LiDona Wagner

Stop Moving! This is Eye Surgery!

A very pleasant man with a Spanish name introduced himself. He was the anesthesiologist.  Because I detest medications of any sort, I told him, "Keep the anesthesiology light, please." 

“Oh don’t worry. It won’t be much," he said. "You have to be able to hear when you’re asked to move your eye left and right, up and down.”

The surgeon asked, “Do you need anything?”

“I need for you to do good work,” I said with a sigh that revealed my discomfort with putting the fate of my eye in the hands of someone I don’t even know. That was the reason I had postponed cataract surgery for well over a year.

I sat back in their monstrous brown leather chair. The chair shifted to a horizontal position and I scooted up at least a foot to get my head in the right place.

“Can you scoot up another inch?” asked one of the nurses. 

I pushed myself up further and was grateful when she connected a heating hose to the paper gown I was wearing. At least I wouldn’t have to freeze while these two doctors performed their ten-minute surgery.

The nurse placed a mask over my face that had an opening for my left eye. I barely felt the surgeon make two small holes through the membrane covering my eyeball. However, I did feel a slight sensation as liquid entered my eyeball and shattered the cataract.

The surgeon had told me he would be using a miniscule vacuum to extract all pieces of the cataract. Feeling the pressure of the vacuum moving over my eyeball was uncomfortable. I must have squirmed.

A loud voice said, “Stop moving! This is eye surgery.” I have to say, that was pretty scary. I realized that if I didn’t lie still he could poke my eye out.

I felt pressure again when he moved the vacuum to the bottom of my eyeball. “Don’t move!” said the loud voice above my head. The surgeon was a large man so of course his voice seemed loud to me. It also had that edge you hear in a parent's voice when a child is doing something dangerous. 

At that point the anesthesiologist shot something into the IV in my arm. All sensations ceased.

While I was out the surgeon inserted a folded lens into one of the holes he had made. The lens unfolded. From a video I’ve watched, I know he put some sterile drops in the eye to prevent infection.

The loud voice above my head said, “OK, we’re removing the face mask.” I felt it being pulled away and the chair being brought upright. 

I literally floated out of the chair, into the prep room where I was given some orange juice, and downstairs to await my driver. Whatever the anesthesiologist gave me, I was so energized I went into the studio and painted for seven hours. When I sat down to do some mending, I was astounded to be able to see all the tiny stitches I was making.

Post-op sessions have shown that with my intraocular lens, my left eye has nearly 20:20 vision. I find myself filled with gratitude. 

The “strange shot” I was given lasted until five days later. When it was out of my system, all of the anxiety of the experience washed through me. I sat down and cried.

I know that for those two doctors and all of the nursing staff, I was just number nine, the last one of the morning. However, for me, this was “I” surgery! My left eye has always been my weak eye. Now it is the stronger one. The eyelid had begun to sag, probably because the eye was so tired from trying to see through the cataract. Now the eyelid sits up the way it should.

It is very strange to have been awake when the cataract was shattered and removed but to be asleep when the miraculous new lens was put in place. I wonder how often this has occurred without my awareness: watching as the old me got shaken up and thrown away but not being aware of the new me taking its place.

A recent series of dreams has been filled with people (parts of me) dying. I have not yet seen signs of who or what the new me will be. Do you suppose there is an intraocular lens for that? Or maybe when they do the right eye, the new "I" will become visible to me?