At first, I felt like a bride on the night before her wedding day, questioning whether this was really what I wanted, if it was necessary for my survival. However, since it opened up many possibilities and was reversible at this point, I decided to go through with it. Dr. Thebes reviewed with me the pros and cons of the lens. He said with these lenses I will be able to see clearly again and that squinting no longer meant trouble seeing but now meant magnifying. He also warned me in his more serious tone to be careful about what to magnify, as things such as fire and the sun were still harmful to the eyes. He went through the operation in detail explaining that there will be a permanent lens, like a contact lens, attached to the surface of my eye. Thin microscopic wires extend and wrap around the eye and are then inserted into regions of the brain that associate with seeing. If I wanted to see something clearer than 20/20 vision, all I had to do was squint, and like a microscope, the degree to which I squint equaled the degree of magnification.
The first few days after surgery, my eyes felt as if they were recovering from severe third-degree burns. I was constantly tired as the areas around the wires were still healing, adjusting, and “re-wiring”. However, on exactly the eighth day, I felt like I had returned to normal, as if I just put in my contact lenses that morning. Except these were permanent. I found that I could see everything beyond “clear”. I felt as if I had developed a sixth sense that was beyond seeing. The world as I knew it, seemed completely new and different.
A week or two later, I caught a cold from my coworker. I had to blow my nose every five seconds and my as my eyes were puffy, the sneezes automatically provoked “squinting”.
Since my vision was constantly magnified now, the easiest of my daily routines transformed into the most daunting of tasks. Everything in my field of vision was thoroughly narrowed. In the morning, it took me twice as long to turn the water on. The act of brushing my teeth became one of the most unbearable endeavors of my every day. I witnessed small squirming forms between what I expected to be the impeccably clean nylon bristles of my toothbrush and had to close my eyes as I brushed. Thus, I went through two or three toothbrushes each day.
As my cold got worse, my eyes began to squint even more due to the swollen eyelids. As time progressed, my world became infected with raw images of disease. I began to see the world through a microscopic lens and even in my dreams I was haunted by the reality of my sickness.
When I started to see the microscopic germs squirming around on my skin, I also began to scratch. I couldn’t bear to see germs on me anywhere. I began to turn hallucinatory and thus began scratching violently. Soon my skin caught an infection, as my wounds would often reopen. It was three weeks later that my mother would find me in my bedroom in an untouchable state and send me to the E.R.
For the first few days, I was under heavy anesthetics and tons of antibiotics that had names more than seven syllables long. I underwent several minor surgeries to remove the dead and infected flesh, and when I was finally conscious again, the trail of doctors and psychiatrists began trickling in. After several sessions, they found the root of my problem, and unanimously decided that it was necessary to remove the lenses. The removal surgery was much more intense and complicated than the original insertion. Since my body had gotten used to the lenses and wires, and had healed quite nicely, the flesh around the wires now had to be carefully sliced through and then reconnected. The surgery alone took 72 hours.
Two months later after finally healing, I requested to see the lenses. A nurse brought them to me in a petri dish and I just remember thinking how something so small could have changed my entire world.
© estalement 2009
