Recovery room

It's been a long road since the optician expressed concern in January 2018 about my optic nerve and referred me on the a specialist in the Mater hospital.

I reached the end of that road today. The cataract had been removed from my right eye on 2nd January, and the left one was seen to today. I went in full of good spirits because things had turned out so great with the right eye, but the experience was very different this time.

Things didn't seem the same in the recovery room (that scary-looking chair in the corner is what I was lying on as they worked on me). Last time, I had vision in the eye that had been operated on and I could see more clearly than ever through the holes in the 'shield' (aka mask) they'd fitted over the eye.

Carl picked me up today and we stopped for breakfast on the way home. That's when I began to panic, because when I blocked off my good eye I couldn't see anything through the shield on the other one. It isn't that everything was black, but all I could see was a very big blur. As we sat there things began to improve, but I was still only seeing general shapes and movement and certainly nothing like the previous experience.

We went back to the Eye and Ear and Nurse Jo was wonderful and brought me straight away in to see the doctor, who proved to her own and her equipment's satisfaction that the procedure had been a total success. 'Your eye will take a while to recover from the various drops and ointments. You must remember you've just had surgery. It could be twenty-four hours before you'll fully recover — maybe even a week. Go home. Keep your eye closed. Rest.'

I didn't at all like the doctor's dismissive attitude and was very thankful that Nurse Jo was there with her much better bedside manner (which she went on to prove by phoning me later on to see how I was doing). I did as told, took a sleeping tablet and went into hibernation, only surfacing to apply the post-op drops.

I'm writing this the next morning. Things are much improved. I can see reasonably clearly with the left eye (though not yet with the pin-sharp vision of the right eye). I keep reminding myself that it was forty-eight hours after the first procedure when I took off the 'shield' and couldn't believe the clarity of what I was seeing. Hopefully history will repeat itself tomorrow morning. The omens are good.