S*cks To Be Me (#7): The Eye Part 2 (to a power of six)

Okay.

I’m going to finally, finally, finally (I promise) get to my eye surgery. I know I’ve said that like fifty-nine and three quarters times before. I know that I’ve tantalized you with images of a giant, bat-winged, fuzzy-eared, tentacle-equipped, fang-encrusted eyeball (with scales). And, I know, I’ve not delivered so far.

But, heck, if you wanted speed, efficiency and quickness, you’d be reading Twitter right now.

But the Eye…

*

As you’ll recall from columns way, Way, WAY back, I needed cataract surgery. The discovery of this aforesaid fact produced a certain in effect in me. That effect was technically known as sweat-poppin’, limb-trembling’, stomach-churnin’, heart-knockin’, breath-gaspin’, pants-wettin’ …terror.

As in Terror.

As in HOLY CHRIST THEY’RE GONNA CUT OUT MY EYE!

Well, that’s a little bit of an understatement, but Subtle is my middle name.


*

So, for weeks before this little trip to the eye doc, I’d been having these teeny-tiny, teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy manifestations of some slight anxiety. Little things. Like panic attacks. And trembling. And hyperventilation. And, now and then, just for variety, throwing up a lot.

The reason for my anxiety? Well, I’ve sort of gone over this a bit in my other columns, but suffice to say that I have a thing about knives going into my eyeballs (can’t imagine why) and I knew about what cataract surgery USED to be like.

The operative word there is USED. You see, these days, cataract surgery is a pretty trivial thing. But, not that long ago, it was a DELETED dreadful business involving major surgery, stitches … STITCHES! … in the eye itself, month-long hospital stays during which your head would be pinned between sand-bags to prevent you from rolling over, and, well, lots of good stuff like that. The kind of sheer unadulterated nastiness that you just can’t get these days. Well, at least outside a Freddy Krueger Movie Marathon. Or a Rush Limbaugh Poetry Slam on Steroids.

And I’m just enough of an historian to know all that stuff. Ergo, not to put too fine a point on it, I’m terrified.

Just in case you didn’t get that, let’s spell it out. T as in Torture, E as in Eviscerate, RR as in Rack and Ruin, I as in Incredibly agonizing, F as in Flayed, I as in Indescribable pain, E as in Extreme anguish, and D as in total Destruction. Terrified.

And, mind you, this is all going on while I’m also dealing with all the other stuff I’ve described over the last few weeks—getting kicked out of my Ph.D. program by the Goddamn pompous asses who were supposed to be my advisors (anyone with experience in voodoo doll construction please contact me at the above address), the furnace breaking in the middle of winter, the flooded basement, etc., etc., and, of course, etc.

So . . . my nerves are shot.


*

December 15.

The day of my surgery arrives.

I wake up early that morning. I spend long moments staring into space. I shiver a lot. I wonder about writing a will. I wonder if it’s too late to be Born Again. Or convert to Catholicism. Or buy a Juju. But, no. The Juju shops aren’t open yet. Pity, really.

So, Martha gets up just after I finish filling out my Do Not Resuscitate order and Last Will and Testament. We have a small bite of breakfast. Breakfast bites me back. And then, we’re on our way.

*

We arrive at the location of my execution . . . er, I mean, where I’m going to have the surgery. It isn’t a hospital. It’s a medical office building just down the highway. It looks sort of like the place where you’d go to buy order entry software. And not a Freddy Krueger in sight.

We go into the lobby and I join a group of other men and women waiting our turn. I’m a little out of place. At 51 (as of 2008) I was fairly young for cataract surgery. Everyone around me is older. They look at me with faint suspicion, as though I’m there under false premises. Yes. I really don’t need the operation. I just have this fetish for sharp knives. Inserted into my eyeball. Next week, I’m off to the proctology office. I’m bringing my own sewer snake. Can’t wait.

So, we sit. I shake. And, in about twenty minutes, they call me.

Right. I stand unsteadily. Courage to the sticking place, oh boy. Walk the last mile. Keep a stiff upper lip. No hysterical weeping in the front office. Frightens the interns.

They take me back into the rear office. A nurse gives me a shot…

And…

And . . .

The next thing I know, it’s twenty minutes later, and the same nurse is giving me juice and a cookie.


*

Seriously, that’s about all I remember of the operation. I have a faint recollection of some lights flashing. But, not much else. No angst. No suffering. No doctors yelling “STAT,” and rushing me off to the ICU.

It was really kind of a disappointment.

I said to the nurse. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Nothing else?”

“Uh…no.”

“Where’s the pain and suffering?”

“We try to avoid those as a rule.”

“Well…damn.”

I think they ought to keep a box of toothpicks around the office. Just so they’ll have something to stick under the fingernails of people Who Expect More. Maybe I’ll write ‘em and suggest it.


*

A little later, I toddled out to the front office again. A couple of other patients asked me what it was like. I told them, “I’ve had hair cuts that hurt more.” Which was true. There was the woman in Dallas with the straight razor. But we won’t go into that. Way too horrible.

Anyway, shortly after that, Martha takes me home.

*

Pretty much for then on it’s a gentle coast down hill. I had to wear an eye patch for a while. But, basically, that’s all there is to it.

Like I say, kind of a disappointment.

The good news is that I’m no longer near-sighted in my left eye. The weird news is that I’m now far sighted in that eye.

Understand, that’s a very new thing for me. I’ve been myopic since I was about six . . . probably before, but no one noticed that I was squinting all the time. They thought I was just a nasty bitter child with a bilious attitude. And proud of it, too.

But, now…things are very different. I had to get reading glasses. I now wear only one contact lens (on my right eye) and that adds a certain note of complexity to morning preparations—I’m used to having two, you see, and I have to remember which eye it is that doesn’t get one now (harder than you might think when it’s 6 am and you’re trying to wake up).

Then, too, there is the fact that colors are bit different. Many seem more vibrant. And my depth perception is changed. Better, but changed. You see, now, I think I judge depth the way that most people with two eyes do—that is to say, I triangulate. But, before, I think I was scanning rapidly from side to side, and then (unconsciously) comparing the different scans. It took some real effort on my part to give up the latter (jury rigged) method for the former. But eventually, I got the job done.

And, in the process, I gained new respect for the one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater, famed in song and story. (And we’re talking the Sheb Wooley original, here. Not Alvin and The Chipmonks.)


*

So, that wraps up the eye surgery part of my story.

In fact, it should end the whole “S*cks To Be Me” series. Certainly, at the time, it seemed to me that events just couldn’t get any weirder. And that, as a result, Things Had To Get Back To Normal…

But of course . . .

The year 2008 had one last little adventure to throw my way.

It would involve going down a hill…sideways …in a Toyota…during a sleet storm.

But that’s for next time.


Onward and upward.























Copyright © 2009 Michael Jay Tucker