Opus 2026-411: Day 1

I survived Monday’s cataract surgery.  That was day one.  Although the patch they put over my eye was a bit porous and would keep me from walking into walls, it was pretty much impossible to read or to edit anything that I dictated.  So this is reminiscence.

If you’ve been through this process this may be totally boring to you, but I thought I would share it anyway.  Feel free to chime in any different experiences that you had.  I know from listening to people ahead of time that results may vary although I did not talk to anyone who felt like it did not help.  So I went in with no major concerns.  The nurses also assured me that they had not lost one yet.  Of course, they would say that.

As usual with low-level medical procedures, the hardest part is the preparation and the waiting.  I generally don’t feel hunger in the morning, probably because I’ve tanked up on coffee and it’s killing those urges.  When I’ve gone without food before a colonoscopy, I have no memory of major hunger.  This time for me, it was very different.  I was hungry when I went to bed.  I was hungry when I woke  Up. I was hungry when they wheeled me into the hallway.  But that’s a minor issue.

The hospital clothing is always fun.  Don’t you love those gowns with no back. The surgery center I went to had a very innovative twist on gowns, they tied the knot for your head for you ahead of time so all you had to do was slip it over.  Genius.  Maybe you’ve experienced this before but I have not.  My next challenge was those itty-bitty socks they gave you.  Now you need to picture that the shoes I wear every day are size 17, and it took the nurse only one glance to realize that this was not going to be a positive experience.  Having been down this road before I managed to get them far enough up that they covered my heel.  I wasn’t planning on doing any walking anyway.

They started putting drops in my eyes.  I think they were at least three groupings of four bottles.  While they were distracting me with that, one of the nurses slipped in the IV.  It was a good stick.  Since I used to donate blood on a regular basis and have blood drawn at least twice a year for my regular check ups, I know a good stick when I see one, or don’t feel one.  The anesthesiologist came in and told me that if I felt any anxiety to let him know and he would up the dosage.  I didn’t bother asking him, but my question was if I am unaware of what’s going on how would I feel in any anxiety?  The nurse said it would be about a 30 minute procedure from when I left my cubicle and out of that only 10 minutes would be involved in the actual operation.  The doctor came by.  I had him hold up his hands to see if they were shaky and we got ready to wait.

The surgery itself was rather uneventful.  I am told that in the 10 minutes I got to sleep enough to snore.  At one point I remember telling the doctor I had to cough so he backed off, I coughed, and then we went back to work, so I must’ve been at least somewhat aware part of the time.  He asked me something about the red dot that I was supposed to see.  I told him it was green.  He humored me, but evidently everybody else sees it as read.  I remember them taking off the tape that they had covered my head with and taping on a patch over my eye and then they wheeled me down to a place where they put me in a reclining chair and I sat.

They gave me something to drink and a package of crackers.  My wife came and sat there waiting for them to tell us we could go.  We went out and got in the car.  We drove home.  I spent the rest of the day, taking naps and looking for YouTube videos that I could listen to.

I have experienced at this point no pain.  The first night the patch came off around three in the morning and I taped it back on.  At that point I could see that things seemed a little more clear and others weren’t.  And I went back to bed.

End of day one.  I am sure the excitement will build.

homo unius libri