It was late Spring or early Summer of 2000 when I went in for an initial screening of whether or not I would qualify for LASIK. Back then, I was living in Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. I walked into the waiting room, which had about 40 other people waiting. ( I know because I counted how many people were there). Of course, nobody bothered to get an interpreter after I called and requested that one be present for the appointment.
I was given medical forms to fill out and of course my Mom was with me. She had actually attempted to take the forms from me and fill them out herself, so I told her politely through gritted teeth that I know how to fill these forms out and that I had filled them out ALL BY MYSELF before. She then proceeded to tell me, over my shoulder, what to check off.
I was irritated so I sat down a few seats away from her and continued to fill out the medical forms. I was about 24 years old at the time. Yes, old enough to be able to fill out medical forms by myself, I’m sure.
Afterwards, I handed the clipboard back to the receptionist and took my seat next to my mother and we chatted about this and that. Soon, she asked me if I wanted her to come with me to the doctor’s office. I replied that I would be fine by myself in the doctor’s office. (Note, I had already been living on my own since I was 18… so at 24 years I’m sure I would know how to get to the doctor’s office by myself…)
Nevertheless, there were two doctors calling out names and I guess my Mom felt justified in coming with me to the doctor’s office because, oh my goodness, I couldn’t possibly hear my name being called. Sigh. One doctor had a very strong accent and I *prayed* the other doctor without the accent would be the one to call my name.
But no, horror of *some* horrors, the doctor with the heavy accent had called my name and then horror of *most* horrors my Mom jumped up and announced in a loud voice that it was my turn. I followed her (along with the eyeballs of everyone else in the room) to the doctor’s office where I was seated in the patient’s chair and Mom made herself comfortable in the other seat while the doctor sat in his, uh, doctor stool. This was when I wished my Mom had stayed in the waiting room. SIGH.
Right away, the doctor started asking me questions and of course, my first reply was, “Pardon me? Can you please repeat that?” So he repeated himself and I just couldn’t understand him at all. I explained that I am Deaf and that he would need to just speak a little more clearly.
He then turned to my mother and in clear English asked her, “How long has she been wearing glasses?”
And horror of *all* horrors! My mother replied! I was like, “Uhhh. Hello, yes, I’ve been wearing glasses since…” only to be cut off by the doctor asking my Mom more questions as though I wasn’t in the room.
I attempted to explain that it would be easier for the doctor to ask me questions directly but instead he chose to ignore me and continue to ask my mother questions. My Mom, of course, continued to answer the questions as though I wasn’t there, either. I was insulted so I swooped up my jacket and bag and declared that if the doctor couldn’t talk to me directly, then he couldn’t talk to anyone. I left the office and went to the receptionist and demanded why they didn’t get an interpreter to begin with? Well, that’s not exactly what I said… I rather yelled at her,
“Why is there no interpreter available?? In fact, you can just refund all the money back to the original credit card this *cheap* LASIK will cost you because you’re too cheap to get an Intepreter!” I also demanded to speak with the supervisor but conveniently, they were out of the office. *eyeroll* I ended up getting a business card and soon enough my Mom and the doctor with the terrible accent had approached the desk. The 40 other patients were craning their necks and staring towards the desk. *hahaha! That part makes me laugh, I don’t know why…* I soon left in a huff and of course my Mom followed me asking me what was wrong.
SIGH. As upset as I was, she really wanted me to have LASIK done so that I wouldn’t have to get new glasses every year or so. (Later she told me I was really her guinea pig! She wouldn’t try the procedure until after I had mine done first! Hahaha!) Mom promised to not speak up on my behalf when in the doctor’s office so I relented. Marched back into the office and the OTHER doctor without the accent (thank you thank you thank you!!!) was waiting to see us. I sat down in the seat and the doctor asked his questions in a clear and calm voice and I could understand most of what he said. He was understanding enough to even repeat his questions and never once directed any comment or question to my mother. (Yes, she followed me again to the doctors’ office.)
After several weeks or months (I don’t recall the time frame exactly) I came in for the scheduled surgery and I tell you, the paperwork took about 30 minutes while the actual procedure afterwards took about 10 minutes.
I do recall reading in the papers somewhere stating that my signature gives consent and will waive any responsibility on behalf of the doctor should I go blind in the procedure. *shudder* However, should I go blind due to the surgery, they WILL replace my eyeball free of charge. Literally. Can you imagine that? I told the doctor 10 minutes before the surgery that I wanted BOTH of my eyes to remain GREEN… their natural original color. “No changing my eyes so that one is green and one is brown! Both stay green!” He chuckled at me and reassured me I’d still have both my eyes. He then gestured for me to lie down flat on the odd shaped “bed”.
The bed was shaped to fit the body snugly… you lay your head down in an opening on the bed… in fact, your whole body fits inside a rough contoured shape… the legs slightly apart and your head resting inside a cup *really difficult for me to describe, sorry!* while you’re laying down flat on your back.
I had earlier swallowed a microscopic pill to calm my nerves. When I swallowed it, I pretended to immediately conk out at the desk in my chair. The nurse just laughed at me and my Mom was in giggles galore. I was terribly nervous but managed to crack jokes here and there! The assistant covered one eye with gauze and taped it. They then put what I call the “A Clockwork Orange device” onto my other eyeball, just to keep the lid open and to prevent me from squinting or blinking. (Also to prevent me from closing my eye and run screaming from the surgery room… OKOKOK, that part, I’m just kidding. Nobody ran screaming anywhere…)
After the assistant placed a couple of drops on my eye (to freeze it… a local topical anesthetic, I guess) the doctor then told me to look at a red laser light above me. I looked up and then quipped, “But doesn’t red mean STOP???”
Both chuckled at me and although I was nervous and scared as hell, I continued… “Shouldn’t we wait for it to turn green? Do you have your driver’s license? Didn’t you learn this stuff in Driver’s Ed? Am I driving you crazy yet?”
The assistant told me to relaaaaax (yeah, sure!!!) and I looked at the red light. I felt something near my eyeball and suddenly for one brief second things looked “watery”. Ahhh, interesting… They had peeled back my cornea and made it into a flap. (Some surgeries have the whole cornea removed but mine were sliced to make a flap and then held back while the machine did the work. *GROSS, I know!*) I then smelled burning hair. Seriously… I felt a pressure on my eyeball, like someone was just squeezing it a little bit… *Squeeze your palm, that’s how it felt. NO PAIN!* And then the burning hair… ugh, smelled HORRIBLE. I tried in vain to hold my breath but I couldn’t hold it for that long. I then commented,
“Do you smell something burning? Shouldn’t we stop now and evacuate or something? Don’t you follow emergency procedures around here?” Both the doctor and assistant laughed at me and you know… it just hit me. If I actually became blind during that LASIK procedure, it would have been MY fault! Cracking all those jokes and distracting the doctor… eek! Ah well, I had a good time and my eyes came through. PHEW!
Lo and behold! I could see *right away*… I really could. I was amazed… without my glasses before I couldn’t see more than 5 inches or less away from my face. Yeah, had very weak vision but I was never diagnosed as legally blind or anything. So I was amazed to see the doctor’s equipment on the OTHER side of the room… without glasses! For the first time, too in about… oh, I guess 18 years? I had been destined to wear glasses since 2nd grade so it was rather liberating to be able to see without glasses.
At first the vision was like looking through a thin veil of white gauze, what they call the “halo effect”. The doctor then covered my “new” eye and took the gauze and tape off the other eye and continued to perform his magic. This time I remained quiet as I was rendered speechless by the new vision I had glimpsed. Wow, eh?
After they were done, I was told to sit up and move to another chair where the doctor did a few tests and finally he asked me, “How do you like it? Any questions?”
I replied, “Gosh, I’m so disappointed. Truly, very disappointed. It’s not what I was expecting…”
He was very concerned at once and inquired further… “What’s wrong? What do you mean?”
I looked him squarely in the eye and said, “There’s no X Ray vision! Where is it? I was supposed to be able to see through things!”
Man, that doctor looked so relieved and he and the assistant laughed out loud this time. They quickly kicked me out of the surgery room (well, it was more like a regular office with dimmed lights… nothing surgical-looking about the room other than the actual LASIK machine by the contoured bed patients lay in.) I was greeted by my Mom who was NOT ALLOWED IN THE ROOM DURING THE ACTUAL PROCEDURE! Ha! (But funny enough, I wanted her there with me when I was having the surgery done… Oh well.) She had been waiting for me in another smaller waiting room and the nurse came up to me and asked how I felt. I told her and my Mom,
“I feel like I just died and went to heaven! Everything looks so heavenly, all white and halo-ish!” I must admit, some of the other people in the waiting room looked a little spooked when I said that… Oops! But the nurse and my Mom laughed and soon enough, after the nurse gave us my eye drops with directions on when and how often to use them, Mom and I were on our way to the hotel where we planned to stay the night. (We traveled to Vancouver City, which is on the mainland and not on Vancouver Island so we were out of town for one night).
I had remembered that I didn’t pack any jammies (nothing new, I’m always forgetting to pack my jammies) so Mom and I went to a store up a few streets and while walking along the sidewalk (I was given huge UGLY *cheap* sunglasses to protect my newly HEIGHTENED sensitive eyes from the light) I started directing my Mom on where to go.
“Whoah! Look out for that manhole! Careful of that traffic! Mom, you better hold my hand, don’t want you tripping over anything now. That man just walked by us! Look at the birds in the trees! Pay attention! Look where you’re going! Keep your eyes literally peeled!” My Mom and I were just cracking up hysterically as we walked to the store. I didn’t care who stared… I was just happy enough to be able to stare back! Hahaha!
Once in the store though, it wasn’t long before the local anesthesia was wearing off and oh no, the pain… It was slowly, cell by cell, creeping into my eyeballs and I could feel every single cell on fire. It was like each and every cell was a bonfire unto itself and it was starting to hurt.
“Mom! Mom, just grab anything and let’s go. Starting to burn up here, need to go nowwww…”
We quickly hurried over to the hotel (close by thankfully) and I laid down on the bed and just doused my fireballs, er, I mean, my eyeballs with eye drops. Yeah, that’s when it started to get a little painful. I also took a sleeping pill that the nurse gave me and I willed myself to sleeeeep ASAP so I could escape the pain.
We took the ferry home the next day and for a week or so after that, I just took eyedrops. At night I had to use an eye gel to prevent my eyes from being irritated by the dryness. After that though, everything else was fine.
However, I only experienced one nightmare about a month or two after the surgery and that was when I woke up late one morning (I had worked late the previous night) and upon waking, I hadn’t opened my eyes yet. I just laid there being, well, LAZY and after about 20 minutes or so, I opened my eyeball. Well, I had opened BOTH eyes but I could only see out of ONE eye! I was confused… thinking I didn’t open my eyelid, I reached up and felt my eyeball but couldn’t see anything other than blackness.
Scared, I ran to the bathroom to see if I was really imagining things but lo and behold, both my eyes were open and I could only see out of one eye. One pupil was fine but the other pupil was still very small and I couldn’t see at all. I quickly called the eye doctor in Vancouver City and told them I was coming over there ASAP (5 hour trip!)
However, while on the ferry to Vancouver City, my vision was miraculously restored and upon arrival at the eye doctor’s office, the doctor couldn’t explain why one eye remained “closed” and the other was fine nor could he explain why it healed on its own. I guess you could call it one heck of a “lazy” eye, eh? Too lazy to even wake up, sheesh!
But that’s about all the troubles I’ve experienced. I do have less night vision and streetlights as well as headlights at night have a halo effect around the edge of the lights, making the light expand, so to speak. I am also a little more sensitive to bright light but I can see without glasses. That’s all that matters. Would I do it again? Sure, why not. 
Carrie Gellibrand
Filed under: Uncategorized on May 9th, 2007 | 3 Comments »