Ah, Clarity

Sometimes it's almost impossible to believe how one little thing can make such an impact on one's life -- like, say, sight. In the span of 20 minutes I went from pretty much blind to having perfect 20/20 vision, and I must say that the psychological terror of that 0.33 of an hour was well worth the trouble.

The way it worked was like this. They herded three visually-impaired patients into a small, dark room. We had nametags so they would know what we'd ordered. We were scrubbed, given caps and booties, drugged, and soothed into a stupor. Neil Diamond was playing the entire time. Then, one by one, we were led into the surgery suite.

When it came to my turn, I was led by the pleasantly sarcastic surgical aide to the room. The surgeon guided me to the chair and I lay on my back. The first part was particularly terrifying. He showed me a clear plastic ring. Then he shoved said clear plastic ring into my eye -- hard. He said, "You might feel some pressure here. And then, more pressure." What I felt was that my eyeball was going to pop out of its orbit in my skull like a grape. And then I felt was that the grape might burst. I started whimpering a bit, I am ashamed to admit. However, the surgeon was soothing and held my head steady. At this point, my vision went black -- and that is when I began to feel like I might lose my mind.

This sensation of pressure and vision loss appears to have coincided with the cutting of the "flap" via intralase laser. Both right and left eye were done one after the other, the pressure was removed, and then he pivoted me in the chair and began the actual LASIK reshaping process.

Each eye was done individually. All I sensed was that there was something on my eye again, the surgeon was waving something gold-coloured around on one eye, and then I saw a flashing orange light. There was a loud clicking noise A soothing voice in the background started counting down the seconds from 37 seconds on my right and 41 seconds on my left. Then the gold-coloured thing again, and clear vision -- easy as that.

From outside the surgical suite, my husband could see what had actually happened and described it to me later. It corresponds interestingly with what I experienced. The gold coloured thing? A metal hockey stick-like device used to ease back the corneal flap (augh!) to expose my raw cornea (augh!) The orange light? Used to guide my pupil and keep me stationary while the laser (clicking thing) did its work. Then the metal hockey stick thing put the flap back on my eye, patted it down like putting icing on a cake, and abra-cadabra, I could see!

The first two days it was like I was looking through dirty glass. My eyes were somewhat sore and burny, but some sedatives and lots of drops took care of that. I spent two days in a drug-induced stupor, but every time I woke up, I was amazed how clear the world was. I've spent five days shaking myself out of the habit of reaching for my glasses. It's a wonderful habit to have to break.

Now my vision is perfect and clear. My eyes still get dry and tired if I try to do too much but it's better and better every day. Why did I wait so long?