The Eyes have it

I am not sure what it is, something in the air perhaps, but every other person I know seems to be going in for cataract surgery. This awareness has been brought sharply to my attention when, after a routine eye check-up, my ophthalmologist declared that I am a ripe candidate for the removal of my cataract in both eyes before they ripen any further. As some poet, whose name escapes me for the nonce said, ‘The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe for change.’ A date was set and I began to embark on the inevitable Google search to learn all about cataract surgery, its benefits and risks, at the end of which I was not sure if my eyesight will return to its pristine 20/20 vision status, or if I will turn completely blind. I have warned some of my closest friends and relatives never to conduct internet searches relating to one’s medical issues. That way lies the path to prolonged uncertainty and misery. In the event, I did not heed my own counsel, and had to spend a few weeks in speculating on all manner of post-surgery complications that were a product of the wretched Google and my own fertile imagination.

However, as I had indicated at the top of this piece, I was in good company. Unbeknownst to me, my brother in Chennai was about to have his eyes operated upon for cataract. The same went for two of my cousins and three close friends, some of them living abroad. We came within a toucher of forming a WhatsApp group, we ‘Cataractees,’ if you will pardon the coinage. That is the way to go nowadays in our digital world. We could have daily, if not hourly, exchanged messages on symptoms, our doctors’ relative competence, eyedrop routines, insurance issues, post-op adjustments and so on. Thankfully, wiser counsel prevailed and we threw the idea out of the window. Nevertheless, well-meaning advice was given and received with gratitude, even if such advice was gratuitous. One of my close friends, claimed he saw pink immediately after the surgery. ‘Everything looked alarmingly pink for a couple of days,’ he exclaimed, ‘was I turning colour blind?’ Surely not, if he could see pink. I don’t know about pink, but he must have seen red vis-à-vis his surgeon. Happily, his pink phase passed and his sight returned to normal, and his eyes are now in the pink of health. That was good news for my friend, but as I was about to submit myself to the surgeon’s knife (or laser), it gave me pause.

Speaking of being alarmist, I had to take a fitness certificate from my GP, based on a routine ECG and blood test, this to be submitted to the hospital before my eye doctor would agree to undertake the surgery. I expected this to be a cakewalk, but my GP saw something in my ECG report that I did not. ‘I don’t like this,’ he said gravely, looking at one of the snaky squiggles that typically turn up on an ECG graph, if graph is what it is. He then proceeded to write a diabolical, lengthy, hand-written report, which virtually said I undertake this procedure at my own risk. I then did what any sensible person would have done. Went to another diagnostic centre and had a fresh ECG done. Lo and behold, this time it came out clear and unblemished. My heart was in the right place, after all. The doctor at the diagnostic centre gave me a clean bill of health and I was on my way. Moral of the story – always take a second opinion.

D-Day arrived and I reported, as directed, promptly at 8.30 in the morning at the hospital for the procedure. This, after two postponements due to some technical issues pertaining to the condition of my eyes and their readiness for surgery. As to what those technical issues were is not pertinent. Suffice it to say the postponements only increased my suspense and gave full rein to my already galloping imagination. Prior to that, I had to be administered 13 eyedrops for a day to ward off infection preparatory to the rigours of the surgery. The person to suffer more was my wife, who had to do the drop administering throughout the day. All I had to do was lie supine, stock-still and look up. Every speck of dust and strand of cobweb on my ceiling fan is indelibly embedded in my memory. Little was I to know that this was just the beginning of the ordeal which, post-surgery would continue for the best part of three months. Drop, drop, drop five or six times a day. A bit like Chinese torture – for the dropper and the dropee.

The rigmarole involved with the surgery itself is interesting. You are first escorted into an ante-chamber, there to recline in a plush leatherette arm-chair, along with six other patients who are awaiting the procedure. Only then do you realise that you are in an assembly line queue. While seated comfortably on these recliners, which remind you of business class travel on an international flight (not that I have had much experience of that), having changed into the customary green smock with matching head-gear, the nurses come round and take your blood pressure, check your pulse rate, administer more eye drops, ask you nicely if you would like some water to drink. They are stone deaf to requests for café latte. You then wait and look around at the other patients, who appear to be in dreamland. A gentleman next to me opened a conversation on the subject of Calcutta, in Bengali! On inquiring how he divined that I knew Bengali, he smiled and said that he heard me talking to my wife in Bengali earlier. For the record, neither my wife nor I are Bengalis but we spent half our lives in Calcutta and there’s no getting away from giving speech in that lovely language. Khoob bhaalo laagche!

At last, your name is called and you are escorted into the OT, which looks more like something out of a sci-fi movie. The sound system was softly playing some old Kishore Kumar / Asha Bhosle duet, Aankhon aankhon mein, baat hone do. Very apt. You are not given much time to take in the scene, as it were. All I saw was a bank of digital screens blinking away to kingdom come. Before you can say glaucoma, you are strapped to a narrow, cushioned plank, all manner of paraphernalia strapped on to you, and more and more anaesthetic drops wash over your eyes. I should properly say eye, because the procedure involved back-to-back surgeries for the left and right eye one day after the other. Anyhow, my surgeon comfortingly tells me I will feel nothing and it will all be over in 20 minutes. She was right. I felt nothing, but I saw stars. Not metaphorically but literally. All manner of coloured lights and shapes, flashing like streaks of lightning and my surgeon periodically asking me how I was feeling. I asked her, besides the eye drops, if I had ingested LSD! That is how crazy and colourful the ‘trip’ was. She laughed heartily, saying nobody had told her that before and if I had indeed dropped acid anytime in my life. I said ‘yes,’ once during my, carefree college days while grooving to The Allman Brothers Band or maybe, Grateful Dead. Some conversation to have during surgery! My whole conception of a surgeon underwent a sea change. Next thing I knew, it was all over and they had slapped a plastic cup and bandaged it over my left eye.

‘Well done,’ said my surgeon, cheerful as ever, as if I had anything to do with it. ‘See you again tomorrow for the right eye.’ ‘You’ve got yourself a date, Doc,’ said I. Come to think of it, it wasn’t such an ordeal after all. My surgeon kept up a steady stream of cheerful banter which kept me in good spirits. The whole procedure was repeated the following day. Two days later, I was looking at the world anew, with two bright new eyes. And I am not seeing pink. Or red. What is more, surprise, surprise, the insurance chaps gave me no trouble and the entire cost of the operation was taken care of in a jiffy. Sometimes, life can be a breeze. Finally, as the nurses were not obliging, on my way out I bought myself a delicious cup of hot chocolate at the swank branded franchise in the hospital foyer.

As we got into the car, I was feeling quite chuffed, though my wife bore a grim visage. ‘What’s up? Everything went well. Why the long face?’ Her response was telling. ‘I am thinking about the post-op drops I will have to administer for the next three months. About 750 of them. That’s why the long face.’

Clearly, she had the drop on me.