What a surgical strike!

The moon ‘s fuzzy/fudgy phases, with occasional double act or the enlightened streetlights exhibiting halos had messages for me. Being an astronomy buff, the fudgy moon troubled me. Keeping these secrets to myself, I happily read and wrote, for well over three years, without my glasses. Secrets could be buried but cataract cannot be hidden forever. Detecting the cataract in my eyes, my family members used every opportunity to push me for a surgery. I resisted, not because of any apprehension but for other reasons.

(1) To give them a chance to grumble about it and exchange notes on cataracts in general and about my case in particular with statistics like age, occupation and severity. (2) To keep me unsettled, they could brag about the history of relatives and friends, who have weathered this storm and sincerely resumed work on the next day! (3) Another opening, for them to take pot shots at me to let out some of bottled-up stress and rub some salt in, even though my doctor had advised me to control its intake. (4) If I do not have enough articles, I might end up with the few readers migrating to other pages, because I did not know how long the period of rest will be.

None of this mattered to them. Continuing their efforts, they finally succeeded in herding me in to an ophthalmologist’s consulting room. The doctor, after carrying out a sting operation with dilating drops, viewed my eyes through his gadgets. Down the alphabet line, the medium and ant-sized letters hedged and fudged my vision. The doctor had me there, cleanly caught and bold. Satisfied with my struggle, he scrawled on my mark sheet, with fractions. The Right Eye managing 6/36 and Left Eye scoring 6/60. I did not know whether to be pleased or disappointed with it. Anyways, I was afraid to ask him which score was better!

The conclusion - both the eyes had cataracts and he will be happy to do the honours of removing them, for a fee!  With a pep talk, he sold the idea of surgery within seven days of each other, and pointed out that the convalescence period would run concurrently. He assured me that the operated eyes will sparkle like gems, in a month!

To postpone the surgery, I hedged my bets by arguing about my eyesight being in perfect order for reading, writing and to help with normal household chores. My family members vociferously denied my help in household chores and froze me with an Arctic stare. The doctor, stepping up his pressure, threatened me of possible complications in delaying surgery. With the family standing stubborn, and the doctor warning of dire consequences, I agreed. Not because of this consulting room nexus but due to another powerful force acting on me to move along.

A few days earlier, my grandson staring at my eyes exclaimed, “Grandpa, there are solar eclipses in progress. Soon, I may be able to see the ring of fire in your eyes. If lucky, I might even get to witness the rare, simultaneous, twin total solar eclipses!” This astronomical bombshell stunned me, but I took the hit with a smile. After all, it was me who had taken him into the world of astronomy. Can I complain now? He had used what he had learnt! 

At home, I quietly troubled google on cataract and ended up browsing websites of hospitals, in other continents. I understood the culprit to be the protein family - alpha, beta and gamma Crystallins and fibers coming together to form the natural lens of the eyes. Over a period of time, this protein and fibers could break down to form the clump and develop into a cataract. Why did I collect only thew information and not about the surgical procedure? 

A few minor surgeries, under my skin (or under the belt), have given me the general idea.  Like I had done in the case of those minor surgeries, I wanted to collect only the information on cataract. But a surgeon getting twice into my eyes is, anyway going to be a different experience. 

To keep the pressure on, my family members got busy. Parallel channels were opened to collect more information.  Persons who have become veterans after enduring the surgery were contacted over cell phones.  A list of hospitals, at Uberable distances, was compiled using variety of search engines on the internet. The cricket enthusiast, did himself proud by collating all the above information. He had set his filter to select that hospital which had a better strike rate. It turned out to be the hospital where the ophthalmologist, whom I had consulted performed surgeries. This lit a little puzzle in my mind – coincidence or a ‘theesra’ bowled by the cricket enthusiast! What unnerved me was the would-be surgeon’s bragging that he the fastest surgical hands, on record! 

True to his words, the surgeon spent under 15 minutes to insert an IOL for my right eye.  Devious guy, he had not mentioned about the pre-op processing time of 60 to 90 minutes, probably his trade secret! After a week, without any option, I willingly submitted myself for a repeat performance, for the removal of cataract from the other eye.  The doctor becoming more concerned, perhaps for his reputation, gave me an operating manual to take care of my eyes. 

Since I could not read it, immediately after each surgery, staff nurses bombarded me twice – once for each eye, with an audio-visual presentation. The given timetable effectively interfered with sleep and other normal activities. Like all good things in life, this manual came along with *conditions apply clauses, proscribing everything except breathing and to keep shut eye with wraparound glass. The nursing staff spared no effort to drive home these points. They subtly exhorted me, almost a borderline warning - when we care, why should you not comply with? A just in and out affair, had blown-up into 5 weeks of medication and penance. 

The aftermath of this double surgical strike came with ample spare time. I was totally unprepared as neither Google had warned me about this nor I had any contingency plan to deal with it, every day, for the next 5 weeks.  I started a guessing game. How surgeons will circumvent such hurdles?  By mentally revising case notes, recalling articles from medical journals, or by remembering tough cases and botched up ones that still rankled? After all they too have another active schedule with eye drops and ointments, to follow! Straying a bit off field, I wondered how professionals in other fields will manage to survive this boredom?  From my frame of reference, the second hand appeared to be taking it easy to complete a lap, on the face of the clock, stretching the minute. Except for spending a few minutes, this exercise did not make any impression on the clock. I mentally cursed it.

This frustration at the clock reminded of a similar feeling, I had suffered a few years ago. Then it was my inability to remember the name of a stranger, who claimed to be my schoolmate. Now, it is the same inability to find a way to pass time. The stranger had given me two clues to help - shared P T classes, and my teaser name when the alphabets are written in the reverse order. Watching the hovering cloud of confusion on my face, he left a piece of paper with his contact number, challenging me to recall his name and then contact him for a tete- a- tete to munch over bygone days.  After much effort and literally bruising my memory cells, I remembered his name and we had that get-together.

Once again, my grandson came to the rescue with a humorous take on my current predicament.  After reading the conditions apply clauses, he rolled over laughing. I asked him what was so funny, in there? 

He replied, “Here it says self-shaving, after a week from the day of operation.”

“Ok, where is the fun in this shaving routine?”

“Grandpa, will you not look funny with one cheek shaved clean and the other with prickly growth! Remember, the surgeries were done one week apart.”

I could not help but to laugh with him. The cataract surgery had brought in a lighter moment to my otherwise upcoming, bleak convalescence period. 

Will the days of boredom, simply fly off the calendar? Instead of sitting idle, I decided to help it by stretching wings of my memory muscles. I silently thanked the stranger-turned-schoolmate for his suggestion - “Try a little mental-gymnastics and you too can recollect my name”. This ignited the spark to go on a mental tour. Still, I could not stop wondering how he unerringly identifies me, after a gap of decades! 

The manual advised, “Can resume office work after a week.”  And so, I became a memory mining archaeologist, to dig up archived faces and names. The goal - to match faces and names of at least 900 acquaintance/colleagues/friends. This appealing number became the target to wrestle with the remaining 4 weeks of inactivity. The self-imposed rider - only those with whom I have had personal or professional interaction might surely make this exercise an interesting one, I hoped. 

After many raids into my memory bank, I located the archived photographs and the roster filled with names.  Had I anticipated this contingency, probably I would have stored them as matched files. Now, for easy viewing the stack of photos needed creation of a revolving gallery in my mind’s eye. To expedite the process of matching, the roster with names became a scrollable screen. Eager to mark the passage of the second week and to overcome inertia, I gently prodded my memory muscles to get moving.  I dangled the carrot to start the match making of face with the appropriate name, as it has the photo gallery and the scrollable roster placed side by side. Having suffered at my hands, the second week elapsed. 

Third and fourth weeks had plenty of frustration in store. Chief among them was that I would get the prescription for reading glasses, only at the end of the fifth week. To work around this, I decided to identify and write down one or two names at a time, keeping eye strain and medication schedule in mind. Slow but had the benefit of doing something for the day. Sometimes the face and name came rolled out like marbles and sometimes reluctantly came out like a thick liquid. Easy ones were of persons with constant interaction. 

Some names introduced themselves with unique tags, like passwords with a sprinkling of special characters. In the case of individuals, with whom I had not developed a long-term friendship, it was slightly difficult to match. There waited a group of people to ambush me, part of my academic and professional life, and make the task of identifying them tough. Some of them, cleverly withheld their names but gladly teased me with their faces. Some names cropped up repeatedly without revealing their matching faces. A face I recognised, vainly attempted to get fixed to a vaguely remembered name, or a name adamantly tried to go with an out of focus face. Is this lot suffering an attack of Identity crisis or it me who is suffering with an identifying crisis?  I don’t know! 

The fourth week was a real pressure cooker. Resolute plodding, rock-solid determination and splitting of many hairs, resulted in identification of 890 persons, spanning nearly seven decades, after satisfying the condition of my own stipulation! The last ten names and photos tormented me with similar names and unfamiliar faces.  As if to mock my futile efforts, they unilaterally opposed any compromise solution. The imminent arrival of the fifth week also added some anxiety factor, to aid this pressure buildup.  Frustrated and trapped in my own Waterloo (Sorry Monsieur Napolean Bonaparte), I decided to contact Mr. Alois Alzheimer, for advice. 

Finally, the fifth week arrived.  The surgeon, who assured me of sparkling eyes, admired his handiwork (could have done it without the stinging liquid drops) and graded my reading test with   R/E 6/9, 6/6P & L/E 6/6, 6/6. Turning his laser sharp eyes at me, he pronounced the ‘all OK’ and sent me out for spectacles. 

Ignoring the defeat and Waterloo, wearing the newly procured specs, I got down to the task of organising my notes under academic, professional and personal interaction. The mental hunt, kindled nostalgia, euphoria over professional contributions and a flood of shared conversations was deeply satisfying. To tease me ,  my grandson came up with another crisp remark – “Preserve these notes, maybe next time around, you can fill in addresses and contact numbers also!” 

All this happened only because of the forced convalescence period. My advice to those who have to undergo surgery and rest for a month or more - have a mental game ready.