Powerful peepers, part 1

Long time no post. With the trip to California combined with my Lasik, it's been a very computer-unfriendly time. There has been precious little horse time too, as I have to stay away from them for a week post-op, so there isn't much to say.

Anywho, I had requests for the lowdown on Lasik. Here goes:

Yes, I can see. For the first time in 20 years, my eyes are working for themselves. I now know that I never got the full scoop on a Lasik experience, so here it is for those who are curious.

No one told me that the surgery itself was going to hurt. It did. The lasers themselves were painless (perhaps due to a combination of numbing drops and a Xanax), but the set-up for the flap stung. A ring was put in, suction was created, and part of it was desperately trying to push my nose to the opposite ear from the inside. Ow.

Don't move. Don't talk. My left cheek wouldn't stop twitching, but I guess that was ok because I wasn't yelled at for it.

Stare at the light, they say, just stare at the light. At this point, you are missing the top layer of your eye. Surprise, it's hard to focus like this. The red light that you're supposed to stare at while your corneas are reshaped by a large, very expensive looking machine that issues what must be powerful, no-nonsense lasers seems like it's important. Too bad you can't see anything. There was a large, red smudge that took up most of my vision, so I tried to look at the center but had no idea if I was successful. I had to keep asking if I was looking in the right direction.

By the time they get to your second eye, your body may be reacting from the heady cocktail of adrenalin and the realization that horrible changes are being made to it. I could not keep my eye still for the life of me, so I had jiggy eye during the entire second lasering. I was told that the laser will follow the eye, turning off if it moves too much, and nothing happened. I was told that I did very well, so I guess the twitchy eye wasn't as horrible as it seemed. Of course, the realization of the twitching didn't help relax me, and probably aggravated the situation.

All told, each eye was under each of the lasers for less than a minute.

Oh, and ever smell cooked cornea? You will if you get Lasik.

Before putting down each flap, they put more drops in my eyes that caused me to have a total-body flinch. I was lectured each time to stay still. :(

I was so shaky after the procedure that I had to be helped to the examination room where they stared at my flaps, and then to the lobby. I could see better, but that actually wasn't my main concern at that point. My body knew that it had been violated, and it was not a happy camper and made sure my brain knew it.

I was told, by those who have had it, that you have the surgery, go home, sleep, and wake up able to see. Sounds great, right? It does.

Too bad it was a bunch of poppycock.

I got home, sporting my new sleeping goggles (which were shaded, that surprised me, I could almost see a snowboarder sporting them), and tried to sleep while Rick went to get my prescriptions for antibiotic drops and pain pills. Before he left, I was starting to feel some discomfort, so I asked him to get the pills despite them being purely voluntary.

Some discomfort my ample ass.

I can only assume that the numbing drops were wearing off, because my eyes suddenly let me know that they were highly perturbed by the day's proceedings. Slowly a burning sensation started to grow, and I'm not talking burning like peppers rubbed in the eyes burning. I'm talking burning like a red-hot poker dragged across each eye burning. Oh, and I was not to open my eyes until the next day. So, I lay there, blind, my eyes watering like crazy (all day I would occasionally crack them open to let the fluids gush down my cheeks), and all I wanted was a kleenex. For some reason, I couldn't find them. The pain built and built, I flailed in a desperate attempt to locate them, and at one point swept a cat off the bed in my mania.

The mind does odd things in odd situations. I started to imagine cells during the Inquisition, with blinded heathens, wondering if it felt much different from this. Yes, I do believe that I could feel everything that they had done to me.

Being our pharmacy, they had to count each drop in the eye drops and each molecule in the pills before filling it. In other words, Rick was taking forever. I don't remember when I last felt so helpless.

When he finally came home, Rick found me in a blinded ball, wailing and sobbing, because I couldn't take the pain anymore. I totally would have failed the Inquisition. Convert? Sure!

I took a pill, and the burning left me. Whew. All that I felt then was a knife driven deep into my left eye, but I could live with it.

With that, I fell asleep.

About an hour later, I woke up. The knife had turned into an eyelash, and everything was grand.

I was to take steroid drops every hour that I was awake that first day, and there was no hope of me doing it myself. Rick was kind enough to put the drops in for me and help me get my goggles back on, and aside from that I spent the day with my eyes closed, intermittedly sleeping, and feeling downright lousy.

That was the first day. At 8:30 the next morning, I was due for a day-one follow-up appointment.