This was eye surgery.
Just a few moments ago they’d finished the procedure on my right eye and my entire life felt surreal but I was O.K.
Now with my left eyelids taped and clamped open, as they started to scrape away the surface layer of my left eye, terror seized my heart. Every nerve in my body rattled uncontrollably within me. The most frightening fear strangled me to the point of near-suffocation. What in the world was wrong with me? I just made it through the procedure – why was I absolutely losing my mind all-of-a-sudden? Why could I not control myself when the doctor kept encouraging, “I need you to look down, Brandy, look down…” Oh, man, I was messing this all up! I just knew I was! It’s a wonder I did not vibrate right off that table, I was quaking so violently within. Oh, Lord, please help me. Lord, please. I need you.
I could not even cry tears. Could not blink them out. My eye was open solid, but my right eye was crying for my left one.
In these seemingly endless moments, in a terror-stricken state, I did all I could think to do as I lay there helpless on that operating table, suspended halfway upside down with my head under this menacing metal machine.
I started counting my gifts.
- being able to see…
- a red light blinking…
- a perfect circle of white light encircling the red blinks…
- a random number 2 on this strange metal machine, just outside that white circle of light…
- that man in the next room (my husband) waiting and praying for me…
- my doctor’s calming voice…
- the nurses’ quick responses…
- the physician’s skilled hands…
- (hundreds of?) drops in the eye to finally numb my reflexes…
- the gift of sound, albeit the ticks of a laser machine…
- encouraging words…
- “Wonderful, Brandy, doing wonderfully…”
- Those words filling me full of hope: “We’re almost done…”
- Oh, that feeling of being cupped securely within God’s loving hands….
I’m still counting, still praying. But then it’s over. A bandage lens is fitted and tucked into my eye. The doctor releases the metal clamp. He untapes my eyelids and tells me to close my eye ever-so-slowly. The operating-table-chair lifts. I sit there with my eyes closed, scared silly. The nurse holds my hand. Tells me it will be like looking through murky water. She waits patiently. I open my eyes. She helps me slide off the table-chair like a little child learning to slide down a playground slide for the first time.
And now… the healing begins….