Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Yesterday was a glorious day.

Far too good to be sitting in a hospital waiting room, I thought. To say I was nervous would be putting it mildly, but I needed new eyes, so there wasn’t much I could do about it. We were the first to arrive, hoping this early appointment would lesson the waiting. I think it did, but it was still three hours before it was all over with.

I am usually quite brave when it comes to this sort of thing, and have spent more than my share of time in hospital for one reason or another. This was supposed to be a simple proceedure to change the lens in my right eye, but it didn’t seem that simple once they got started. For a start, I hadn’t given the actual doing of it a thought. That once they strapped me down and clamped my eye open, I would have to watch what happened, close up and very personal.

It wasn’t painful, well not in the sense you first think of, and took about twenty minutes. I felt a lot of pressure on my eyeball, gallons of fluid were sloshed in a regular intervals, but the extremely bright light I had to stare at was making me feel giddy. When this light began to move rapidly about, creating a surreal psychedelic effect, I began to feel decidely ill.  I would imagine it was like one of those LSD trips from the eighties but not being a flower child these days, it was not pleasant and I prayed it would be over soon.

Then they strapped this clear plastic shield over the eye with copious amounts of sticky tape and said I could go back to the recovery room. But when I sat up, the room revolved around me. I wanted to be sick and knew if they wanted me out of there, I would need some help.

That was when an attractive male nurse arrived and asked if I needed help. I have never been so grateful to be offered an arm in my life. I made it to the recovery room and enjoyed a welcome cup of coffee.

That evening was a nightmare. I had to keep the shield on until the morning, when I was allowed to clean the eye and start the regime of drops. In the meantime, it was itchy, sore and uncomfotable. The tape was pulling my skin and my head was killing me.

I tried to look at my emails, hoping I could do some work with my one good eye, but to my disapointment, that eye wouldn’t focus either. By then, I was tired and frustrated. The tv was just a blur, so I listened instead, wondering how long it would be before I could actually see anything.

I was awake early this morning, desperate to be rid of the shield and clean my eye and as I pottered about, I made an amazing discovery. I could see clearly through the new lens. In fact, it was showing up the other one something rotten. Everything looked clean and fresh with my new eye, while the old one was making everything look old and dirty.

Hopefully, I won’t have to wait too long to have that one done too…

Already, I have discovered a major drawback to all this improvement and I may have to spend the next few weeks catching up on the housework, either that or stop looking around with my old eye!