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GenePool
Humor
Eye For an Eye
Here's a little something you may not know about me: I wear glasses. I have worn them for quite some time-- since freshman year in college-- and never really minded.
Okay, that isn't entirely true. I got my first pair in high school, but never wore them, which might explain my grades senior year. After a few brief setbacks-- like the time a girl told me the only time I looked like a "Eugene" was when I wore them, which resulted in them being banished to my sock drawer for a year-- I got used to it. Now, I think I look better with glasses than without, even if I do look like a Eugene.
Which brings me to my wife. Deb has never gotten used to wearing glasses. She's constantly putting them down in random locations throughout her house, meaning that it is a daily chore for members of our family to find them for her so she can drive to work. About a year ago I picked up optical insurance from my employer and immediately took advantage of it by buying myself a nice pair of glasses (that are now totally screwed up because my nose is crooked, but that's a different story.) Deb decided to go too, which I thought at first was great because maybe there was a chance the optometrist would permanently affix her glasses to her face, or at least attach a tracking device to them. Instead, he told her about laser surgery.
If you are like me-- a normal human being-- then the idea of shining an incredibly bright light into your eyes on purpose sounds as stupid to you as poking your eyeball with a sharp object. But it turns out that now, thanks to modern medicine, it is possible to pay somebody to do both to you at the same time.
I can't even imagine how one perfects such a procedure. Did they use chimps first? If so, how do you ask a chimp if his vision is better now, much less identify one who needs glasses? And it's a laser, for god's sake. They can be very destructive, as anyone who has watched Star Wars knows.
But it wasn't my decision. It was my money, but that never stopped anyone in my family before. Deb decided to go through with it, and I, being the supportive husband, forcibly checked her into a psychiatric clinic. When it turned out there wasn't enough wrong with her to justify her staying, she went through with the operation.
I had the joyous pleasure of escorting her to the clinic, which was a mildly creepy experience, because I got to watch the whole thing. Here's what they did to her.
First, they had to administer eyedrops to dilate her pupils. This made it harder for her to run away. It was then that she discovered she really hated having things dropped into her eyes, which would be something of a problem later. It was around this time that she started to get nervous, in the sense that she was twitching and couldn't form complete sentences. Sensing the potential cancellation of the check I'd written, the doctor provided her with some valium. I didn't get any.
Once her pupils were in a sufficiently dilated state, she was escorted into the operating room. I wasn't allowed in, which was okay, because the only medical advice I knew to dispense to her during a medical emergency was "push," which is apparently only useful during labor. I sat outside and watched through a little window.
The first step was to apply a medieval torture device to one of her eyes. This was a small metal bracket with an eye-sized hole in the middle. It's job was to suck her eyeball out of her head, much in the way Satan would if he were in the medical field. This accomplished, they graduated to another torture technique and flayed the top of her eyeball, slicing it almost all the way off. I don't know how Deb felt about it, but I was squirming quite a bit.
With that out of the way, the fun began. Deb was having astigmatism corrected. Astigmatism is when your eye is shaped more like a football than a basketball. To correct it, the laser vaporized part of Deb's eye until it was properly rounded, without also vaporizing her entire head, although I bet this happened to at least one chimp. This happened very quickly, and also invisibly. (Deb's eyeball had been dried with what looked on the monitor like a bath towel, but was probably a lot smaller. Since her eye wasn't moist, it didn't reflect light, and since the view was from the top down and none of the laser light was being reflected, it wasn't visible. You probably didn't need to know that.) It was over in about ten seconds. Then they put the top of her eyeball back down, put the eye back into her head, and she was done.
Unfortunately, my wife comes equipped with two eyeballs. At this point they asked her if she wanted to go ahead with the other one. I was about ready to quit at this point, but I didn't get a vote, and Deb went through with the other eye.
Then we both got to go into a small, rather dark room so that the valium Deb took earlier would get a chance to kick in. (My wife has never been able to feel the effect of a drug at the appropriate time. When she got a shot of Demerol while in labor with our son, it didn't effect her until after he'd been born.) We were provided with the startling information that the human eye needs time to heal after it has been flayed and slow roasted. Deb was given a list of things not to do to her eyes, which included: no squinting, squeezing, rubbing, scratching, touching, or opening. No bathing. Also, two sets of eyedrops had to be administered every four hours, plus artificial tears whenever they itched. (Yes, folks, you can buy tears at your local pharmacy. A great gift for the man who cannot cry.) When she was awake, she had to wear wraparound sunglasses like the ones elderly people wear when they want to look especially dorky. When she was asleep we had to tape eye shields to her face so she didn't rub them in her sleep.
It took about a week before she could see clearly enough to discover something mildly disturbing. The surgery effectively returned her eyes to the state they were in before she developed astigmatism. Turns out she needed reading glasses back then.
This is known as irony.
© 2002, Gene Doucette
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