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I stayed up late and noticed that there was a lot of lightning outside during the storm. We rarely get any electrical storms in the winter time, but in the past several years, these storms are becoming more and more frequent.
Oh well, that might explain the power outage too.
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My laser eye surgery appointment was this afternoon, so I skipped out of work after lunch and took the subway down to the clinic.
I was quite surprised as to how quickly the bus appeared, but then again, I may have been lucky. I got down to the clinic right on time, and sat down to fill in a few forms. I was then lead around by one of the female doctors who took a look at my eyes and made sure that everything was hunky dory.
The examination didn't take very long and I was ushered back to the waiting room where I sat for a bit. More people had entered the clinic, including a heavy set man, and some Chinese girl (who brought along a friend who was quite attractive). There was also another couple off to the side. The guy was wearing these huge sunglasses while the girl was reading through a magazine. I assumed that the guy had surgery done recently.
I had the option of taking some Valium before the operation. It was suggested that I do so as it will calm my nerves, but I felt fine. One of the doctors asked me if I had taken it and I told him that I hadn't. I thought that they were going to give me some but nobody ever came around before I was ushered downstairs.
There were a couple of massage chairs down in the basement so I sat in one and got a nice back rub while I was waiting for them to prepare for the operation. The most painful part occurred here: payment for the surgery. It took a while for the transaction to go through, but soon after that I was led into the first of the two operating rooms.
LASIK is a two step process. The first step creates a flap in the cornea. This flap is later moved out of the way during the actual operation and used to cover the affected area. The flap makes recovery a lot easier and less painful and also reduces downtime.
When I was put on the table, I was given a number of drops in my eyes. I'm assuming that they were anesthetic drops to freeze my eyes during the flap making process. With the improved technology, they used lasers to create the flap rather than a knife. The table I was on was rolled under a machine which had a ring of very bright (blinding) lights.
I was told to keep my eyes open and to focus on a blinking dot but that was fairly difficult considering how bright the ring was. I watched as they took some sort of ring device and slipped it onto my eye. As the pressure increased, I slowly lost sight in that eye. It's a weird feeling actually: my field of vision didn't go black, it just.. disappeared.
With the ring now firmly attached, I was placed under yet another machine which was pushed down on my eye (or I was pushed up to it). At this point, there was a lot of pressure on the eyeball and some people may find it uncomfortable. One of the technicians was counting off the seconds left in the procedure (starting at thirty-seven) and that made the situation a lot easier to handle (since you know how much longer you have to endure).
This part was rather easy for me since I couldn't actually see anything. I found out later that one of the girls did not like that part of the procedure because she wasn't prepared for the sudden pressure on the eye.
Anyway, once the flaps were made, I was led back to the massage room. My sight had gotten very blurry and I didn't want to do anything to my eyes, so I kept them closed and sat in the massage chair for the next few minutes.
From this room, one can watch as they operated on a patient, but there was nobody in the room when I was there (I was the first in the bunch) and in my present state, I was in no condition to see anything.
When I was brought into the second room for the final part of the operation, I was laid down on the table and they put in a lot of drops into my eyes. They were very careful not to touch the eyes themselves, and took precautions so that there wasn't any mess.
I overheard a conversation between two of the technicians about setting the correction for my eyes. Apparently they like to set the correction so that I'm left with 0.75 for each eye (down from 8.50). I don't know the reason for that though.
I was put under another machine which had a blinking light. I was told to focus on the light and keep it in the same spot in my field of vision.
Piece of cake, I thought. As the flap was pulled aside, the point of light moved, and as such, my eye moved as well so I was told not to move my eye. (Easier said than done.) It took a few tries to get the flap moved out of the way, and then it was time for the laser ablation.
Again, I was told to stare at the blinking light. My head was held in place and the laser was turned on. I thought that it would be easy to keep my eye on the blinking light, but after several seconds, my vision became very distorted and the light disappeared.
Now, the light didn't just disappear. My entire field of vision turned into a semi-homogeneous shifting grayish fog. I had nothing to focus on, and the doctor told me to keep my eye looking straight ahead. Easier said than done! I tried to stay focused straight ahead, but anytime I noticed something in my field of view, my eye would lock onto it.
However, my thirty seconds under the gun were up, and everything seemed fine. Then they put the left eye under. This time I was prepared. This time I knew I would lose the light and I tried extremely hard to keep looking "straight".
The first thing I noticed when the laser came on was the stinging. Every time I heard a click, my eye would sting a little. It wasn't very painful, but it was a bit distracting. (I'm guessing that the anesthetic had worn off.) In addition, my left eye must've really went wild because the clicking stopped (I think the laser stopped) halfway in. It took a little while to reset before continuing on with the rest of the operation.
I think the harder I tried to concentrate on looking straight, the more I ended up focusing on one of those moving gray clouds and the more my eyes started to wander. I probably should've taken that Valium.
But it was over fairly quickly. My eyes were a little sore after the operation, and I was generally tired from the ordeal. So I was helped into a darkened waiting room and waited for Windelynn to arrive and pick me up.
When I got outside (with glasses on) I was suddenly hit by how bright the sun was. I was in no mood to talk or do anything, but I had to begin my eye drop regimen. I've never been good with putting drops in my eyes, and when combined to the soreness of my eyes as well as my general feeling of "leave me alone", getting those drops in my eyes was a definite chore.
I was only able to stay awake for a few hours after I got home. Long enough to make food and getting a few drops in my eyes before crashing for some much needed rest.
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