Well, I promised a post talking about surgery day and I figure I can now handle looking at the computer screen long enough to write it…most likely lol there may be some pauses and walking away from the laptop here and there but you’ll never know! 😉
My appointment time was 9:15am. A friend was going to give my mom and I a ride there but that fell through so we took the bus with all the crazy early morning commuters, I heard some interesting convos that’s for sure lol
When we got there my mom got to go chill in the waiting room with the comfy couches and yummy cookies and I got my blood pressure taken. It was 117 over umm, crap, I don’t remember…something low…I have a freakishly low blood pressure, always have. This could be a good thing except when I am in distress and go to seek medical help they take my blood pressure and it shows a normal number so they think whatever I am saying is wrong is not that big of a deal but in reality a more normal blood pressure number coming from me is actually a high number…does that make sense?
Seriously goooood cookies!
Aaaaaanyways!
When I got the blood pressure taken I was asked if I wanted the Ativan, originally I did, I was definitely planning to be drugged for this but the lady made some comment about how I was the only gal there today and I didn’t want to be a wimp and take a pill when probably nobody else had soooooo I figured I’d skip it. How bad could it be, right?
Oh pride…how you put me in annoying situations at times.
I sat and chilled for a bit, resisted the urge to eat a cookie, went and signed some paperwork, got given a bag with stuff I would need afterwards, told lots of important things that I focused on like I have never focused before. I didn’t want to risk doing something wrong and messing up my eyes.
After not a long wait at all I got called in, my eyes were tested again, I guess to make sure nothing changed since my evaluation, then I moved to a different room, had drops put in my eyes to freeze them, given more instructions about what to do right then, what to expect in the room and what to expect afterwards. Then I had to chill and let the drops do their thang.
When I was called in to the operating room I finally met my surgeon, I find it odd all the lead up to this moment did not once have me crossing paths with the person who was going to do the actual surgery, but I guess that is how these things go, shrug. The machine does most of the work anyways I guess…no offence to the people out there who perform these surgeries.
The surgeon was very nice, quite calming which is good because while externally I was fine internally I was freaking out a bit. They gave me two stress balls to hold on to during the surgery which I find brilliant because it gave me something to focus on.
I laid down on a comfy bed/table and had a machine placed over my face, not touching but hovering above me. My eyes were already frozen so I couldn’t feel anything and I was told to look at the green light. There were three lights going across my field of sight, red-green-red, so that green light became the only thing in the world to me. My left eye was taped shut and the right eye taped open, then this clear plastic rectangular insert was put in my right eye so I wouldn’t be able to blink. It was uncomfie but not horrible or anything.
This is stolen from the internet, lol, not my surgery, or surgeon, but a similar machine.
Because I got PKR the surgeon had to scrape off the top layer of my cornea, *shudder*. That was the part I was stressing out about the most because it sounds so creepy. Scrape off my cornea?? Ugh. I could see but couldn’t see when the surgeon did it, it was like squiggly lights taking over my vision, with every scrape up and down all I could really see was multi coloured squiggly lines that came and went. It didn’t hurt but just knowing what was being done had me squeezing those stress balls like there was no tomorrow.
After the top layer of cornea was removed the lasering began! There is a slight smell of ya know, your eye ball being burned by a laser, but it isn’t that strong of a smell and it doesn’t last long, so, shrug, no biggy. Some reports I had read from other people who went through this totally exaggerated the level of smell so I went in there thinking it’d be waaaaay worse.
After the laser is done the assistant starts counting to 20 and the doc is doing something to my eye, I’m not really sure what. At the end of the count my eye was flushed with water, like lots of water, like, if I breathed through my eyes I would have drowned quantities of water. It felt kinda soothing. An article I read talked about the water bath, saying it was super shocking and worse than any other part of the surgery so I worried a bit about it but once again it appears I was led astray by other people’s descriptions lol
Then the plastic thing was taken out of my eye, I could finally blink again, yay! Before I could get a lot of blinks in the right eye was taped shut and they did the exact same thing to the left.
After both were done I sat up, I was handed two pills (one for pain, one for the nausea the pain pills can cause), had some eye drops put in my eyes, given the worlds darkest sunglasses and a prescription for the pain pills I would need to fill on my way home. Luckily for me, the lady from the front came and grabbed the prescription and took it to my mom so she could fill it while I was sitting in a dark room with two other people who went before me. The super dark room had comfy couches so I claimed a corner, used my jacket as a blanket and got settled in. I was torn between wanting to stay in there forever or go home because I knew misery was going to hit me and who doesn’t prefer to be home when they feel like crap?
Before leaving I had my eyes looked at one more time, given some more drops to take home, given some more care instructions, then led to the lobby, where I sat and waited for my mom to find me. A fellow PKR-er came over and we chatted for a bit, I couldn’t really see what he looked like so I’m guessing he couldn’t really tell what I looked like either, lol, we compared notes, then we both went home.
I got there at 9:15am and left about 11:30am, so not too bad of a morning. We were warned it could take 4-5 hours so I don’t know why it went so quick when we were warned it would take half a work-day but oh well, I’m not actually complaining that it took way less time lol
My mom and I grabbed a cab back home and I spent the rest of the day napping, and sitting with dark glasses on being cared for by my mom. 🙂
Tags: cornea, laser surgery, LasikMD, PRK, surgery day
The Amazing Shrinking Woman 