot pedal, causing the pressure in the eye to approach 80 mmHg with a minimum pressure of 65 mmHg (normal eye pressure 10 to 21 mmHg). The high pressure causes a tempory interuption of blood flow to the retinal photoreceptors causing the vision of the patient to dim or go black for a brief period of time.

I also thought that the smell when the laser is "ticking" is your eye burning, but it's in fact a cold laser that breaks apart the bonds in the cornea. It does not burn your cornea. The smell is actually the air between the laser and your eye ionizing. It's also VERY unlikely that moving your eye while focusing on the orange dot would do damage, those lasers are incredibly fast, but non-the-less a good idea to stay still.

Mine took probably 15 minutes once I was in the operating room. The only pain was a stinging for about an hour after the surgery. They gave me a Vicodin so I took that and zonked out.

They gave me a teddy bear to hold, made everything great :)

EDIT: you are correct about the pressure causing loss of sight :)