I Can See! ...But Not Walk...

About a month ago, I realized two things: I was not getting anywhere trying to find new contacts, and I had enough money for LASIK.Rare for two things like that to coincide, but coincide they did.
So I made an appointment to talk about LASIK. And another appointment to have it done.

This is a seriously scary prospect for me: as a mother of five, I really can't afford to lose my eyesight. And blindness is a possibility of any eye surgery. I also can't really afford a lot of downtime, since I live my job. It's a 24/7 kind of thing, as any mother can attest.

Therefore, I was a bundle of nerves yesterday morning when I walked in for surgery. I had asked my sister about her experience - two of my siblings have had this kind of surgery - and she was laid up for about 3 full days and was in a lot of pain. Granted, her procedure and mine were a little different - and her surgery was 10 years ago. 10 years makes a huge difference in technology when you're dealing with an emergent procedure.

There was a woman ahead of me with her sister, and they were busting up laughing about everything. "This drop is going to sting a little," the nurse would say, and they responded, "That's why I'm here! Pain! Yes! Bring it on!" It definitely doesn't translate so well, but it made me laugh and made me think of my sisters. It doesn't take much to get us going, either.

The whole experience turned out to be more like a spa day than anything else. A valium was pulled out a tech's pocket (isn't it supposed to be in a sterile cup?) and taken out of its bubble package in my hand. Water bottles with the doctor's logo washed the pill down, while a hyacinth-leaf basket took all my possessions to be locked away "in the back".

It gets better: after some eye drops (in a recliner), they passed out freshly baked cookies. Then I had the flap cut: this is where they laid me down and positioned a laser over my eye. A suction cup came down and the laser inserted "friendly bubbles" into my cornea. "Friendly bubbles" was my doctor's term. He explained that "unfriendly bubbles" would be like bubbles in a bathtub. Oh, and Abba was playing in the background.

Once the "friendly bubbles" were there, they sat me in a massage chair. Not kidding - 15 minutes of a full-body massage while a nurse quietly read out the post-operative instructions. With the valium and the massage (and the cookie), I was feeling pretty good, although my vision hadn't changed at all.

Then came the real laser - 14 seconds on each eye. More Abba. We chatted about movie stars trying to sing in musicals: Pierce Brosnan, who freely admitted that he was not a singer in "Mamma Mia", and Russell Crowe, who was bragging about his singing voice in "Les Mis" (give me a break, Mr. Crowe). At this point, my vision went from majorly blurry (normal for me) to cloudy - but I could see across the room. Whoa.

And cloudy was where I stayed for about an hour before I went to take a nap. I made a few mistakes at this point:

• Mistake #1: I cannot do everything normally when my eyesight is not normal

• Mistake #2: I placed the eye shields over my eyes (thus obscuring my already-cloudy vision) before going downstairs

• Mistake #3: I went down the stairs at my normal pace. 

And the result was?

A sprained ankle on one foot and a bruised ankle and heel on the other foot. Doug was upstairs: "Are you okay?"

Silly question. My response was sillier still: "Um, yes, um, in a minute maybe?" 

Doug, meanwhile, was being Husband of the Year, taking care of the kids, making bread (not kidding) and broccoli soup for dinner. Yum. Let me just state for the record (again) that he is awesome. And it kind of prolonged the whole “spa day” feel.

So I spent the day resting - which I was supposed to do because of eye surgery - but mostly I rested because I couldn't walk at all. I crawled a little. Pathetic. 

This morning I could actually walk (hooray!) a little. And at my follow-up appointment this morning, I was cleared for driving (my vision is 20/20!), reading and normal activities. If you call not walking normal, I guess. 

So, a success. And a failure.This is so typical of me. Here's me hoping that no one else out there is being a gimpy this week!