The Gift of Long Forgotten Vision

When I was about ten, mother caught me squinting at the television. It was an old black and white clonker, which took about ten minutes on good days to warm up. Although its picture was never really sharp to begin with, in my squint mother's myopic eyes unmistakably recognized genetic repetition of her own vision defect. She took my hand and dragged me up the concrete stairway of a dark grey medical building into an optometrist's office, from which I emerged with the oversized square frames of my first spectacles.

The novelty of having glasses wore off under jokes and laughter of my ridiculing classmates. Most of the time I kept the specs safely stored in the school bag, far from the sight.

A year later mother spied me watching from a chair placed almost right in front of the TV box. Predictably, off I went on my second visit to optometrist. After the serious reproach for not wearing glasses, I got a new, much stronger prescription. This time there was no escaping it-I had to wear them all the time.

Later I discovered contact lenses and my vision became more or less fogged with the buildup of eye secretions and scratches on my contacts. For the next 30 years I alternated glasses with contacts and contacts with glasses, always with the same misty result until, finally, I had enough! Plucking the contact lens off my red-shot irritated eye I made a decision and, subsequently, a phone call to Lasik eye surgery centre.

For people who never had the experience of having a little silicone disk stuck to their cornea, it's impossible to explain the motivation behind the voluntary eye surgery. How to explain all the pain and tears spilled every time a speck of dust flew in the eye, when the air is too dry, too smoky, too hot, too cold?

For many months I've been haunted by advertisements for the vision correction surgery "from $499 per eye". The price seemed acceptable for the gift of long-forgotten vision I had as a child. A few days after the phone call I found myself in a stylish waiting room of a hi-tech clinic at the opposite end of spectrum from my childhood optometrist. A high definition plasma TV on the wall was big enough for even the most acute myopic cases to watch. Two waist-high jars stood in the corners filled with eyeglasses discarded by happy patients. In a course of a few hours I was led through the series of rooms where I looked at the binocular-like apparatus, had lights flashed into my eyes, got eye drops for this and that, then more flashing in different rooms, more different chinrests on different apparatuses, more "look-up-please", "look-down-please", "now-at-my-ear-please". Finally, the pile of papers gathered through all the checkups was assessed and I was "diagnosed" with about a grand per eye. Of course, it was strongly recommended that, considering my profession, I take the two-grand-per-eye optional procedure, which bears less risk for side effects. As for advertised $499 per eye-if you have a high prescription, which is the main reason why people choose to have the surgery, the price goes up. I left the clinic with the booked surgery date and two weeks to change my mind.

Two weeks later I was back at the plasma TV room. On my scale, the prospect of not fearing dust and wind, of being able to swim, to splash and to look under water if I choose outweighed fear of having my retina sliced and eyeballs burned by a laser. After monetary details were taken care of, I sat in the waiting room clutching a belt pouch with postoperative tools and medications provided by the clinic. The pouch contained several different kinds of eye drops, oversized plastic sunglasses and a couple of transparent eye-shields to be taped on my eyes overnight to prevent me from rubbing eyes in sleep. A nurse explained which drops to use, how and when, then made me repeat it twice to make sure I memorized it. To cap it all up, I got a shower-hat to prevent my hair from falling into my wide-open eye during the surgery, had the numbing eye drops applied and was ready for the procedure.

The visit to the operation room lasted five minutes, in which I chit-chatted with the surgeon and joked about getting an X-ray vision for about three minutes, then had the vision on both of my eyes surgically altered in remaining two. Before I get into all the gory details, I must post the warning:

THE FOLLOWING DESCRIPTION CONTAINS GRAPHIC DETAILS AND CAN CAUSE STOMACH SICKNESS OR OTHER FORMS OF DISGUST. PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

To start the procedure, they taped my left eye shut and the right upper eyelid was taped to my forehead. Next, metal pincers were slid around the eyeball to keep the eye open and a small round instrument, called the keratome, was pressed over the pupil, the eye tissue was sucked into its concavity, then a cut was made through the base of the keratome's ring which sliced open the layer of cornea-that's the transparent tissue at the front of the eye-and left it dangling at its base. They call it "creating a corneal flap". On the receiving end, I felt pressure when the keratome was pushed on the eye, followed by the weird vibration when the slicing occurred, then all went black and for a few seconds I was blind. The vision returned blurred to oblivion. There were a green light and a red light flashing. I was asked to look at the red light. The laser buzzed, not that I could see it, but when the eyesight fails other senses kick in, smell in particular. The laser beam shaping my eyeball into its natural form released an odor, which reminded me of the smell of meat forgotten on a barbecue while the cook took a lengthy phone call. In less than a minute the burning was over, the flap was flipped back to its place and some gelatinous substance was smudged over it. Then the eye was taped shut, all was repeated on the other eye and I was led outside where I got the first serving of the eye drops and had sunglasses installed on my nose. The first look through my "new eyes" felt like looking through water-very muddy water. Still, with a lot of blinking, I could read signs on doors, a feat which was before literally impossible without the glasses.

An hour and many eye drops later I was checked to see if the flap is healing properly and sent home. The procedure comes packaged with three mandatory checkups-a day, a week and a month following the procedure. On top of it, I purchased a one-year-maintenance plan-yes, I know it sounds like a car dealership-which should cover any additional procedures that may occur within a year. Of course, I was told that, with my prescription and age, it's a wise thing to do.

The morning after, I was back at the clinic. When the door opened, a dozen heads turned towards me and I saw my reflection multiplied in a dozen pairs of the exactly same dark glasses. It was an eerie feeling, seemed like the waiting room was crowded with giant insects. Their dark, shiny goggle-eyes followed me to my chair. Occasionally, some of the "insects" would lift their goggles and squeeze a few drops in each eye, replacing the shades quickly. One by one, yesterday's surgery patients were checked up. When it was my turn and the dark glasses came off, I sat speechless in front of the vision test sheet, digesting the wonder. The gift denied to me by Mother Nature-the gift of vision-was miraculously restored.