I can see clearly now the frames have gone
Our writer describes how laser eye surgery has changed his life...
IT’S NOT every Thursday morning that you find yourself lying flat on your back with a laser beam fizzing into your eyeball. But I’d signed up to have my eyes fixed and that’s why I was now in Optical Express’s sleek, white operating theatre in Newbridge, Co. Kildare.
I was indisputably petrified for at least 24 hours before the operation commenced. It was a peculiar feeling — like I was about to get married or move country — but having laser eye surgery is a massive, life-changing step.
Millions of eyes are successfully zapped every year but that didn’t stop my own eyes from wobbling in nervous anticipation. They knew something was up.
Forty-three years of experience ensured that from the moment they opened on the appointed morning, they were on high alert. Alarmed, unblinking, sometimes subdued, sometimes weary, but always, always aware that something immense was about to happen.
I sat down with the wonderfully comforting Aisling Keating from Optical Express who comprehensively explained the likely side-effects — dry eyes, heightened sensitivity to light, red blotches on the eyeballs, starbursts and halos appearing over lights.
There was also a stark warning about ‘rare complications’ but I took a deep breath and advanced i nto the theatre where three people in white were on hand to take care of me.
My all- i mportant ophthalmic surgeon was Mr Stefan Klopper, a kindly, straight-talking South African who I liked instantly.
Drops splash in my eyes and I lie back and try to think of nice things as my body heads into the iDesign iLASIK machine.
‘This will last 12 seconds’, says a voice. I think of my daughter Jemima and how she wondered if we could dig a hole through our lawn to Australia. Red lights flash in a faraway tunnel.
‘And, holding absolutely still … 12, 11, 10, 9 … Daddy, do kangaroos hop upside down? …7, 6, half-way now … hop hoppity hop … nearly there, 3, 2 and 1, well done.’
There is no time to celebrate because my other eye is now also under the laser. I rapidly focus thoughts on my other daughter Bay and her stream of marvellous questions. Can you be half past six years old? How do they make humans? But who invented the Big Bang?
THESE two 12- second zaps are each followed by longer zaps of 34 seconds which are somewhat harder to sustain. It’s very trippy, a little claustrophobic, a bit uncomfortable but ultimately very quick. Misshapen rainbows blossom into orange circles, like when you stare at the sun for too long, or when you walk into a hotel where they’ve over- garnished the carpet.
Then it feels like somebody’s thumb is pressing on my eye and things go dark and blobby for a while. The surgeon is talking to me, explaining exactly what I should be seeing. His descriptions are mercifully spot on.
And then it’s done and I take my leave and stumble to the waiting room where my wife Ally has polarised shades at the ready. Many people had stressed the importance of dark glasses at this time.
I totter towards the car with Ally, keeping my eyes closed. It already feels like I’ve slept in someone else’s contact lenses for a week. She drives me home and I talk to her of kangaroo headstands and distorted rainbows.
At home I gobble some Panadol Nighttime and lock myself into a darkened room. It is just after midday. I place night goggles on my head, tumble into bed and pass out. I awaken intermittently over the next 18 hours. During that first afternoon, it feels like my head is stuck in a bucket of chopped onions but I am forbidden from rubbing my eyes.
I am blessed with angels who appear intermittently, armed with lukewarm toast, sweet tea, white wine and eye drops to temper inflammation, infection and dryness.
‘ I know i ts uncomfortable,’ whispers Ally consolingly, ‘but it’s not like giving birth, twice.’ BLIND MAN’S BLUFF I PERFORMED like a complete swot over the ensuing week, making sure I did everything by the book. I slept for unbelievable l engths of time — mornings, afternoons and all through the nights f or the f i rst f ew days. I dreamed heavily, most potently of a vast universe of palettes going around and around on which every hint of a shade of a colour was represented, so I must have tickled whichever synapse looks after the whole colour vision side of things.
I didn’t feel great when I arrived into the kitchen for a cuppa on the first morning.
‘It’s my near vision that concerns me’, I said, adding a spoon of salt to my coffee. I probably hammed it up a bit but while I could now see the contours of distant hills, which I could not see before with glasses, I was unable to see the lines on the palm of my hand.
As the sort of person who stops to read every newspaper, book cover, picture or map I pass, the idea that I might not be able to see things up close gave me the fear.
By Saturday afternoon I realised I could actually see more and more things close up. Crikey, are my teeth really that tea- stained? Eeeeuw, look at those bags under my eyes! And yet my eyes were straining at the seams when I tried to focus on the nib of the pen I was writing with.
‘ I’ m going to have to wear reading glasses,’ I announced authoritatively that evening.
‘Are you emotional yet?’ asked Ally on Sunday morning, day three. Everyone said I’d get emotional after the operation. ‘It’s too soon to say,’ I told her, ‘I’m certainly bored of staring at my eyelids.’
But I realise I can now read some of the names on our world map and the smaller headlines on the Sunday papers. I go back to Optical Express for a check up — they’re based in a shopping centre so its usefully open on a Sunday — where a lovely ophthalmologist from Omagh tells me all is in order, despite the fact I can’t read most of the letters she asks me to identify.
‘You’re in early recovery. Have patience. Your near vision will adjust slowly.’
That night I watch Attenborough in the Galapagos on TV with my daughters. I have a red blob on my right eye that ‘freaks me out’, says Bay. By Monday I can read books. My eyes are slow to traverse and move about, and I can’t stay focused on anything for very long, but I am getting ready to concede that something amazing has just happened.
COME Wednesday I am in such good spirits that I march i nto Optical Express and r eel off the letters on the screen like I’m sitting on them. ‘ You’re better t han 20/20’, concludes the ophthalmologist. ‘It’s called 6/6 but nobody ever says that.’
And so that’s it. I have been zapped and it has been a major success. It takes me a while to accept this. For starters, there are a few side-effects.
Dry eyes were the most obvious discomfort but I moistened my eyes with drops regularly, gobbled fish oil daily, drank as much water as I could and tried to wipe my tear ducts clean twice daily. That seemed to do the trick.
While the tissue is healing, my eyes are much more sensitive to artificial light.
The Ready Brek glow around oncoming headlights at night is particularly strong. I gave a talk a few weeks after the operation and nearly tumbled off the stage in shock when they suddenly switched on a projector to light up a screen behind me.
Mind you, the glare factor was never great for me with glasses and I’m assured it will resolve itself within a year.
I also had a foggy haze upon awakening for the first month or two, so that there was a time lapse before I could see clearly, not unlike the delay you get before an environmentally friendly light bulb comes to full glow. The foggy haze has now dissipated.
Indeed, these days I simply open my eyes and I can see. The benefits are constant. I no longer awaken in the night to search for spectacles that have somehow fallen on the floor and become hidden under the bed.
I can use binoculars and cameras and distinguish shampoo from mouthwash when I’ m having a shower.
When I get my haircut, I no longer have to remove my glasses and weakly joke to hairdressers ‘you’re on your own from here’.
I swim as often as I can, with goggles, and now I can see the other swimmers who have been trying to make eye contact with me over the years.
I can even distinguish my own wife and daughters from other people who look like them.
An extraordinary and genuinely amazing thing happened to me earlier this year. I was not blind but I could not see with ease. And now, with the assistance of a laser beam, I can see with astounding clarity. Yes, it’s a little emotional. Yes, it’s a miracle. Yes, it’s wonderful. There is no looking back.