Just got back from the annual visit to my eye guy - actually a new eye guy, the old one (who was one of the top 10 billing doctors in Ontario) has left, presumably to go yacht shopping, but anyway ….

So, I had cataract surgery on my Right Eye, or as eye-doctoring types would call it, “OD”, Ocula Dexter, because they went to medical school and had to learn all these fancy terms and they are darn well going to continue to use them, back in 2021. (I also had an exciting bilateral laser retinopexy a couple of years earlier and wow, that was an amazing light show. But back to today.)

I used to have one doctor for the back of my eye (retinopexies) and another for the front (cataracts) but the new guy actually specializes in Your Entire Eye. “You’ve come to the right place”, he told me.

The 2021 cataract surgery was an amazing assembly-line process, of which Henry Ford would be quite proud, where thousands of eyes a day are routed through eight different operating rooms where you are sedated but if you are lucky, you will hear the doctors and their students casually discussing last night’s hockey game and then agreeing that they’re going to do the left - no, the RIGHT - eye on this guy.

Then the doctor removes the natural lens and inserts a totally different artificial one - and you are given the opportunity to pay extra to get a Really Good One - and it involves knives and your eyeball the less I think about how that works, the happier I am.

Apparently it’s normal for scar tissue to form around the new lens, making your vision a little cloudy, because OF COURSE IT WOULD FORM SCARS THEY WERE POKING AROUND IN YOUR EYE WITH A KNIFE.

So I was advised that now I needed a - speaking of obscure medical terms - “Posterior Capsulotomy”. And I know what you’re thinking. Steve, isn’t your colonoscopy NEXT week? But no, despite the name, a Posterior Capsulotomy is a process where they shoot laser beams into your eye to make an opening in the cloudy part of the lens, and light can come through, and you can see properly again.

First off, though, they need to take photos of your retina. The lab had acquired a new gadget since the last time I was there, a Nikon OPTOS camera.

See that lens at the bottom? You stare into that, resting your chin on the strap. But you have to get closer. Closer! They have to get the angle just right! CLOSER! What’s actually happening is that the tech is manoeuvring your head around and pressing your forehead - and your nose - hard into the base of the machine.

I appreciated the nose massage but the ergonomics of this device needs some work. Needs a nose cutout.

Anyway, photos done, back to the Posterior Capsulotomy.

This scary sounding procedure takes all of five minutes. Here’s a photo of that machine.

You sit on one side and rest your chin on the thing, and the doctor sits on the other side and administers some really potent eye drops that numb your eye, and then the barrel of this weapon zooms right in and touches your eye and you think “those are some amazing eye drops, I totally cannot feel this thing touching my eye.”

Then the doctor - no doubt using all his video game skills - aims and fires a laser to drill a hole in the cloudy part of the lens or whatever. I assume there’s some sort of scoreboard on his side, with bonus points for hitting the alien warship and….

I gotta tell you. It’s the strangest feeling. It’s a very bright light, but what’s really disconcerting is that you can actually hear little Pop! Pop! Pop! noises that are coming from INSIDE YOUR HEAD.

A minute later and you’re all done. I can’t swear that my eye is immediately better, as my pupil is still extremely dilated, but I feel good that the total cost to me of this process was $0.

Thank you, Ontario medical system, for the excellent care.

(Also the Bathurst streetcar and Lakeshore GO trains were zooming along nicely, unimpeded by traffic, so perhaps this province actually can get things done once in a while.)