The eyes have it! Part Three

To catch up, you might want to read Part One and Part Two.

Well here I am, ready to go under the knife, as it were.  Notice the obvious disregard for ‘no photos’?  We are such rebels.  When we arrived at the appointed check in time, Sweet Husband was well prepared for the duration.  We were to be at the facility for 2-3 hours, yet the actual surgery was to be complete in less than 10 minutes. I knew how I would be spending my time.  But to occupy his time he had a book, a Zune with podcasts of Rachel Maddow, an FM radio, and a plothera of the standard selection of office magazines,  produced in BIG print.  Yet what did he do?  He watched the giant screen which is showing a big blue dot where my eyeball was soon to be.  He was asked when I was checking in, if he wanted to ‘observe’, to which he responded with a quick ,”‘uh, no, that won’t be necessary”.  I wasn’t hurt, I wouldn’t want to ‘observe’ either.  But as other people, (all much older than me) toddled in and  their ‘ride’ was asked if they wanted to ‘observe’, they all quickly said “Yes”.  I guess guilt got the best of him, so he muttered something about “well if everybody else is ‘observing’ then I guess I should too”.  I didn’t realize this was a competitive spectator sport.  So observe he did, and I’m glad he did or he wouldn’t have this ill gained photo of me at pre-op. 

Our Sweet Daughter was VERY nervous about me having this procedure, even with  us reassuring her and poo-pooing the possibility of something going wrong.  Perhaps I am a much stronger person than I realize, but several people asked me if I was nervous about having cataract surgery?  Uh, nope!  Not until I was actually sitting in the chair and all of a sudden I could feel my heart rate go up by just thinking about was going to happen.   Yeah, things happen all the time, but isn’t that why we there are eye patches?

From what Sweet Husband said about ‘observing’ the procedure, it looked like there was some brutality going on.  He said that from the movements it looked like the Dr. was vacuuming the carpet.  Sweet Husband said he didn’t know that garden trowels and giant hooks were going to be used.  But let’s keep in mind that the surgery was being shown on a 36in monitor so that might have something to do with magnification of size and movement.  I had been issued pretty good drugs so I wasn’t paying too much attention, but I did feel a slight pressure at one point, but nothing else.

I was done before I knew it.  I was ushered out of the room, stripped of my IV, downed some orange juice and was walking out the door in less time than what it takes to drive home.  My lovely parting gift, consisted of  an eye patch to wear at night, a pair of almost-as-large-as-my-head less than fashionalbe dark  glasses, 3 different vials of eyedrops  and the urging to take Ibuprofen if I had any pain. They were very efficient in this office, there were no less than 6 patients in varying stages the whole time I was there, quite impressive.

This morning was the follow up appointment (man these doctors are young) today I saw Ms Doogie Houser who kindly signed me off to my regular eye guy, after a thorough checkup.  My eye is progressing well, I’ll have wonky sight for a while (wonky being my word not theirs) as the prescription will need to be changed for my glasses/contact lenses.  I’m happy with the procedure but really wonder how I will get by for the next few weeks with blurry eyesight , yet without that bothersome cloudiness.  But you know me, I’ll keep you posted.