Surgery Day (Part Two)

Well, my poor old eyelid has finally been sorted - courtesy of a 45-minute x2 surgeon operation, plus a supporting cast of brilliant medical folk. 

It turned out to be a longer, trickier procedure than either I or my consultant had expected. And honestly, I really wish they’d knocked me out entirely instead of giving me six of the most excruciating injections I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing. 

I arrived at the ophthalmic surgery at 12:30 and was quickly moved from the general waiting area to a larger room that eventually filled with 8 patients. As we settled in, we began swapping stories. It turned out we were all there for either cataracts or, like me, eyelid-related issues. Thanks to the room’s open-plan design, we had the pleasure of hearing every detail of each other's conditions. I won’t go into specifics here, but let’s just say I winced more than once at how personal some of those consultant-patient chats got. One story in particular stayed with me and still tugs at me days later. 

I was the last of us to face the surgeon’s knife and, lucky me, got to hear the post-op groans of those who came back before me. Plenty of grimaces, muttered “never again”s, and the sort of haunted looks that don't exactly calm the nerves. At around 4:30 p.m., when our merry group had dwindled to just yours truly, it was finally my turn. 

Oddly enough, the scalpel, cauterising, and stitching didn’t hurt at all. But the six local anaesthetic injections straight into my eye? The most definitely did. That was, hands down, the most painful experience of my nearly 59 years of life. Because I couldn't afford private treatment, the wait for NHS treatment meant the tissues below my eye had toughened up and blocked my tear duct. This was briskly resolved with a saline syringe flushed through until it reached my nasal passage - at which point I got a delightful cocktail of salty tears and slightly sweet blood trickling into my mouth. That, too, hurt. Not quite injection-level pain, but still grimly memorable. At one point, the surgeon's asked if I could cope with the pain. Desperate to avoid more needles, I just grunted “Yes” and lay as still as possible, trying to ignore the glimpses of scalpels and ominous-looking tools being aimed under my poor old eyeball. 

To add to the drama, it became apparent one surgeon was training the other. So, naturally, I had the privilege of hearing a play-by-play commentary of everything about to happen to my face. “Snip there. Lateral slice there. Diamond-cut this. Cauterise here. Thread the suture through the tendon - no, firmer than that, jiggle the needle - it’s tough tissue... no, that’s too superficial... here, let me show you...”

Honestly, it was like being trapped in an on-the-surgeon's-operating-table nightmare. Eventually, it was all over. Everyone seemed very pleased with how everything had gone. Grateful, I thanked every single person in the theatre at least a dozen times as they wheeled me back to the now-empty waiting room. I sat alone, clutching a black coffee (no vegan milk options, of course), texting my wonderful partner to come pick me up, conscious that Day-Surgery was about to close for the day. 

Back home at last, I sank onto the sofa, dosed myself up on co-codamol, and waited for the swelling to kick in...