Friday, February 22, 2008

LASIK, pick a title, any title:

a)20/20

b)stick a sharpie in your eye

c)freak out 

..... i now have 20/20 vision ....after thirty years of 20/400 vision (more or less)..... i had a sharpie stuck in my eye ..... who knew they made sterile sharpies? .... and i freaked out .... a couple times .....
so now, a little more clearly..... 
i had lasik surgery yesterday .... i was very squeamish about it going in ... and eeeeek .... still am .... it started with some pre op stuff .... dr. s. was telling us (lovely husband was with me) about the laser, cold laser not hot laser , custom blah blah blah ... and while i pretended to be listening , i saw him go for a medical something or other ..... sealed for safety .... rip it open to use on me ... and....and ... and .... well, gosh, that looks for all the world like a sharpie.... and he kept talking and was looking at my eyeball through a microscope .... and then i SCREECHED ...
I"M FREAKING OUT HERE, ARE YOU WRITING ON MY EYE? .... and he pulled away ..... and said, oh, yes, i am writing on your eye ..... deep breaths ..... in....out ....in .....out ..... and he explained what he was doing and why ....i heard it ...and at the moment it seemed sensible, but now, 36 hours removed, i have no recall of why i would let the man write on my eye.... he's even married to a good pal of mine, and i'm still not sure how i ever got the gumption to say, sure, write on my eyeball with your sterile sharpie ..... beathe .....in ....out ....in ....out ..... so he finished working on my numbed eyes .... and made four marks....two on each eye ..... wow .... who knew they made eyeball sharpies .... and he started rolling away from me again ... towards the trash ....WAIT, STOP ... can i have that pen?...... how often do you get to take home a pen that is specifically made for eyeball writing? he gave me the pen .... and surely thinks i'm very peculiar for it ..... i told allison this story and she asked if i rummaged through the trash for more good stuff .... pffft! no! .... andy was in the room ......

so ..... i spent some time in a pre-op holding room with a handful of people ...we all had on blue surgical hairnets...not a good look on anybody, but i think i wore it well, considering .... we also had green dot stickers on our foreheads... with secret codes on them .... then at my very end, one woman came in and got a single red sticker over her right eye ....very interesting ..... very star bellied sneeches suessical .... i was thinking we could be a post modern sci fi show in all the oddness ..... how weird is it to look at other people who have sharpie writing on THEIR eyes? 

and then the freak out in the surgery room blechiness .. my whole surgery took far less than ten minutes ... ok ..... here's one throw you a bone detail, while my eyesocket was splayed out and unblinkable and clamped there .... i could SEE my kind and lovely doctor's paint brush smoothing out the flap as he put me back together .... swish this way, swish that, wipe swipe brush ..... andy was watching and later when i told him my (FREAKED OUT)impressions he said that's what it looked like from his end too .... a paint brush or a sponge squeegee flattening and smoothing it all back out .... after the cold laser ... that smells...... who knew lasers smell? 

the rest of yesterday was a blur (HA, not actually) of sleeping pills and naps ..... and this morning a post op check without freaking out ... and 20/20 vision ..... yoinks!! 

so.... i have to wear wrap around, no access to eyeballs, sunglasses for the first 72 hours .. til bedtime saturday night ..... so, i went to target ... and bought FOUR pairs of sunglasses .... only one fits the medical bill and are HUGE .... i look like i'm trying for the incognito thing .... julia brought girlfriends home from school with her today and i was explaining the it's-a-dark-and-cloudy-day-and-wearing-sunglasses-inside-thing..... and one of the little girls said, that's ok, i just thought you were being your usual, groovy self ...... so there you go..... this groovy gal has 20/20 vision .... 

but i did no art today ... and you still read my blog .... how much non art can an art blog have before you can't call it an art blog? .... that's rhetorical ..... 

here's your question of the day? have you ever had your eyeball written on? ....no....wait .... 
lemme try again .... what's the most freaked out you've been lately? 

tra la la ... have a happy weekend .... 

9 comments:

aj said...

BRAVO to you e!!!! How fun to not have to wear glasses anymore. I only have reading glasses, but that's almost more annoying than needing them all the time. On and off and on and off. pfffft.

Never been poked in the eye. Got hit in the eye with a bean bag when I was 18. Hit me so hard it knocked me to the ground and I was so dizzy I couldn't even walk to the house. Saw black spots everywhere (just like in the cartoons!)

Went to eye doctor who said I had ruptured blood vessels in my eye (that's what the black spots were, blood floating around inside my eyeball! ysck!) And my pupil in that eye was paralyzed all the way open.

I got icky fluorescent eye drops that I could feel run down the back of my throat. No fun!

Yes, you ARE groovy even when you aren't going art!

aj

Anonymous said...

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!
YOU DID IT!!!!
I'm so proud of you for asking to keep the eye sharpie!!
I was pretty freaked out before all 4 of my c-sections.....I think I freaked some of those doctor people out when I refused to have the curtain thingy in front of my face....I'm VERY claustophobic..is that how you spell that?
Hope you sleep well tonight and heal perfectly!
Love, Roberta :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Elizabeth,

Congratulations! You're brave! And you can still call it an art blog because the doctor was the artist and your eye was the canvas and the sharpie was the...sharpie. Did you check to see that he wasn't doing a teeny little mona lisa collage with his sponge smoothing??

David

Wendy said...

I'm freaking out just reading about it! You know, I've thought many times about getting that surgery, but I never heard anyone say that THEY WRITE ON YOUR EYEBALL!! Egad man, I don't know if I'd have the nerve for that, 20/20 or not! You're not only groovy, you're pretty gutsy, too.

And my latest freak out? Well, it's over on my blog. ;)

Heidi said...

...only e could make lasik an artsy topic for her artsy blog! ...i'm thinking here, just thinking...but we might start seeing "eyes" in your art now? ...just wondering.

Congrats on going through this! I still wear glasses and contacts.

Something that freaked me out? Eye related, maybe? The first time I put a contact lense in. Then, this is true... Mark wanted to see what it was like! So (like a dummy) I let him try one of my contacts on. HE FREAKED out! LOL So my freak out story is not mine, it's Mark's, but it was funny.

Mary Isabella and Kiley too! said...

I know you will be happy not to have to wear glasses anymore. Wonderful!!! The most freaked out I have been lately is looking at my husband's badly swollen and discolored leg after a 300# cross tie hit it. I am loving my visit to your blog...Smiles

Contessa Kris said...

There was sharpie and stickers involved so I think you can still call it an artblog.

Congrats on the surgery. I'm the only one in my family who doesn't need glasses, so I'm sure some of them would love to have 20/20.

Freak Out Time?
2 weeks ago I was going in for surgery (gallbladder) and 2 nights before the surgery I woke up in a panic. In my dream I had panicked when they came to give me anesthesia to put me asleep. They gave it to me and I kept fighting the anesthesiologist, literally. Pushing him and stuff and trying to sit up when I was clearly going to sleep! lol Thankfully none of that actually happened. I fell asleep in the room before the anesthesiologist even came in to give me drugs and I woke up after the surgery. No harm, no fist fights!
Heal well, heal fast!

Darla said...

Brilliant! I laughed out loud when I read about keeping the pen.
Hope you enjoy your new and improved vision.

Darla

Anonymous said...

you survived and I am proud of you -- I am not so brave.

today made me nervous -- But there isn't much I have freaked out about. Once as a teen I wanted to get up off a doctors table when I was having a birthmark removed -- but I was 18 and knew my mom would be mad because I begged for this -- I freaked when they put a grounding pad on my thigh ---WHAT
Jeannie