Kishore Singh: A painful eye operation

Surgeons don't have a sense of humour, explains the author

Sometime after the doctor with whom I had an appointment had scheduled a battery of tests, dilated the eyes and sent me to consult with another doctor in another hospital in another part of town under “emergency” orders, I stopped fooling myself that it was just a routine check-up. Even so, I couldn’t help smiling when the retina specialist began to speak in clichés. Did I have someone accompanying me? “Only the driver.” Could I sit down, the news wasn’t good? “Like going-blind-bad?” “Yes,” the doctor confirmed stentorianly, “kindly be serious.” This was after he’d made me stare for what seemed like hours into a bright light that penetrated all the way from the ocular to the remotest part of the brain. But I held on to my composure as the filmy doctor went about his prognosis.

 
I was to have a surgery the following day (“Please have a family member with you, not the driver”), before which he needed more tests done (“make sure I get the reports in time”), the operation would take a while and be expensive (“Do you have Mediclaim?”), but it was when he said post-operative care meant not simply bed rest but making like the dog, lying flat on my stomach for two weeks, that the defensive defective gene in my system kicked in. “You can’t be serious, doctor,” I whined, “can I at least read, or use the laptop?” This was clearly a doctor who didn’t like patients being flippant. “Please take this seriously,” he repeated. “Really,” I filibustered, “I’ll kill myself if I can’t do anything; I’ll kill somebody.”

 
Surgeons, or at any rate eye-surgeons, don’t seem to have a sense of humour, for the doctor hastily began to remove all implements that could be construed as being dangerous from his vicinity — thereby also laying to rest any hopes I might have had of an alternative career as a stand-up comedian. “It’s all right,” I calmed him down, “I’m only joking. But, seriously, no reading?”
 

The following day, in the operation theatre, completely swathed, the doctors snipping away at cornea and retina with scissors, using scalpels, poking and suturing with needles, using a torch at solder things in place, the pain was unbearable. “Another 10 minutes, we’ll be done,” he said eight times between the snipping and prodding and cutting away of what was once my eye. Feeling like a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, I remember mumbling to the doctor I wanted to say something, hoping I could appeal to his better senses when I was no longer able to bear the agony. For a couple of seconds, all operations ceased. “Doctor,” I whispered, “can I give you a hug?” “Increase the pressure,” the doctor instructed his team, and in a sea of pain that followed, I forgot any other endearments I may have wanted to communicate to him. I did remember I had promised to kill — somebody? him?

 
It’s been just a day and as I write this without permission, before I’m due a visit when he will remove bandages and peer at the clamps he’s put in that have to be removed several months later, so I guess it’s best I behave myself. I’ve a box of chocolates for him, and a bottle of champagne, and flowers may not be a bad idea. But also a butter knife in the bedside drawer, just in case. It’s not easy smiling and giving presents to somebody who has, and uses, the capacity to hurt you bad.