Third Time's The Charm

This morning I had my third eye surgery since July, and hopefully the last.  I have been anxious about this because my right eye has been filled with silicon oil since my last eye surgery in August, necessitated by the failure of the first surgery for a detached retina, which was the most painful surgery I have ever endured or would ever want to endure.

I was totally out for the second surgery, at my insistence, intubated and of course I didn't feel a thing.  But for this morning's surgery my doctor insisted that I was to have only a local anesthesia, just like the first surgery, because he might need me to move my head or eye upon command as he worked inside the orb with his tiny instruments and magnification gadgetry, in case the retina started rolling up off its platform of cones and rods as my eye was being flushed of the oil.

I greatly feared another agonizing moment as the scalpel cut into my eye, and I fixated upon that possibility, already once realized, as the weeks approaching surgery drearily went by.  I had a long talk with the anesthesiologist this morning pre-op, who was very sympathetic to my experience during the first surgery as I described it, and she said she had never had any other patient complain about eye pain during eye surgery but every case, and every head, is different and sometimes the nerves leading into the eye alongside the temple or maybe the cheekbone ridge aren't in exactly the same place as normal when the doctor put in the local pain-numbing or blocking cocktail of drugs.

I tried to be a big boy and I forced, or willed, myself to lie as still as possible if the incision hurt again, because that too would pass, as I lay on the gurney in the cold OR and everyone in scrubs bustled about me and spoke in clipped, precise sentences or issued crisp commands.  The next thing I knew I became aware of being wheeled out of the OR with only a trace of memory of people moving about or above me and I hadn't felt a thing, and I was so euphoric about not experiencing any pain during the procedure that an hour later I was dressed and having breakfast with the friend who picked me up (all surgery is ambulatory these days) at a nearby diner.