Lasers violated my eye yesterday. The retina specialist put what looked like an oversized suction cup into my right eyeball to prop my eye open and then the eye-rape began. It was horrible and unpleasant and I now totally understand why light torture is so effective. After mere seconds of laser bombardment, I would have given in.
But let me start from the beginning. I had gone to a free Lasik consultation last month to see if I'm a likely candidate for the procedure that would make me 1.75% prettier. They told me I could do the generic laser treatment, after the usual reading-out of tiny letters on the wall and sticking my face in the box that takes pictures of my enchanting eyeballs. But, the doctor warned, there were two minor issues: one, my retina was a little bit thinner than most, and two, there was a hole in it.
THERE'S A HOLE IN MY EYE!
The Laser Consultants (TLC) assured me it wasn't a problem, and proceeded to efficiently schedule the Lasik appointment and all the other associated procedures: dilation, wave scans, what have you. So I go to my usual optometrist to get my eyes dilated so she can see waaay back in there, and she said the same thing: "There's a hole in your right retina."
Well, golly gee. She promised to send the information to TLC, and said they would get back to me if they found something yucky.
February ended and March began. It was now a week before my scheduled Lasik. In one week, I would become a beautiful, slightly blind--but only temporarily!--butterfly. And then on Tuesday, TLC calls me to say that they wanted a retina specialist to check out Mr. Eyehole, who quickly moved to the top of my carefully nurtured Bane of My Existence list. Because TLC, also, shares my dream of me becoming 1.75% prettier, they scheduled my retina appointment for the very next day.
So off I went with my handsome chaperon, and Dr. T showed me a real-time MS Paint diagram of the issue. I kid you not, this is what it looked like:
I honor his illustrative technique by also using MS Paint to modify the image above. So as you can see, the retina is the area in red, far away from the cornea, where all the Lasik action is going to take place. But, 20/20 vision isn't going to be much help when Mr. Eyehole leads to a detached retina somewhere down the line, so Dr. T told me we were going to "weld it shut" with a laser. He would do it that very day.
OH GOD THE PAIN. All I saw were flashes of short vertical green lights, around the area where the hole was. Whenever the lights disappeared, I saw afterimages of the veins in my eyeball.
ARGH!!! It took only about twenty seconds, but I came out of the room feeling like a wrung-out dishrag. My very solicitous chaperon then took me home, where I immediately napped, as instructed, and felt much better afterwards.
As of this writing, my wave scans were moved to Monday, I get to see Dr. T on Tuesday to tell him proudly that I did not touch my right eye for 24 hours even though all sorts of crust congealed on my lids and lashes, how gross,
AND my Lasik appointment is still on for Thursday. Booyah!
And the moral of the story is: naps solve everything.
