Matter of Fact It’s All Dark
Since the actual original bike accident on 1 May 2011, I have been under full anesthesia for more than 25 hours. That is a lot.
I had extreme misgivings about this last surgery, now 10 days ago. I have not been in a very good mood, and there is a lot of stuff that would be better to be doing. The ophthalmologic surgeon insisted that this was, like, the last chance to save the left eye, that it’s too busted up and nothing else has worked in terms of less drastic repairs. So even though, once I considered the alternative — of just having a fake eye that was an exciting color like violet or orange and different from the remaining eye and that eyes from the future like in Mona Lisa Overdrive will probably be invented soon — in my subdued state I agreed to this sort of new surgery where they graft some part of your good eye into your bad eye.
Unfortunately, until the moment the anesthesiologist told me what was going to happen I failed to realize that this would entail both eyes being totally patched for some number of days, and I was not very happy (as in extremely surprised and unhappy)* when I did realize it. But maybe I had been meaning to listen to the audio book of The Pale King anyway.
The trauma of surgery for me is normally the anesthesia…I am really kind of used to not being able wear my glasses, or see perfectly. This time I was out from about 10:30 a.m. until about 3:30 p.m. — quite a spell. In the recovery area I had some very vivid dreams and memories during which the nurse kept interrupting me from telling me to breathe…. I remembered so clearly a particularly sharp cold day in the hautes fagnes seeing a herd of deer emerge from the dense fog. A few years I looked up into the eyes of an acquaintance and discovered that instead of the blue I has always assumed they were these eyes were actually a sparkling golden hazel with flecks of green and black, like a lynx or a cheetah. I was so amazed I lost track of what the person was saying and just stared at them. This moment seemed to go on and on although it took only a second. Everything I imagined or remembered had to do vividly with animals or seeing or both so even in being partially aware that this was partially a synthetic effect of synapses snapping to Versed and Dilaudid this was an exceedingly intriguing state, and alluring.
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