Saturday, May 29, 2010

The Procedure

On May 27, 2010, I went into the clinic to have the actual PRK procedure done.

Payment was taken care of at the front desk and I didn't have to wait more than a minute before a medical resident (I'm assuming that's who they were) came to get me prepared. I was take to a regular exam room where I was given the consent form that I'd already read over at home. I skimmed it again to make sure it was the same document and signed it. Then, we went over all the different drops that I would be needing post-procedure, what they did and how I should apply them, and I was given a bag of them to take with me. I was asked if I wanted a Valium to calm me beforehand and I yes so they opened a pill packet onto my hand and got me a cup of water. I have to say that I didn't really notice the effects of the Valium at all though. Even after the procedure, I couldn't tell that there were any
lingering sedative affects.

Let me note here that while I, having worn contacts, wasn't normally queasy at all with things being around or in my eye, the amount of involvement around the PRK procedure was on completely different scale (that is, surgery does not equal daily contact use or, I don't know, removing lashes form your eye, etc.) so I was glad to have something to calm me down at least psychosomatically.

Anyway, the technician asked if I had any further concerns and I mentioned that since I'd only been getting one or two hours of sleep a night for at least two nights before, that my eyes were already very dry and that it was very important to me that Dr. Manche was very liberal with the re-wetting drops. I'd watched Youtube videos of LASIK and PRK procedures prior to this (not recommended for the faint of heart, but it gave me a great sense of how long the actual procedure would take--not very long at all). This very popular video in particular (a recorded LASIK procedure with the patient commenting via video comments on their experience as it was happening) made me concerned because they do mention that their eyes were getting extremely dry between re-wettings and that at one point the doctor took so long that the dryness was "unbearable": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4kDC4sZ5Jg The technician assured me that Dr. Manche would definitely make sure that wasn't a problem.

Then, I was taken into the room where the laser was, put into a terrible shower cap with gauze squares tucked underneath on the sides of my face in order to keep my hair out of the way and, as I would later learn, to soak up the torrents of drops that Dr. Manche would put into my eyes. They positioned me on a chair. My one gripe was that it seemed the chair wasn't made for someone as small as me (I'm 5'2"), but that's how most things are in my life. So I had to scoot myself up higher on the chair in order to look into the laser machine.

Dr. Manche came and helped me position myself so that I could stare into the red light that the laser would be using to track my eye (it's a red dot with a ring of light around it). He then began taping my eye lashes out of the way and applied anesthetic drops to my eyes. At this point everyone in the room was making casual conversation to keep me at ease and this continued through the maybe 10 minutes it took to do everything. Part of me realized that it was to keep me calm or distract me, but another part of me wished that he was giving me technical explanations of what he was doing as he did it. As I was laying down, I asked that they think of
a time when they were on a flight where the pilot landed the plane so skillfully, so beautifully that they didn't even feel the landing and everyone broke into applause--and told them that I expected the same (including the applause) at the end of this procedure because it was going to go so smoothly. They laughed and put in the instrument that would keep my eye open the whole time. I have to say that this thing made me pretty nervous because it reminded me of the torture scenes in A Clockwork Orange, but I actually only felt the tiniest pressure once they were in. My eye kept trying to blink and, I think because Dr. Manche was re-wetting my eyes so often as the muscles in my eye were trying to blink, it just felt like I was actually blinking so it wasn't uncomfortable at all.

Now, the actual procedure began
and it all happened very quickly. Overall, I have to say it was very disconcerting to be able to see all these things happen to my eye, and to feel a bit of pressure and (thankfully) no pain. Like I mentioned before, I'm not easily grossed out but the experience of this made me a little queasy to think about. I don't know the names of the instruments, so my descriptions will be pretty plain, but there was some kind of cylinder that was used maybe to mark where the epithelium was going to be removed. Then, Dr. Manche warned me as some kind of spinning, whirring flat, disc-like thing removed the epithelium from my eye. This was nerve-wracking because you can hear it do its work, but your eye sort of blacks out as it's happening. There was some fiddling around with sponges and scraper-like things probably to remove the leftover pieces epithelium. Then the laser treatment started. I was told to look at the red light and to move as little as possible. I could hear the zapping sound and actually smell something burning. I don't know if that was the smell of disappearing eye tissue since the laser is a cold one, or the smell of the laser itself. It was nice to know how the laser worked beforehand so that even though I tried to stay as still as possible, I know that involuntarily moving my eye wasn't going to destroy my eyesight forever.

When the laser finished, Dr. Manche doused my eye with some kind of liquid and BAM! the world (or rather, the laser instrument and the red light) looked instantly clear! Dr. Manche removed the thing holding my eye open and then started removing the tape. He explained that the tape is made so that it doesn't take any lashes with it when it's ripped off (thank god). He put something over that eye, taped it shut, shifted me over, and repeated the entire process for the other eye. I do have to say that I could feel more pressure with the left eye than the right eye, which made me really nervous that the anesthetic drops hadn't kicked in completely (especially when the spinning sandblaster-like thing removed the epithelium), but as the procedure kept going things started feeling the same again. Everything actually happened so quickly that, I told him later, I didn't even realize when he put the bandage contacts in. When everything was done, I could look around and instantly tell that the world was much clearer than I'd seen it for a while without the use of glasses or contacts.

I walked out to the waiting room on my own where a friend was waiting to drive me back. I
was definitely feeling a little loopy from the Valium (which had finally kicked in during the procedure) and my newfound vision and I couldn't stop staring at everything outside the window was we drove back.

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