All these things that I have done

Nah - they give you an eyedrop which dialates your pupils to almost the size of your iris, which makes it really hard to focus on anything and makes everything outside seem too bright which lasts 4 hours or so and some local anasthetic eye drops which last about an hour. You're not supposed to drive for a couple of days until they've tested the results, but that's mostly just caution. I did think at one point that I would have been tempted if they'd offered me some knockout stuff though! It was well worth it in the end - my aftercare test shows I've got 20/20!