The Turning Gate

Another one bites the dust / he blinded me with science

Talking LASEK on New Year's Eve

10:17 p.m., New Year’s Eve in Korea. Outside, all over the city, people are seeing the old year out with a bang and (will soon be) welcoming the new year in. Me, I’m home. I’m still recovering from my LASEK surgery and my girlfriend’s down with flu, so it’s a quiet evening in.

Despite my blurry vision, I find myself overpowered by boredom and driven to the computer. If you, like me, are bored, you can read my nonsense.

Let me tell you about my surgery, and doctors may lambaste me for fouling up procedural explanations; this is just how I understood it.

Two variations of the surgery were laid out for me. LASIK and LASEK, the one I ended up with.

In both procedures, the goal is to somehow remove the corneal epithelium, the eyes’ first layers, in order to expose the stroma. The stroma is then modified using a laser, with the intent of correcting the patient’s vision.

In LASIK, a blade is employed to cut through the corneal epithelium, creating a flap. Once the laser work is done, the flap is then laid back in place over the stroma and allowed to heal. Recovery time is fast, measured in hours. While the procedure has a high patient satisfaction rate, there are a number of possible aberrations which can occur, and about which you can read by clicking the link above.

In LASEK, there is no blade, and that scores automatic points for the procedure in my book. The corneal epithelium is removed by (liquid?) abrasion. The laser alters the stroma, and a contact lens is set in place to cover the eye while the corneal epithelium regenerates. Recovery time is slow and, for the first few days, extremely painful. The procedure is recommended for those who engage in visually demanding tasks, however, such as aviators, microscope jockeys, and – in my case – photographers, which is why the doctor recommended this procedure for me.

I went in for surgery the day after Christmas.

My personal experience began with the application of local anesthetic, eye-drops for the eyes, and a topical solution rubbed around the eyes. My face was covered by a sort of sheet with a hole in it, exposing the eye. The rim of the hole was sticky and held my eyelid open, and a metal instrument was also attached, presumably to limit eye movement. My eyes were bathed in alcohol, squirted with liquid(s) and the doctor employed a metal instrument to remove the epithelium. I felt no pain and only a mild sensation of contact. I just kept my eye on the red light and tried to keep my nerves under control – surgery of any kind makes me squeamish. Epithelium removed, the laser went to work. I would hear it clicking, and I could smell it burning away my eye. That – the smell from the laser – was the strangest part of the procedure, but lasted only seconds. The contact lens was set in place, and the procedure was repeated on the other eye. In all, the surgery lasted 15 to 20 minutes and went well. I sincerely wish that were the end of the story.

Here’s the deal on hell recovery.

Two and a half days of agonizing pain and uncontrollable crying, and — because all the bad bits of your face are wired together — torrential, tumultuous cascades of snot resulting in blocked nasal passages, a desert for a throat, an inability to breathe without choking … therefore drinking oceans upon oceans of water, causing you to piss every thirty minutes … and all of this — the pain, the lack of oxygen, the green snotfalls, the constant urination — makes sleeping impossible, so I didn’t do any of that for two entire days or nights.

Add to that the constant boredom of blindness, of not being able to do anything at all because you can’t open your eyes to see, of having to be fed every mouthful like a baby, of having to be led around by the hand whenever you try to make your way to the bathroom, and needing someone else to check your toilet paper every time you shit to ensure that your ass is properly wiped …

… the mosquito who buzzed in my ear three nights in a row because we’re having an unseasonably warm December, and I couldn’t see enough to hunt it …

Eventually, my corneal epithelium grew back, the pain dissipated, my various, afflicted functions and behaviors returned to normal, and I killed the mosquito.

The world’s a little out-of-focus right now, but improving daily. Two days ago, the television was a rectangle full of light blobs; the next day, I watched a movie. I started checking my email (big fonts!), I even read a little bit of a book. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. Today, email is at a normal font size, book reading is easier, and I watched another movie, this time with fewer eye-drops. The doctor says it should take a week or two for my eyes to recover fully, but I’m making improvements daily.

I think, in the end, the results will be worth the suffering, but oh, those first two and a half days … I’ve never felt worse in my life, except maybe the time I had deathly food poisoning for almost three days and nearly died, and believe me, you don’t want the details on that, they’re gross. I still can’t eat mandu to this very day.

Now 11:11 p.m. In 2008, I’m going to see things clearly.

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