August 1, 2004

It all began one fine day at the ophthalmologist's office, or at least, on a day that everyone tells me was fine. I, myself, had my eyes dilated into giant anime-size gaping black holes, so the weather could have been anything, including an actual plague of locusts, and to me, it would have appeared as if I had somehow, between the doctor's office and my house, driven into the corona of the sun. Or that I had just witnessed any given Harding computer science major remove his t-shirt. It was that bright.

I'm not sure how they expect you to drive in such conditions. Of course they give you a pair of "sunglasses," or a piece of dark plastic which you are supposed to wedge behind your actual prescription glasses to prevent your retinas from melting. But it fits into your glasses about as snugly as a chihuahua fits into a keg, and when you finally get it settled just right, you step outside and realize that the sunlight can still stab your eye sockets through your peripheral vision, which, thanks to nearly 16 years of glasses-wearing, you had forgotten you had.

And what made it worse was the knowledge that, if I wanted to wait out the dilation in the car, I would have had to wait until the following Tuesday. This is because I had asked about Lasik™©®€¿, but I didn't follow the Patent-Pending-Ophthalmological-Lasik-Requesting-Procedure so they punished me with the 48-hour drops. "Don't worry, they'll wear off by tonight," she said. I figured this was suspicious, given that they were called "48-hour drops" and 48 is a little more than 6, so I reinterpreted her statement correctly as "Don't worry, they'll wear off by Rosh Hashanah," sighed, and took my blows.

I knew I would be asking about Lasik that day. I had been planning it for a long time. I was going to go in and ask, at the appropriate time, "May I talk to you about the voluntary surgical procedure Lasik™©®€¿ in order to reduce my dependence on corrective eyewear and increase my ability to flatten my sideburns?" In fact, this is what I thought I asked when I said, in response to a question about contacts, "No, but I am interested in Lasik." But this is not, evidently, what they heard, which was, "Please schedule me for a Lasik appointment by the end of the month, and, please, put it on my Master Card." This is what happens when you announce your interest in elective surgery in a room full of people who stand to gain a great deal of money from those procedures, such as doctors.

Then, it was time for the punishments. First, the extra-strength dilation. Then, the pink machine. This is a machine in which you rest your chin and must hold your eyes open for several seconds while they are shone into by several concentric glowing pink rings, each with the brightness level of stadium bulbs. This is followed by sighs of exasperation from the nurse, as if to say, "It is so inconvenient and unreasonable for you to not be able to hold your eyes open, given that I have just dilated your pupils and subjected you to piercing light." But I survived somehow.

I didn't even know that I was scheduled for Lasik until later when my mother informed me, at an Italian restaurant, that I had an appointment on July 30. I nearly peed in my pants, but I remembered that this is a faux pas at Italian restaurants. Here I was, kind of noncommitally asking around about the idea and then BOOM I was on my way to having my sixteen-year burden (and we're talking bowling-ball level burden) lifted from my face! And it all took was the greed of the medical profession and my own personal vanity to make it happen!

So I waited, in eager anticipation and a certain amount of nervousness for a procedure that I knew about only through the internet, which, as we all know, is a very reliable source about everything, particularly which third world countries one can purchase prescription-strength medication from cheaply. The internet was mostly right, I guess, about the actual procedure, which I detail for you here as I experienced it.

First, they take you into a little waiting room to be measured (again!) in case they messed up the first time, and to receive a wide assortment of fun eyedrops. Then, a very pretty and kindly nurse sits down across from you to explain the procedure and ask you several reassuring questions, such as, “Do you experience anxiety when in pitch black rooms with very loud noises and the clear odor of burning flesh?” and “Did you remember to take your Valium this morning?” “Why would I need Valium?” I asked. “Well, some people find it helps them relax through the ungodly procedure,” she explained. “Are you nervous?” she asked with a pleasant smile. “I wasn’t until just now, thanks,” I almost said.

Then, they lead you into a surreal, dimly lit room full of machines that looked, to my naked eyes, like holdovers from 80’s installments of Godzilla. They lay you down on a movable couch thingy, numb your eyes, and then, before you know it, they’ve started. They move with rapid-fire precision, occasionally stopping long enough to ask if you’re doing okay but not long enough for you to reply (I imagined that, if I said "I'm not fine!" they would have replied, "Who's the doctor here? I'll tell you when you're not fine!" and moved right along.). They stretch out and tape down your eyelids, squish your eyeball down with a big glass plate (or at least, that’s what it felt like), rub your eyeball with this glowy-blue thing, and then tell you to focus on a little blinking yellow light that may or may not be turned on at any point during the surgery, but if you fail to focus on it when the laser is cutting you might go blind, no pressure. So you stare at the light, and it gets blurry, and then it goes out, and then it comes back and it’s all you see but you hear this loud whoosh and smell burning flesh, and your heart skips about seventeen beats, and then, just like that, you’re done. Except that you have two eyes.

So that’s what it was like. It was, in short, tremendously cool. It couldn’t have lasted longer than 10 minutes in total. Tape, tape, squish, drop, zap! Tape, tape, squish, drop, zap! And then, you can see! Relatively speaking.

Everybody (meaning all 10 bleary copies of mom) was looking at me and smiling, as if waiting for me to jump up and scream hallelujah, but the fact was, everything was still extremely blurry. And I was still a little shell-shocked from everything. And there are all these rules for what I can and can’t do with my eyes for a while, but it’s all okay, because… no more glasses! No more glasses! I haven’t been able to go without glasses since kindergarten! Now I can see when I swim, take a shower, wake up in the middle of the night, go to the beach, and almost see when I try to write a C-File by pressing my nose directly against the monitor! Now everybody can see my beautiful blue eyes and the massive dark circles underneath them that make me look like a narcolepsy victim! And the doctor assures me that my vision will "stabilize" which translates, roughly, to "require additional expensive surgery!" Everyone’s a winner!

So, now, I think I’m going to go off and do something I never could when I had glasses… I know! I’m going to go flatten my sideburns! See ya later! (No… wait… it’s eyedrops time… man, it’s ALWAYS eyedrops time…)