My experience with laser eye surgery – report from Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Hello everyone
After the operation, I slept like a log for eleven hours, which was good not only for my eyes. My feelings are very ambivalent. Because of my high number of dioptres, the procedure was more invasive than it is with milder short-sightedness. That means laser exposure for ten seconds instead of five (as in the case of Manu’s enthusiastic friend Natascha). It did not hurt. And it was not that I was poorly prepared. What may have been distressing was that I had to SEE everything, as I could hardly close my eyes. I felt the pressure of the “suctioned” eyeball, of the eyelid being held open artificially. At times you lose vision, then it returns again, like being in an aeroplane flying through clouds, then a colourful ring-like trip, the way I imagine it might be when taking LSD. The laser burns a cut into the cornea, which is lifted with a small blade; then the laser ablates the underlying corneal layer so that the incoming light can subsequently focus on it and produce the desired sharp image on the retina instead of the blurred one I had known all my life. After just under fifteen minutes, everything is over. The patient stands up, can open her eyes and sees everything clearly. However, she is instructed to keep them closed for another four hours and to rest in the hotel. Which she did, because she felt like a newborn who did not yet want to know anything about the world that had just opened up to her.
Next day: Good Friday. In the breakfast room, Silent Night and other Christmas carols. Apparently, it had been noticed that it was an important Christian holiday and that the predominantly Western guests should be given some pleasure with this – just as we might assume the entire Orient enjoys “oriental sounds”. The eyes need to be treated with drops once an hour, but otherwise sightseeing is on the agenda. A visit to the Blue Mosque with crowds of other tourists, shoes all packed into plastic bags, but heads uncovered. Then a Bosphorus cruise, swaying in high waves between Europe and Asia, the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. In the cold and rain, the eyes anxiously protected with sunglasses, on to the Grand Bazaar.
Apart from that, Istanbul is a historical goldmine and today an overpopulated metropolis (three times the size of Switzerland!), in which not even the façades shine any more – which makes it endearingly honest. Between rows of buildings, there is repeatedly a ruin that can hardly be demolished without neighbouring houses also being blown up. Many people work in the European part and live in the Asian part; the latter is therefore more residential, greener and better maintained. The two suspension bridges between the continents are constantly congested because of commuter traffic, as are the roads; the underground network has so far only been expanded in the liveliest district, Taksim. Istanbul is a melting pot of nations and even of different religious communities.
On Saturday at five in the morning, as on every morning, the muezzin woke us. The return flight, with its dry cabin air, was not good for the eyes. Back home, there was finally a feeling of unclouded joy at being able to see familiar objects sharply without visual aids. It is also wonderful that vision is no longer limited by the edges of glasses. The highlight is in the morning, when I open my eyes and don’t first have to reach for my glasses in order to see clearly.
It is strange, though, how quickly everything becomes normal. Some say they see much more than before. That is not the case for me, but I see about as well now without glasses as I used to with them. My short-sightedness was deliberately not fully corrected because I am already of a more advanced age, and otherwise presbyopia would apparently set in more quickly. Still, I can see well into the distance without glasses.
What is still inadequate at the moment is near vision. That means everything appears blurred when I read, and I hope that I won’t immediately need reading glasses. However, the doctor reassured me in this regard and said that this is normal during the first few days.
Was mich auch noch etwas sonderbar berührt, ist Folgendes: Wenn ich nun ohne Brille in den Spiegel schaue, sehe ich viel stärker die Gesichtszüge meiner Mutter in mir. Die Brille hat das zuvor nicht so deutlich hervortreten lassen. Dieser Anblick löst bei mir einen gewissen Unwillen aus. Gleichzeitig aber empfinde ich meine Augen als schön – gross und klar.
Warm regards, Petra Paul