Was Blind, But Now I See

To my loyal fans who eagerly await my posts, I'm sorry for the delay. You see, I had my LASIK surgery last week and took this whole time to recover. There are several things I want to write about regarding my surgery, so this will be the beginning of a LASIK "mini-series."

My roommate and I woke up early Monday morning and headed out. I was a little nervous and a little excited. But before we did anything else, we stopped at Chik-Fil-A for breakfast. There are few things in life that make me happy in the way Chik-Fil-A breakfasts do. It was a nice way to start the day. Once I arrived at the doctor's office, we sat for a little while and talked about whether or not B was going to watch while they performed the surgery. I wasn't keen on having an audience, but she was so excited about it, and she'd been so nice to me, so I told her she could come. I ended up being really glad she did. (See my An Argument for Advocacy post.)

They made us turn off our cell phones and took us back, where they took my blood pressure and oxygen level and put a couple different kinds of eye drops in. They like to give their patients Valium beforehand so the patients are calm during surgery and able to sleep right afterward. However, knowing what that would do to me, I opted for a half of one. They also gave me a little take-home kit with different kinds of eye drops and things and talked to me about what each one was for. Then I read this card that went through everything that would happen during the surgery and what I could expect to feel. This included things like, "You'll feel some slight pressure," or "You may smell a slight burning odor." If they were amputating my arm, they'd probably still say, "You may feel a slight absence of appendage." (I wasn't kidding about the "burning odor" warning, by the way.) After I read that, they talked to me about all my post-operative instructions. Turns out I'm not supposed to water ski for three months. Dang.

Once I got through all that, they had me put on my surgical cap and booties. I figured out that the booties were to keep my shoes from creating friction and sparks and that sort of thing. I felt amazingly stupid in the hat, but at least B was the one with me and only laughed a little. After I was all set, they had me sit in a chair right outside the operating room so I could see other people having theirs done. Well...theoretically, of course, since I didn't have my glasses on and couldn't actually see anything. They put a bunch more numbing drops in and kept asking me if they still stung. They didn't sting after the first round, and I kept telling them that, but they persevered in asking. Then the girl told me to close my eyes and started spreading this really thick, goopy, clay-like substance all over my eyes. B laughed quite heartily at this (which was appreciated greatly), because the stuff she was applying was bright orange iodine. I'm sure I looked awesome. She rubbed it right off, but my eyes were still stained yellow. B enjoyed that.

After that, she brought me into the room with all the lasers and had me lie down under one of the fanciest ones. She pulled it down so it was seriously like 2 inches away from my face. I felt amazingly claustrophobic. She gave me a little pillow to hold, which I was glad for, because when I'm going through something like that, it always makes me feel better if I can hold someone's hand or if not that, at least hold onto something.

They started off by covering my left eye and taping my right eye open with packing tape. (It probably wasn't really packing tape, but as far as I'm concerned, it might as well have been.) Then they used this metal claw-looking thing to pry my eyelids back even further. This was an unsettling experience. They probably put in more numbing drops then, because hey, why not? And no, they weren't stinging anymore.

The very first part of the procedure was marking the area from which the layer of cells would be removed. When he said he was using a "marker," and that I would "feel slight pressure," I didn't think too much about it. I discovered later that the marker was sort of a cookie-cutter that cut into the layer to mark the area that would be removed. I'm glad I didn't know this at the time. Then they dropped alcohol into my eye and let it sit and then soaked it all up. I couldn't tell much about this part because I was suddenly looking through a pool of alcohol. Then they put down some sort of weird disk-looking thing that made everything look CRAZY! It was pretty trippy. After that came the scraping. I hadn't thought about what this experience would be like, but it was rather hard to remain calm while I lay there and watched him scrape away my eyeball. I couldn't feel a thing, and if they hadn't told me beforehand that's what was going to happen, I would've been perfectly fine. But holy cow--that was freaky. I was glad to have my little pillow. Then they dumped about a cup of solution to rinse, and it ran all down the side of my head into my ear.

At this point, my eye was exposed, and they turned on the laser. I think it just seemed like I was having a bright red light shined on me, but mere bright red lights do not create a burning smell. Again, if they hadn't warned me ahead of time, I wouldn't have thought anything about it. But as it was, I lay there smelling my eyeball cook.

(Ok, it wasn't really cooking. But if you were to cook an eyeball, that's probably what it would smell like.) They had the laser on for less than ten seconds. After that, I think I got another rinse, and then they put a contact lens in to protect my eye. And that was it.

Then I heard the most horrible words--"Ok, next eye!" Before I could think, "Oh man, once was scary enough!" they ripped off the tape that had been holding my open. That was definitely the worst moment of the entire procedure. After that, they did the same process with my left eye, and about 9 minutes after we'd begun, I was done.

When I walked out of the room, I was greeted by my roommate who'd just seen the whole thing on the screen and couldn't wait to tell me about it. However, I was quick to tell her that my doctor spent most of the last 9 minutes amused by her facial expressions as she watched the happenings. They had me sit for a while with my eyes closed and occasionally came in to make sure the lenses hadn't moved. My left lens had, in fact, moved, which meant I had to sit there longer. I was okay with that, because I really felt like I was going to pass out. By the time my lens decided to stay in place, I was feeling well enough, and they sent me out with my sunglasses, a bag of candy, and a DVD of the entire procedure.