I’ve avoided doctors, hospitals and anything to do with medical issues as much as I could for most of my life. The majority of my attendances to establishments of healing have been at the request of medical practitioners. Tests, routine checks and the like. Even after injuries and necessary procedures, I’ve always failed in keeping up with follow-up appointments or taking medications as instructed.Take majorly important stuff like my heart attack. For the first year after, I probably only managed three full weeks of routinely taking the half dozen tablets a day expected of me. I’m just shit at medical stuff generally.
Over recent years though, I’ve battled my reluctance to consult the local surgery and my visits have gradually become a little more frequent. I still will not join a queue of a dozen people at 8:00 am just to get an appointment though. Maybe I have a queue-phobia that I really should see a doctor about?
Following an eye-test a couple of years back, I was diagnosed as having cataracts. Soon after, I began to notice a slight blur to one side in my left eye. I couldn’t quite see it as it moved like a floater every time I tried to look at it, but over time it became more obvious and gradually, a bit of a hindrance. Eventually, after having my arse kicked by my optometrist nurse daughter-in-law, I decided to get my left cataract sorted.
I didn’t look into what actually goes on during cataract surgery and just had a horrifying vision of a Doctor Frankenstein figure prodding and slicing away at my eye while he replaced whatever needed replacing. Probably during a thunderstorm in a hilltop castle in Transylvania, or somewhere. The thought of watching and seeing, close-up, everything that the surgeon would be performing on me made my sphincter squint more than my eye.
However, it was nothing like I imagined. I neither saw nor felt anything anywhere near what I envisaged. In fact, as with most medical procedures, there was absolutely nothing to worry about. The Hammer House horror bloodbath I expected was no more than a hazy, fluffy dream of blurred lights and soft voices accompanied by chilled background music. The whole experience was almost enjoyable.
I don’t know what improvement I was really expecting from the surgery apart from the blurred spot not being visible anymore, but when I removed the eye-patch the following morning, my mind was blown. The vividness in my left eye was blinding. My sight had been regenerated to its former youth when crystal colours radiated in the freshness and crispness of juvenescence. The dullness of an old eye became bright and young again.
I was reminded of the time I stepped out of the opticians wearing my first pair of glasses at the age of nine. I’d spent nearly the whole of my first decade of life struggling in a blurry world of vision limited to not very far beyond my nose. My new glasses wowed my visual perception. Until then, I didn’t know I couldn’t see, but all of a sudden I could see everything that I normally wouldn’t and it was amazing.That fifteen minutes of surgery I absolutely feared has enlightened me. It has awoken me to the miracle of medicine more so than any other procedure or cure I have encountered throughout my life. My cataract operation is the best surgery I’ve ever had and I can’t wait to have my right eye done.
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