Surgery continued

Now I'm on the train to Shanghai from Hangzhou with Josef and Seth.  This last week in KL was a little uneventful; other than walking around a little forest reserve, we didn't really get out.  The group dynamic changed a little with Ben leaving and Lena's arrival.  We kind of turned into stay-at-home bums.  Or maybe the inevitable inertia of KL caught up with us.

Back to the surgery: I went in on Friday morning with Mom, Seth, and Lena.  We got there at 8:45, they did minimal prep (read: swab my eyes with disinfectant and give me a robe and head cap), and then they left me in a chair for almost two hours!  Not cool.  When it was finally my turn, I walked into the operating room and lay down on the operating table.  The door was glass, so the other three stayed outside and watched.  Professor Doctor Muhaya Mohamed was very professional and supportive - she said a prayer before beginning and gave me continual encouragement during the surgery, which kept me from thinking too much about it.

The surgery itself was worse than I thought it would be.  I have pictures Seth took, but they don't come close to approximating how it felt.  First she cut off my corneas, and then they mapped the tissue underneath with lasers to determine where to cut.  The second part for each eye was the actual burning of the tissue with lasers, shaping my eye into a better lens.  I had to stare into ridiculously bright lights the whole time, they put thick contact lenses into each eye to keep them open, and they kept dripping saline solution into my eyes the whole time.  For the actual surgery, they had the machine suction the contact lens to keep my eye in place - not a pleasant sensation.  Nor was the tapping on my eye with the scalpel.  When they finished, I felt like I had been swimming in the ocean with my eyes open for hours.  I was tearing up constantly, and they gave me dark glasses to wear because my eyes were so sensitive to light.  It's been three days now, and things are still slightly blurry, but I'm mostly recovered, and my vision is great!  On the whole, I think I would do it again.