The Over-Educated Nympho

I had my Lasik surgery on Friday morning. Now that the smoke from my burning eyeballs has cleared, I can tell you all the shit that really goes down during Lasik that you won’t read on the official sites.

Before I explain in detail all the ways they bitchslap and manhandle your eyeballs that is surely similar to tactics the CIA uses during terrorist investigations, let me say IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT. In spite of knowing what I know now, I would do it again. Although I hope I don’t have to. The one time was really enough to hold me over for this lifetime.

Onward to the explanation of the bitchslapping of eyeballs:

The night before I was nervous as fuck. A coworker had warned me about “the smell of burning eyeballs.” Up to that point, none of the descriptions I heard from Lasik veterans had scared me. But the smell of burning eyeballs being compared to that of burning flesh? That got to me. It seeped into my dreams the night before the procedure and kinda maybe scared the LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME just a little bit.

My darling friend Sweetie Pie took the morning off from work so she could take me to and from the eye center. I think she was even more nervous than I was, because she half-jokingly told me to ask the nurse for a Valium for her when she took me into the special pill room (seriously. they have a special room for the dispensing of pills, which is a nurse opening a bottle of Valium and putting it in a tiny plastic pill cup and pushing it toward you in a manner that makes you think she would rather club you over the head and drag your unconscious ass to the eyeball-probing machine in a fit of cackling).

Back in the waiting room Sweetie Pie asked me how much longer we were going to have to wait until I went in for the surgery. “Dunno. I guess when the Valium kicks in so they don’t have to worry I’ll puke all over the machine?” She asked me if she could come in with me to watch. I’ve seen her turn green over a creepy toenail–there was no fucking way I was letting her witness a man with tweezers poking at my cornea. We’re friends. That means if one cries, the other cries–and if one pukes, the other pukes. That’s just what friends are for. Which was why I forbade her from following me into the procedure room.

Half an hour later the doctor opened the door, handed me a fashionable blue hair net, and told me to come inside. I could hear the hum of the eyeball-poking machine as soon as he opened the door. Eeep.

But before I could turn and run, there was that precious moment that reminds me why I’m undergoing the torture chamber: the doctor told me to take off my glasses and leave them with my friend. I beamed as I took them off and blindly held them out for Sweetie Pie’s waiting hand.

And then I turned to the humming eyeball-poking machine room. Oh sweet merciful crap.

I had been expecting a stainless steel operating table like what I’d seen in my dream the night before, but instead he guideded me to a dentist chair which was actually quite cozy. As I sat down, one nurse turned off the lights (WHAT? WHY THE FUCK DO YOU HAVE TO TURN THE LIGHTS OFF? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU FUCKING PEOPLE PLANNING ON DOING TO ME?!) and another delicately placed a pillow behind my head. Aw, how nice! I thought. No. Stupid stupid girl, this not an ordinary plush pillow designed for your comfort–it is a special moldable pillow that conforms around your head to keep it in place and limit all unnecessary movement.

Oh fuck. I don’t think the Valium has kicked in, not nearly enough. Wait!! Let me get my purse!! I have Xanax in there!! I AM ENTIRELY TOO LUCID FOR WHATEVER IT IS YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO TO ME THAT REQUIRES A DARK ROOM AND A RESTRAINING PILLOW.

One of the nurses temporarily distracts me by rubbing sanitizing cream on my eyes and massaging my temples. Oooh la la, now this kinda feels like a spa treatment… she continues massaging my eyes and forehead for a few more seconds until she stops and swiftly releases my chair back into a full reclining position and abruptly swivels me under the monstrous roaring of the hungry eyeball-probing machine.

At this point I think I stopped breathing for the next fifteen minutes. The machine is so huge and so close to your face that there is no room for movement, including breathing. Breathing is for pussies, so I proceeded TO NOT MOVE EVEN THE TEENSIEST LITTLE BIT FOR THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES LEST I PUSH THE LASER OFF COURSE AND IT PROBES MY BRAIN.

The doctor asked me if I was comfortable. I could only think of smartass things to say, but this man did not seem like the sort of fellow who would appreciate any comparisons I made to being spread-eagle at my first gynecological exam, and you don’t really want to piss off the man who pushes the buttons on the eyeball-probing machine. So I whimpered instead.

He pulled me out from under the machine just enough to reach my eyes. With something resembling masking tape he held back my upper eyelashes and then taped them back to my eyebrows. Hmm. Clever. He did the same to the rest of my eyelids until four pieces of expensive surgical masking tape kept me from blinking. Oh, well that’s not so bad, I thought they used–

Enter the speculum.

In this situation, the speculum is a metal fork/ring thing that holds your eyelids open and prevents you from blinking at all. This whole time the doctor was kind enough to explain everything he was doing, but I got caught on the word “speculum.” Speculums are not exactly a happy thing in a woman’s world. I’m only familiar with the speculum as a bizarre device the gynecologist uses to spread my crotch wide open for examination while my tooshie is exposed, cold, and frightened under a paper gown. That image on my eyeball isn’t exactly helping my already queasy stomach.

Then he rubbed an anaesthetic across my eyes so that I wouldn’t be able to feel any of the many types of probing I would be subjected to over the next thirteen minutes.

And then he branded my eyeballs.

Branded? You know like what farmers do to their cows? Okay, without the burning flesh part. That comes later. If you didn’t look at the icky link already, go here and you can see the miniature branding iron I’m talking about that leaves marks on the cornea so that when the flap is dropped back in place after the laser-probing, you can be sure the flap lines up in its original position.

Next comes the SUCTION. This is when the shit really turns into a bad ’70s science fiction flick.

The doctor covered one eye with a cold metal plate. They do one eye at a time, which means you know exactly what pain and whatthefuckness to expect on the second eye–just to make sure you remember all this shit in nauseating detail for life. On the other eye he placed some device and told me not to worry if my vision blacked out. What the fucking EXCUSE ME?! Four seconds later, my vision blacked out.

I wonder if this is what happens right before you die.

The suction feels weird as hell. I believe this is what “raping your eyeball” would feel like… like this device clamped over your eye is trying to suck the eyeball right out of its socket and then shoot it out the other side, ending in a >SPLAT< as it hits the ceiling tile.

The suction is a necessary evil, however, because this is when some nifty device slices a flap in your cornea. It is my personal suspicion that the suction doesn’t have to black out your vision.. they just do that so you don’t witness a cheap ass no. 11 x-acto blade swipe across your line of vision, ie cut into your eyeball. In hindsight, I appreciated the blacking out, even though it was the first of several “I wonder if this is what happens right before you die” moments I would experience in the next twelve minutes.

AND WHY THE FUCK IS THE VALIUM NOT KICKING IN? I THOUGHT I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE FEELING LESS NERVOUS, OR AT LEAST A LITTLE SLEEPY!! I SURE COULD GO FOR SOME SLEEPY RIGHT ABOUT NOW!!

When the doctor removes the suction, the flap has been sliced in the cornea but it is still in place. Now out of all the fancy (and freakishly LOUD) equipment they use during Lasik, it is a wrinkly hand holding tweezers that came into my line of sight and flipped the flap over, exposing my naked eye. WHAT THE FUCK. IT’S MORNING!! WHAT IF THE DOCTOR HAD TOO MUCH COFFEE AND HIS HAND WAS A LITTLE SHAKY?! I DID NOT NEED TO SEE THREE DOLLAR TWEEZERS ANYWHERE NEAR MY EYEBALL, JUST FOR FUTURE REFERENCE, ASSHOLE. HEY I DIDN’T SEE ANY COLLEGE DEGREES ON YOUR WALL, BUDDY. ABORT ABORT ABORT, MOTHERFUCKER!

At this point, the “doctor” pushes me back underneath the humming eyeball-probing machine. The room is entirely dark, except for a circular row of tiny and painfully bright lights on the underside of the machine. They are the most menacing lights I have ever seen, and they are mere inches away from my brain.

I wonder if this is what it feels like right before you die. Or before an alien species invites you to join their Circle of Trust.

The “doctor” pushes some buttons and the humming gets louder. Directly above my exposed eye is a tiny red light in the center of a brightly lit white circle.

I wonder if THIS is what it feels like right before you die.

“Stare at the red light. DO NOT LOOK AWAY FROM THE RED LIGHT, EVEN IF IT GETS BLURRY.”/p>

Oh fuck, AM I dying?! BUT I HAVEN’T BEEN LAID IN TWO AND A HALF MONTHS! I CAN’T DIE RIGHT NOW!! NOT LIKE THIS!!

The laser starts. I stare at the tiny blinking red light with greater concentration than anything I’ve done since I took the SATs. Oh please don’t miss and probe my brain, please don’t probe my brain it’s a lovely brain pleasedontprobemybrain pleasedontprobemybrain.

The laser is fucking LOUD. It sounds like the quick popping of a machine gun. POP-POP-POPPOPPOPPOP! A laser machine gun, melting my eyeballs into pools of squishy goo which will then leak directly into my brain.

Then I smell it. The burning of eyeball. MY eyeball. Dear god, what does that smell remind me of?…

The laser stops. The doctor swabs my eyes with a sponge so they don’t dry out, crust over, and render me useless for the rest of my life. Assuming the eye-probing machine doesn’t melt a hole in my skull first.

Oh fuck, the laser isn’t done. It is five rounds of laser-probing, in ten-second intervals, stopping to wipe away molten cornea-cules. Each round of laser-probing leaves that heated smell wafting around my nose, which is actually a welcome distraction from the loud POPPOPPOPing sound. Throughout all of this, my eye instinctively tries to blink, to shut out the horrors going on right in front of it and inside it, but it’s hopeless. The evil speculum forces my eye to take it all in. The Valium, which my mother later tells me has minimal effect on anyone in our family (??!!!!!), is no help in forgetting all the atrocities once I leave the doctor’s office. The memories, the smell, the lights–it has all been permanently seared in my brain by a devilish bitchslapping laser (it’s no coincidence the light is red!).

A minute and a half later, the laser is done on my right eyeball. The doctor pulls my head out from under the machine. With great force he runs a metal swab over the eye, removing debris, ie burned eye cells or whatever the fuck it is the laser etches away.

Everything has been blurry since the tweezers came and flipped my cornea out of the way, like looking through water without my glasses on–which only made everything that much creepier and surreal. I wonder what fucked-up shit Dali would have come up with if he’d experienced Lasik surgery. As if the melting clocks weren’t portentous enough.

The laser-probing is done on eye #1. Once I’m pulled out of the lights, it’s too dark to tell what’s happening through my watery vision. I sense something at the side of my eye, and then I see something cross over from one side to the other. The three dollar tweezers–they flipped my cornea back in place. I can see again. Normally I would breathe a huge sigh of relief, except I’m too scared shitless to move. Once again, I find that whimpering will suffice.

The last umpteen paragraphs? Repeat on eye #2.

It is during the laser-probing of my left eye that I identify the smell of burning eyeball. Flashback to age twelve, camping with my boy cousins. We’re sitting at the kid campfire, twenty feet away from the adult fire where a bottle of whiskey is being passed around. We’ve grown bored of melting marshmallows for s’mores, so we start melting patterns into a styrofoam cup using the hot coathanger that previously held hot dogs. Then we dangle an entire cup above the flames and watch it crumple into a tiny ball. That chemically smell of molten styrofoam. Cross that with the smell of a girl in chemistry class getting her hair caught on fire on a bunsen burner. That’s the smell of burning eyeball.

After the doctor unclamps the speculum from my eye and I have the privilege of blinking voluntarily once again, the nurse flips me back up into sitting position and swivels me out from underneath the eye-probing machine. I blink quickly. Already I can see better. Duuuuuude.

The doctor takes me by the arm and guides me into the exam room next door. By the second, it feels like my eyesight is improving. He directs me to a familiar eye machine (one that doesn’t hum, probe, or terrify) and uses it to examine my newly fixed eyes, still branded with tick marks–which he declares line up perfectly. The corneas are exactly where they should be. Well done, three dollar tweezers. You lucked out this time, motherfuckers, but I still don’t trust you.

He hands me a package containing goofy goggles and several boxes of eyedrops. I hold up one of the boxes. It’s blurry, but I can read the instructions. HolybejeezusonumaBITCH that shit is cool.

The fine doctor sends me on my way. I wave off his offer to guide me to the door. I don’t need it.

With goofy goggles in place, I enter the waiting room where three anxious soon-to-be-probed patients await my return–will I be crying? vomitous? smiling? bitchslapped, manhandled, and thoroughly reamed? well, yes, but I’m smiling anyway. “It’s not that bad!! I swear!” I announce to the room. They probably don’t believe me. Oh well, what the fuck do I care. Sweetie Pie promised me we’d stop at McDonald’s on the way home if I behaved well. There’s a big fattie of a chocolate milkshake coming my way.

Once wrapped up in a blanket on Sweetie Pie’s couch, I rub my tummy now full with chicken nuggets and chocolate squishy. She turns off the lights and leaves me to sleep for the rest of the afternoon. Four hours later I wake up, and I can see well enough to walk to the kitchen for a glass of water. I take a sleeping pill and go back to the couch. Four more hours later, I wake up, pull off the goofy goggles, and for the first time I behold the world in all its beauty with my very own eyes. I can see it all, and it is glorious.

In conclusion: totally worth the thousands of dollars, nightmares, probing, POPPOPPOPPOPing, bitchslapping, and bitter smell of burning eyeball. I would do it again in a heartbeat. Although I hope I don’t have to. It feels like I died three times–I just don’t think about that part. When I wake up in the middle of the night I can read the alarm clock! WOO HOO!! WAY TO GO, EYE-PROBING MACHINE!!

Still don’t fancy the tweezers, though.