Better Living Through Technology
I got laser eye surgery done on Monday, my 30th birthday present from my wonderful generous mother. (Thanks Mom!)
I wasn’t nervous at all going in — they gave me an Atavan and played soothing new-age music while I waited for surgery. When the procedure began it was a whole nother story. Laying down beneath the kerotome laser, I was handed two stress balls to squeeze. A nurse recited numbers, “eight, twelve, twelve, ten, six, twelve, nine, nine, ten, eleven, ten…” I had compete faith in Dr. Lin, who’s performed thousands of procedures and is probably the most experienced laser surgeon in the world, (he participated in the very first Lasik studies in the eighties). Despite my trust in his capable hands, the physical stress of having one’s eyelids clamped back was kind of overwhelming. I exhaled sharply from my mouth, for which I was reprimanded, (water particles can get in the laser and you’ll get a shitty prescription).
The only actual operation the surgeon performs is cutting a flap in the cornea and peeling it back. Everything else is handled by the computer. The doctor feeds in a map of my retina, a target map of the desired retinal curvature is calculated, and the keratome does its thing. The only role I had in the proceeding was to stare at a green light in between two red lights. When the cornea is removed, the lights distort and pixelate in a way which reminded me of nothing so much as the final twenty psychedelic minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then everything kind of goes squoggly and dark and the laser clicks loudly and there is a sharp odor like burning hair as retinal tissue is vaporized. It takes about twenty seconds, then the cornea is folded back over, and the work begins on the other eye. “It’s over,” Dr. Lin said, “You can stop shaking now.” The stress balls did nothing.
Now I have perfect 20/20 vision and it’s utterly fucking brilliant.