It was not a pleasant experience but not entirely unpleasant. Blessed NHS sent angelic drivers to pick me up and bring me back home. The wait at the hospital was long but quiet and punctuated by the insertion of many varieties of eyedrops. The op itself was surrealism, sci-fi and existentialism. Only the left eye was anaesthesised, I was fully conscious, lying down, head and face covered apart from small area left open for the surgical business. Various masked and gowned persons moving about, talking, presumably about what they were doing, and strange, melodic machine sounds. Instructions given to me were simple: look up, keep both eyes open, breathe. What I saw looking up was something like the view from a spaceship. Different kinds of lights, shapes like abstract skulls, crystalline cobwebs. I felt calm, detached. Also annoyed that it was taking so long. It seemed long but maybe it was only an hour or two. Then the surgeon said it's all done, everything went very well. In the waiting room, they gave me a cup of tea,biscuits and instructions to take home plus more eyedrops I must use for 2 weeks several times a day. An ambulance ride home and that's that.
The glint in my eye is not a glint: it's a reflection on the plastic shield taped over the de-cataracted eye which I must wear for a week every night when I sleeo but can take off in the daytime. As yet I have no idea what the world will look like through the doctored eye. We shall see. Goodnight for now.
