JACQUELINE BOND
No one describes their laser eye surgery
for a reason
They've probably blocked the memory.
Laser eye surgery is like being abducted by aliens except they probe your eyes instead of your ass.
Though many people are justifiably scared before the procedure, there are just as many diehard evangelists afterwards. What happens in between?
Whilst being a passing visitor to both camps, I am convinced that if people knew the trauma of the operation, most would not choose to proceed.
During surgery, your fears cannot be separated from the physical procedure, simply because there is no way out of experiencing it. Besides dosing up on whatever prescription meds you have access to, you must remain fully conscious during the entire operation.
Not just that, but the doctors compel you to look straight into the laser, not merely through verbal recommendation, but physically opening your eyes wide throughout. You observe an operation at the closest distance your eyes can see – maybe even a little closer when they're making the cuts – wondering whether these are the last scenes you will ever witness in your sadly short (-sighted) existence.
I would imagine very few people are devoid of fear when considering even the barest conception of "laser eye surgery". Lasers will be going into your eyes; this happens, but the fear is unfounded. You can't see them, and you won't feel them. However, upon further investigation, you may discover the word "surgery" isn't just to make it sound clinical. They will be cutting your eyes open.
Most people do not think about this, and it's disgusting.
It is so disgusting that I would have probably foregone the operation itself if I had given both words surrounding "eye" (my eyes!) equal consideration. Regrettably, I am genetically cursed. With excruciatingly terrible vision last tested at -6, surgery felt like something I just had to suck up sooner rather than later.
Perhaps one of the things that threw me over the edge was also The Threat of Nuclear War.
It didn't really. I only partially coincidentally got laser surgery after the invasion of Ukraine. I was one of the people who read this article years ago and found that the idea of laser eye surgery as preparation for Earth-wide annihilation resonated because I had been indulging as an environmental fanatic for a while, readily concerning myself with living in communes as a resort for all-hell-breaking-loose inevitably within our lifetimes.
Whilst I am not so much into this way of thinking right now, I found it to be a mildly concerning vulnerability to have near blindness exposed upon me every night when I got eye-naked before bed. In blind mole mode, I couldn't see faces unless I was practically kissing them, and that's not an ideal time to start looking. I would feel cross-eyed focusing on blurred objects without glasses, though I could never check this. Friends also were grossed out if they ever saw my old contact lenses dried up like shrivelled eye raisins on a bedside table; but luckily, I'm also blind to embarrassment.
Overall, I'd say (in order of decreasing importance) my motivations were the following:
-
I am vain, so glasses went against my wish to look un-four-eyed, despite later opposing trends in fashion.
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Mortal boredom. The idea of fixing the same problem until you die is boring.
-
Nuclear war.
The third makes even less sense now. It would be a world where I survived, but all corrective vision was destroyed.
Barely more rational, the eye surgery brochure encourages you to consider the environmental impact of contact lenses. Guilt-mongering you into a green solution that is highly profitable for them is as trivial as it is unconvincing. My social conscience does not extend to zapping lasers into my eyes to slow the growth of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by one pair of contact lenses a day, mainly because I could just wear glasses.
So, despite having some vague reasons, they were not 'laser focused', and I found my main one on the day was:
-
I've already paid for this, so now I've got to.
I'm pretty sure they make you pre-pay so you don't run away. The prospect of losing £5000 to a strict cancellation policy makes one persevere.
When you make an initial appointment, there is pressure to commit after the first visit. For example, when a sales assistant compliments you to excess on some okay-looking clothes, or the loo-side attendant helps you dry your hands. Handing over your money is not compulsory, but it's just socially easier if you do.
The day before surgery, my student recollected that a Kardashian (definitely Kim, maybe Khloe too?) had completed laser eye surgery. She concluded that it couldn't be that bad because they did it. Considering the family's attitude towards elective medical procedures, I wondered what logical steps had led to her conclusion,
Later that evening, a girl I sat beside at dinner brought up the same Kim reference. She mentioned Kim had filmed the whole thing. Of course, the woman who presents her entire life even has the camera see the inside of her eyes. This deep symbolism did not form the peak of our conversation, however. She proceeded to add that the surgery was so much grosser than you'd ever imagine—nauseatingly bad. However, she'd still totally get it.
I had little time to contemplate as our discussion swiftly progressed onto the varying nature of the ball in pens. How I regret us not continuing on lacerated eyeballs as I sat back down with two pens I'd fetched – to prove once and for all that a biro was different to a rollerball. As my (relatively mid-range) weight met the seat, the leg of my chair splintered free from its frame and carved a whole nine bloody inches up my side.
The first aider who bandaged me up moonlighted as an eye doctor. She found it deeply alarming that I would consider such an invasive procedure when I was told to be sober, well rested and in good health, and convinced me to cancel it tomorrow.
I left the restaurant limping and confused about how I had acquired an injury so spontaneously before my scheduled one. Fortunately, within this setting of misfortune, I'd already designated a surgery chaperone for the next day. So, Amir, also my designated boyfriend, arrived at my flat to guide me to bed; he was impressed, and I was depressed at my incapacitation 12 hours ahead of time.
The next day, we cabbed to the surgery and I made a weak case for postponement to the woman at the front desk, vaguely wincing and pointing at my side, uttering something about a chair.
She eyebrowed me like the dumb child I was impersonating,
"Doesn't sound like the thing on your side will affect your eyes, then?"
Debating club had a clear winner. I sat down, resigned to await my receptionist-confirmed fate.
Though still bleeding, I also found that my wound placed me in a better position for the big day itself. Being in sufficient throbbing pain, I had no energy for paranoia, as I was now freshly attuned to misfortune, exhaustion and physical distress.
A female ophthalmologist took me through the standard checks to ensure I hadn't sabotaged my eyeballs since our last meeting. A dark room of many machines awaited me to stare down their inner world so that they could stare into mine. She instructed me to rest my chin and forehead into moulded plastic structures that pinned my head to one point and started to strafe bands of damagingly bright light across my eyeline. This left me with the strange experience of being able to admire the branched capillaries of my retina - almost identical to leafless trees in winter - by reflecting them into my retina. Station number two fixed me in front of some calming, blurry pink bubbles, which transformed into a standard screensaver of hot air balloons in a desert, to suggest I had passed the test of staring straight ahead of me. If this experience was becoming too romantic, she promptly moved me onto a third machine, whose only purpose was to blow each of my eyes with a slightly obnoxious puff of air. Fully teary and slightly out of this world, she told me I was ready for the real deal.
I told Amir he could seek finer pastures than the clinic waiting room. And so, for the next hour, our lives diverged. He went off to get a reliably high-quality pastry around Harley Street, and I was called into the laser room to have my corneas peeled off.
[*THE PROCEDURE ONLY STARTS HERE:]
As I entered, wondering if this were the room they would excise my eyes, the nurse nearest the door held the horizontal patient's chair down and prompted me to sit. She said it wobbled, hence her stabilising it, and I did not feel better. With a clarity I had previously avoided, she gave me the full rundown of the procedure.
Some eyedrops would numb me, before a sucker was attached to hold my eye in place to cause some discomfort. As pressure increased on my eyeball, I could expect some disturbed vision up to a total blacking out – not of my consciousness, though, unfortunately.
During this time, an incision would circle my cornea and then remove a transparent cap from the surface. I'd then stare at a 'bright light,' and at this point, the lasers would fire without sensation. Seconds later, I would have my cornea replaced, and that's it. Great!
It didn't sound great, but I didn't have it in me to run away. It was like that psychology study that says we'd mostly all electrocute strangers to death if someone in a lab coat told us, but not only was I letting people cut my own eyes open, I was paying them to do so.
So, her unnecessarily courteous foretelling of events was over, meaning it was my turn to live it. They told me to shrug further up the chair, as if I were avoiding the whole procedure by being a few inches lower down. Holding one of my hands in the other, I provided myself the closest thing to company.
The most looming of the ophthalmologists said he was about to put some anaesthetic drops in. Not holding back, he indifferently recreated a miniature childhood paddling pool in each of my eyes. Whilst relieved to be rid of some clarity, I simultaneously calmed my nerves by saying this would be a curious experience, so I should pay attention.
After the drops came the eye clamps. I've discovered a cultural phenomenon in which mentioning "eye clamps" immediately results in just one reaction: "Is it like Clockwork Orange?" The standard answer is no: it's worse. I had to stare at doctors and tools operating into my eyes. Alex went to the cinema.
Alex from Clockwork Orange, having a relatively nice time.
My right eye was to start, drawing the first of a pack containing precisely two short straws. They covered my left with a white cup like the ones they might give children with lazy eyes or a clean-looking Captain Hook.
A clear plastic doughnut followed, fitting inside the clamps and contacting directly onto my eye. This doughnut was an eye-hoover. They told me to expect pressure as the device sucked up my eyeball. It applied perfectly onto my numb eye, and my field of vision soon became one with the doughnut hole.
As I looked only in one mandatory direction, I sensed them making pupil-sized incisions along the rims of my vision. They were right, it wasn't comfortable. My hands gripped together tighter, each controlling the other from moving.
The best thing you can do is nothing, became my part-time mantra. There are no restraints or guarantees against people lashing out and pulling all the equipment out of their eyes. Fear alone keeps you deathly still, repressing even shivers. I couldn't even shift my focus to check what was happening to avoid the risk of jolting my eyeball and them slicing it right open. Yet, the fear may have been needless as I doubted whether I could even move my eyes.
A female voice nearby counted down, "25.. 10.. 5.. and done." I noted her atypical use of time, but was happy it was shorter than the regular kind. Then, a male voice, whom I sexist-ly assumed was the doctor, told me I was doing well and the worst part was now over.
Perhaps for them, that is. I next saw the inner circle of my doughnut vision shunt from left to right as they shifted my sliced cornea off my eyeball. As the cornea refracts light, the movement of this disc warped my entire sight, and my vision went blurry as they flapped it away altogether.
They repeated the exact process in my left eye. God knows where they'd stored my right cornea, but this side was over quicker than before, or I perceived it so, being already familiarised with the harrowing process, somehow. With both eyes sliced, I found myself, for the first time, much like a Roman centurion, Cornea-less.
And then it was laser time. The surgeons dripped a load more analgesics into my eye. They told me to stare at the fuzzy orange light, like a remote alien sun, as I imagined it irradiating at some infernal temperature.
Here was when a friend told me to expect 'smelling the burning flesh of my eyeballs'. This attempted fact had erupted one Optical Express staff member in laughter a few weeks back when she asked if I had any questions. After composing herself, she told me that any smell would be emissions from the operating lasers. Despite this, I doubted my nose could recognise one from the other.
My flooded left eye looked towards the light, now accompanied by a Geiger-counter type clicking. "Thirty" descended to zero in about 12 seconds, and the clicks stopped. Voices congratulated me for the most challenging doing-nothing I had ever done.
The next moment, my not-so-long-lost corneal disc came back in view. Micro-curling brooms started to sweep across my eye, returning it to the groove of its previous home.
Tools floating across your eye is a unique visual experience. You see that you see through 3D spheres. Tiny windscreen wipers sweeping across the surface delineate the invisible edge of your eye you've never noticed before. It also becomes very clear that we see from the back, not the front, of our eyeballs.
By this point, my right eye had exhausted itself so much that during the lasering, I lost control of my focus. My procedure, iLasik, was bespoke, so each ray corrected prescriptions as they varied across the cornea. If my focus veered off centre, might I be cursed with systematically incorrect vision?
I couldn't tell if I was staring straight anymore, but I was soon alerted by a serious "Look up!" I estimated my best look up and they didn't need to tell me again before it was over.
This time, eyeball sliders were having a more challenging time rehoming my loose cornea. The flap was nudged back and forth for about double or triple before there was an unannounced sigh of relief. It had gone well, so they told me. Before I knew it, I was released from all eye-suckers and vices, free to sit up and leave the room.
I was in shock. I said a trembling thank you to everyone in the room, feeling intensely vulnerable, violated and mostly blind. The nurse assisted me to the door and pitied me. Instinctively, my eyes shut tight, but I could peep them open briefly, only to exude unstoppable tears before they abruptly closed again. In these crucial moments, I saw that I could see.
With some blindly delivered instructions, they set me on my way home. Led to Amir's arm, I wanted to cry, but more than this, I wanted to get the hell out so I could sleep forever. It felt like the most overpowering tiredness, mixed with having experienced something profoundly wrong and unnatural.
We ordered a cab, and after a never-ending squirming journey to mine, I manoeuvred through a lot of guidance and homely recognition into bed. The following five hours felt like I had detachable and scratchy bits of eye beneath my lids that, in no uncertain terms, must I touch. Tears streamed out in a current every time I tried to open them, and I replugged them shut.
Any paranoid thoughts were now a luxury, and I cared much less; I existed in the time after surgery. Five hours later, we went for dinner, and I could see better than I had seen since I was 12.
The next day I went for a check. They told me I already had better vision than 20:20, but there was slight inflammation in my right eye. No doubt this was due to the extra window wiping. But essentially, I was in the clear, and so was my eyesight.
So, there it was, I had laser eye surgery and survived. I have no idea whether the process I just described represents what an ophthalmologist would agree with, but it's all from my pierced-eye view.
If you want to check from the other side, there's always the Kardashian video.
A friend related to me that he found having laser eye surgery hands down the most traumatic thing he ever experienced, and I would agree it's pretty high up there. It is like being the sorry protagonist of a dubious sci-fi movie. I honestly can't believe so many people have had it.
However, forgetting is a beautiful thing, and now my only worry is forgetting it's ever happened, so I attempt to take out contact lenses that aren't there. That's what it feels like now, just like wearing contacts constantly. But I guess if I accidentally gouge out my poor eyes, I at least have some pre-sliced corneas for the job.
April 2022