Complex Numbers

Eye Gevalt!

8. I've had eye surgery.

If you didn't cringe when you read that a few days ago, or when you read it just now, I'll rephrase:

I once tore my cornea, and they stitched it back together.

Or,

I've had a surgeon poking needles into my eye.

It was 1987, and it was my left eye. I was working in construction, and I'd just dropped my glasses all the way down a stack of cinderblock cells. Minutes later, a nail came up and the head popped me in the eye.

When I went to the hospital, they scheduled me for immediate surgery. "Immediate" in this case meant "the next day," which I suppose prepared me for the 12-hour "right away," fifteen years later.

Fortunately, I was under a general anesthetic for the actual surgery. Recovery took a few months, after which my eyesight was as good as before - maybe even a bit better.

The worst part was the night after the night of the surgery. The corneal stitches were leaking, and to keep the stuff that's supposed to be in my eye, in my eye, they put cyanoacrylate on the stitches. But they put too much on and it got in my sclera.

Imagine having superglue on the white part of your eye.

Anyway, I can't complain much - like I said, the eye got better, and at least THIS didn't happen to me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthesia_awareness

Yeah - give me snakes, spiders, or clowns any day. Just Not That.