Surgery

Thursday, November 6, 2025

A lady with the biggest hair I have ever seen on a real person came into the waiting room just after we got some forms to fill out. She was the driver for the other lady who was supposed to check in 45 minutes after we just had. She looked at me and said, “how long is your supposed to last?” I said I didn’t know. “You don’t know what you are having done?” It occurred to be that this was really weird, but her hair was really distracting and I said no, I was getting my eye fixed, but I didn’t know how long it would take. The reality was that I really had no idea exactly what was going to be done to my eye, and I thought it was best that way. She talked quite a bit about how long everything would take for everyone, and I went away to the bathroom. Then they came and took me away.

Drops! Why’d it have to be drops? Well, obviously, so they could do my eye. They did some stuff, but mostly I just was on a gurney thing waiting for about an hour. I got started late with surgery. I didn’t care, because what else was I going to be doing? Once in the surgery room, they put some kind of something on me to keep my arms immobile – it was cozy. Then I was asleep.

Then I was awake. Bam. Awake. Unfortunately, the surgery was still going on. I had a moment of OH NO, because you hear about people being surgeried on without anesthesia and it’s a nightmare. I was fine. Everything was black, but I could tell they were still doing things to my eye. I felt tugs and what I imagined as tiny wires going into my eye. The doctor and his helper were talking, lot of things in eyeball code, letters and numbers and gobbledygook, but then they would say, “Hey that looks good. Shine a light on that. Do you want me to use tape?” (I am known for my liking of tape, so the answer was probably yes.) My lower back hurt from lying flat, but I figured that wasn’t really a reason to complain. As time went on, I could feel more and more, but everything was still black as anything. I could not figure that out. Later I learned that they had a nerve block on my optical nerve, so I could not see, but my eye was open. I could feel more and more of what they were doing and I said that it was getting harder to stay still. I thought I would be a big surprise talking, but they just said they were almost done and I would be fine.

And I was. I got back to the room feeling fine and totally awake. I had to sit up right away and rest my forehead on a table – face down is the thing. They said everything went fine and we went home.

I have been face down sincce. It is way harder than I thought it would be. It is so uncomfortable. My right eye is blurry, but I don’t know why, and If I open my right eye and look (at the ground) my left eye wants to move too and that hurts. I mostly have been face-down with two eyes close. That causes even more inadventant naps.

We head back at 7:30am to get that patch off and get the scoop on what happens next.