Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

I had laser eye surgery yesterday. I wrote in January that I’d decided to look into it. In my mind I’d pencilled in April as the most suitable time to get it done and by the skin of my cornea I achieved it. I’m not noted for actually going through with actual things I actually want to do so this is something of an achievement. If you’re thinking about it then don’t let anything in the following put you off.

After the consultation a month ago – at which you’ll recall they put drops in my eyes which left me unable to read anything and then gave me the forms to sign – it finally crept up on me. A month became two weeks became a week became a couple of days became not being able to sleep or eat anything because it was really going to happen and soon. With mother by my side (aren’t mums just basically brilliant?) we went into town armed only with a simplistic map and two umbrellas. Mine was far too big. I didn’t think that part through at all. I got there for eleven and was asked to sign the consent form I’d read on Tuesday night during half time in Manchester United’s unexpected victory over Barcelona. The form clearly says not to sign it until the surgeon has been through it with you point by point. He didn’t and I just signed it in reception. Over the next hour all I did was move from one waiting area to another and go to the toilet (through all together too many doors – I don’t know who sold them all those doors but that person must’ve been laughing when his commission came in a the end of the month). They had a big telly on and I saw the end of a programme in which two women – they turned out to be mother and daughter not a couple – looked at houses in Derby. It was exactly the sort of think Mitchell and Webb take the piss out of. Which made it marginally less terrible.

Next was a thing in which a very old, very posh lady wanted to raise a thousand pounds for a trip to a health spa. To do this she was going to sell some old junk. This wacky little old lady had a trove of unused designer handbags. Where did they come from, asked the host. She said she’d had various admirers over the years. The programme couldn’t move on fast enough. After that came the second show in a row to feature ordinary people trying to sell stuff at auctions. Who commissions this rubbish? Whatever happened to imported cartoons and the Open University? That’s proper daytime fare.

I was saved from the banality of the BBC’s counter programming to Richard and Judy (or whoever does that these days) and taken into a little room. A woman redid some of the tests they did a month before to make sure. Then back to the sofa. Then in to see the surgeon (a tactile man with a beard) who looked at me through a microscope. Literally not metaphorically. He said I was fine. That’s a compliment and I’m keeping it. Back to my sofa to wait to be called.

The sofa was opposite the "Laser Room". Every fifteen minutes someone would go in there. It was like a pre-titles sequence in Doctor Who. The innocent victim – played by someone who will get a Big Finish job soon after – goes in and the door closes. Then the lights go out, you hear a loud and ominous ticking sound then the lights come on again and the person staggers blankly out. Cue music and an investigation into what is obviously the vanguard of an alien invasion.

Then it was my turn. Nerves don’t really come into it. As soon as she summoned me I was in a sort of daze. Cut off from what was really going on. I went in, did exactly what they told me to do, spat out my chewing gum on request, gave basic details to prove I was who they thought I was and lay back.

Some may wish to skip the next bit.

They put numbing drops into each eye and there is a calm. The room seems to be full of people. We were introduced, I hope they didn’t take offence when I didn’t catch their names. When I seemed to be numb the surgeon pulled my right eye lid up and pushed what felt like a rubber ring into it. And I mean pushed. Really hard. You know how you could make everything all misty by pushing your eyes when you were a child? This was a grown up doing it under licence. He pushed really hard. Everything went white. I was vaguely aware (I don’t know how as my other eye had stopped doing anything in sympathy – either that or they’d slipped a patch over it when I wasn’t looking) that a machine had been pushed over. This bore down on me and pressed against my already compressed eye. I heard the nurse counting from twenty and there was some kind of colour going on but it was all too much to notice. Aside from the pressure on my eye ball – which was a sensation rather than actual pain – there was nothing. Then they let me go and did the same to the other eye.

I now had flaps cut in both eyes. Apparently there are two ways to do this – the cheaper option is for them to use a blade. I wasn’t keen on the sound of that so paid the extra six hundred pounds to be cut open with a laser beam. Six hundred pounds is a lot of money but weighed against a metal blade it seems like a bargain.

They turned my chair or couch or whatever it is I was lying on and the bit which sounds worse but didn’t feel as bad began. The surgeon used a prong – everything was too blurry to see was it was but it looked like a surgical hook or scraper – to peel back my new eye ball flap. I thought my vision had been blurry in the past. It was nothing to this. When I first lay down there was a little orange light blinking above me. It was the size of a standby light on a regular television. A tiny thing. My eye was now so blurry that this was two feet across at least. People were talking to me but I couldn’t really hear what they said. The gist was to look at the light. One of the things people say about laser eye surgery is "what if you move your eye during it?" Well I think I’ve got an answer – you can’t. They say to look at the light. The light is two feet across. You can’t not look at the light. You can’t blink, you can’t move, you can’t do anything. Another machine stooped over me and another nurse – probably the same one if I’m honest – counted down. You can tell how short sighted you were by how long the countdown is. Mine were 35 seconds each. That’s pretty high. So you just lie there without moving – I didn’t even breathe – until she reached zero and the ticking of the laser stops.

Then the most icky moment of the lot – the surgeon is back with another prong and he uses it to unfold the flap and smooth it back onto the rest of my eyeball. It was like smoothing wallpaper. Stroke, stroke, stroke, up, down, up, down. Then relax. Until he did the same to eye number two a moment later.

Then they say that is it. Sit up – carefully – and don’t fall off the chair. She gave me my bag and walked me through to the next room. There I sat – eyes closed in the semi darkness – for a few minutes before she came in and gave me a bag of eye drops. I have anti-biotics, anti-inflammatories and lubrication. Some would see that as a weekend bag. She gave me a well rehearsed list of dos and don’ts and told me I could go. I went to sit in reception and waited for mother. With dark glasses on and one eye half open I got home in one piece. Then straight to bed for a couple of hours with my new goggles on. They are to stop you rubbing your eyes in your sleep. I didn’t sleep but two hours in the dark with my eyes closed and nothing to disturb me but a welcome airing for the first four parts of "Paul Temple and the Geneva Mystery" made things a bit better. Part five of the Geneva Mystery was when I took my goggles off and sat up trying to open my eyes in the darkness. By the end of the episode and the dramatic discovery of Vince Langham lying in the snow on the drive of Julia Carrington’s mansion I could just about read the instruction sheet for my collection of eye drops. By the conclusion of the sixth and final episode I had one curtain half drawn back and could cope with a little daylight.

Its now just over 24 hours since I got home. I’ve been for my first post-op check up. He said there is a little inflammation in the left eye but nothing a doubling of the drops shouldn’t sort out. Although I’m still somewhat bleary and blurry I apparently have 20:20 vision in each eye, a little better than 20:20 with both eyes open. Reading isn’t quite right yet but that will come soon. My vision should improve over the next few weeks and be stable within two or three months. I won’t be sorry in a week’s time to ditch the goggles and the drop regime but they are a small price to pay for what seems to have been a successful operation.