Notes from the day I had Lasik + other eye related trivia

January 5, 2023

For the last 20 years of my life, the first thing I’ve done in the morning has been to fumble for my glasses. After every good night’s rest, and every not-so-good uncomfortable nap in cars. In the car, it’s usually tucked away into the seat pocket in front of me while I sleep on my mum’s lap. At home, despite all my promises of consistency, they move everyday — sometimes on my desk, sometimes atop the rightful bedside table, sometimes curiously placed within last night’s book under the bed, but mostly, they lie in bed next to me when I sleep alone. So each morning I fumble with the sheets, feeling for the frame with my hands. I’ve even sought help in this regard – yelling for my parents on school day mornings to aid in my searches.

Usually, they never come off after, apart from the aforementioned naps in cars, swims, and showers. Swims are usually an adventure of their own while showers are relatively easy, especially in known terrain. Even still, I carry my glasses into the shower each time, taking them off at the last possible second. I put them back on immediately after, making my way out of the bathroom with foggy and wet vision.

When I swim, I usually study the pool before jumping in. I’ve also gotten good at judging distances and velocities of oncoming traffic of swimmers. I’ve only bumped into a handful of swimmers in all of my experience. Finding friends however, is a more challenging chore. Over the years I’ve memorized the colors of their swim caps — the bright neon of my brother, the blue and teal of my best friend — beacons in the pool. Mostly I assume that since they’ll be able to see me, things are okay, and this strategy has worked.

The ocean is a different terrain, literally. Here, what bothers me is not even the crowd of strangers and the conspicuous absence of swim caps. It’s the sand underneath! Or what is supposed to be sand underneath. Each step is panicky, unknowing of whether I’m about to step on sand or stone, or — and you can call this an irrational fear — a starfish or a toad. I’ve worn my glasses in the ocean more times than sensible.

It’s surprising to me therefore, in all my years adorning these fragile equipments atop my face that I’ve only broken 3 pairs of glasses. Most recently, last year, by taking a football to my face. When I was 14, I had the acute stupidity of purchasing the then fashionable, and to-date utterly impractical ‘frameless’ spectacles.

Predictably so, I broke them playing with my cousins. Unpredictably, we were playing a ‘game’ we called War wherein two opposing teams (usually formed on pre-existing rivalries) would wield anything within a child’s bedroom as a weapon and throw all things from pillows to tennis balls, sketches to badminton racquets at each other until a team (or usually one injured player) calls quits. That we only broke a pair of frameless spectacles (and a lot of ego) in these games is by itself a miracle worth dwelling on. That all it took was my youngest cousin’s soft plushie to my face is, if anything, cute. We later got the ‘frames’ fixed and repurposed as my amma’s spectacles. I got dealt a marginally more practical metal frame.

I’ve squished metal frames innumerable times, and they’ve portrayed immense resilience each time. Mostly they’d just get malformed, like play-dough. In a careful adult’s hands, they’d be back to perfect in seconds. I always handed mine to my mum’s surgical, sure hands. I’m not sure how my dad would have fared.

The third and final time is a hazy memory. I can’t tell if I’m making it up. I was in 3rd grade. I had a pair of metal glasses. My vision was good enough that I could make do without glasses, although I wore them most of the time. I recall placing them on the railings of my school corridor on the 3rd floor. I remember wondering if they’d survive the fall (some kid in my class had boasted that his had). I remember then running downstairs to pick up my unscathed pair of glasses from the hot, dusty ground. Whether I had intentionally dropped them or the wind had carried them over — I don’t know. Hell, I don’t even know if I’ve made this memory up. I’m just realizing that in any case, they didn’t break, so this incident doesn’t count. Never-mind then.

I’ve been called ‘butti’ (Tamil colloquial word for glasses that is mildly insulting) all the time. I’ve grown rather dear of that nickname.

Wintry, unspectacular potato looks back perplexedly at its past framed face.

Outside of a few trials and tribulations with lenses, butties have been a staple diet on my face for 2 decades. I have my LASIK (laser assisted in situ keratomileusis, or one of those words that you’ll know is an acronym but can’t quite place) procedure scheduled for today and I know it isn’t a big deal. I know it is a simple procedure. I know millions of folks have undergone this. I’m not scared (well, I’m not terrified). I’m certainly sentimental though.

– Butti

First few thoughts post-surgery:

1. My ophthalmologist lied when he called this a painless surgery.
2. If one eye hurts more than the other, does it mean they botched half the surgery?
3. Where are my glasses?
4. My head hurts. On one side. Refer to (2).
5. I need to remove my lenses/my eyes are dry. (Post surgery, eyes tend to dry out since a part of the procedure cauterizes nerves that connect the cornea to tear glands. This leaves the eyes with a contact-lenses-worn-too-long feeling.)
6. Whoa, did the window always have so many cracks?
7. How do people sleep with so much entertainment? One routine I’d created unknowingly was a ‘bedtime mode’ for my vision. Like turning off blue light or setting your phone on B/W mode, removing my glasses made the world dimmer, a bit duller. The world was now too entertaining to just go to sleep. This took a few days to get over.
8. I can SEEEEEEE! (This I repeated so many times I’m surprised no one has told me off, yet.)

More on eye-related things!

1. What is Astigmatism, anyway? Here’s a 110 second video with a 60 second explanation.
2. ‘Starry-Eyed’ can mean you’re an optimist with impracticable thinking. It could also mean that your retina has been detached from the back of the eye by the vitreous fluid and that you need immediate medical attention. As we say it, potato, po-tah-to.
3. Strawberry Squids, besides having a bizarre name, outdo the rest of us puny species with an asymmetric evolution in vision. The two eyes of the squid are differently sized — one is almost twice as large as the other, and are positioned differently to allow for separate functions. The larger eye is positioned to look up, to sight shadows using the dim sunlight that pervades the depths of the ocean. Sunlight can only permeate up to 200m under the ocean’s surface and Strawberry squids can be found up to 1 km under the surface. The smaller eye on the other side of the head looks down for bioluminescence in the water.
4. ‘Madras Eye’ or conjunctivitis is an infection to the outermost portion of the eye that can be caused by virus or bacteria. The common name of ‘Madras Eye’ doesn’t seem to have an obvious explanation, apart from a singular pithy article in The Hindu claiming that the virus was first discovered in Madras in 1918. I suppose ‘Madras Eye’ has a better ring to it than ‘Chennai Eye’.
5. Hindsight is always 20/20 or 6/6? From the 20/20 of visual acuity, the phrase generally means that things are obvious in retrospection that weren’t clear at the onset. I recently found out 20/20 is the same as 6/6 – one’s in imperial units and the latter is in meters. 6/6 means you, at 6 meters away can see what an average person can see at 6 meters. Having a vision of 20/16 would mean you have superior eye-sight, you can see at 20 what the average person can only see from 16 feet away.