Tunesday : Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

(O'Dowd, G / Moss, J / Craig, M / Hay, R) Performed by Culture Club

Give me time to realize my crime 
Let me love and steal.
I have danced inside your eyes 
How can I be real.

Do you really want to hurt me 
Do you really want to make me cry
Precious kisses words that burn me 
Lovers never ask you why.
In my heart the fire is burning
Choose my color find a star
Precious people always tell me
That's a step a step too far.

Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry.

Words are few
I have spoken
I could waste a thousand years
Wrapped in sorrow, words are token
Come inside and catch my tears
You've been talking but believe me
If it's true you do not know
This boy loves without a reason
I'm prepared to let you go

If it's love you want from me
Then take it away
Everything's not what you see it's over again.

Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry.

Give me time to realize my crime 
Let me love and steal.
I have danced inside your eyes 
How can I be real.
If it's love you want from me then take it again.

Two weeks ago I wrote about my eye surgery - where the cataract was taken off my right eye and an artificial lens was inserted - so today I'm following up with the second surgery, on my left eye. Once again, this is not the song I had planned on using before the fact (I had been trying to decide between The Guess Who's These Eyes and Billy Idol's Eyes Without a Face - who knew there was such a rich eye-related catalogue from which to choose?), but once again, the circumstances in the moment dictated the only possible choice; this may look like a fairly melodramatic song selection for this week, but it will make sense in context.

To begin with, as I noted two weeks ago, I had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon the day after my last procedure, and when I asked him at that time if it would be possible to put close-up vision in my left eye, he suppressed a sigh and said he thought we had already discussed that (we hadn't), and then we went on to other topics. There was a second follow-up appointment later that week, and one of the first things that the doctor said to me was, "Have you considered offsetting the lens in your left eye in order to have some close-up vision in it?" I said that I thought that sounded like a good idea - the best possible outcome would have to be not needing any correctives at all in the end. He waggled his head back and forth, as though trying to decide if that would be the best outcome, and then said that he would make a note in my chart to offset that lens. (And I should put here that I found it very non-reassuring that my high tech eye surgeon then proceeded to hunt and peck, painfully slowly, on his computer keyboard to add these notes to his files.)

Fast forward to last Friday: After having been away for my last surgery, Dave took the day off work to drive me this time. I had had to perform all the same pre-op prep (a series of eyedrops the day before, no eating or drinking after midnight), and I arrived at the hospital quite anxious: Whereas before the first procedure I had been assured that it would be no big deal (by people who had had the standard laser cataract removal surgeries), my more invasive procedure left me dreading a second go round; I was suppressing tears all morning - not like I wanted to full out cry, but I could feel tears springing unwillingly to my eyes every time I really thought about what was going to happen to me. I'm so weak.

So, Dave came with me to register and then came with me to the Day Surgery waiting room. And just like when Kennedy brought me last time, Dave was asked if he wanted to accompany me into the pre-/post-op ward; and again, I was the only one in there with an attendant. (Weird note: as we were moving through the ward, we passed an open door to a room that was decorated with balloons and streamers and had a table piled high with potluck foods - it was apparently the last day for one of the nurses on the ward and this was her going away party. While all of us patients arrived with our bellies empty as ordered, the delicious smell of warming meatballs filled the entire ward throughout the morning.) Funny, but while I didn't mind having my daughter stand around bored while I had all my info taken and eyedrops administered the first time, I knew that Dave was planning to go to the cafeteria to work on emails during my operation, so I encouraged him to leave his cell number and take off as quickly as possible; wouldn't want to bore the husband unduly.

So, the prep was the same as last time - the eyedrops, the Ativan under my tongue, taking off my top to put on a gown while keeping on my pants and shoes, laying on a hospital bed, and waiting for what I knew was coming soon. I didn't have the briskly efficient older nurse this time, but this younger one was interesting in her own way: at one point she came back to my curtained off cubicle, brushing crumbs off her lips as she entered (I heard her joking later with an old woman in the next cubicle that she's probably making herself pre-diabetic because she can't stop grabbing cookies from the pot luck table); when she asked me if I wear glasses and I replied, "Only to drive and probably not even then anymore", she replied, "Oh you're lucky. I have to put in contacts every day. I can't wait to get cataracts" (which I found to be a fairly insensitive thing to say as I lay there trembling in dreadful anticipation.)

Because I was dreading this procedure, and the closer it got, the more I trembled; the more I worried that I wouldn't be able to control the tears any more. I told myself to just breathe; to concentrate on my surroundings, and that's pretty much the first time that I realised there was a radio playing in the ward. And as the slow opening voice and chords of a familiar tune began to play, I started to smile and then to quietly laugh when I realised that I was listening to Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? It was just such a corny and melodramatic song for fate and chance to throw at me, and it was the relief I needed right at that moment.

Nearly immediately, an orderly came to roll me out into the hallway outside the OR, and she put the heart monitor on my finger, stuck the conductive patches to my chest, and placed the blood pressure cuff on my right arm (and though she didn't give me the tip about keeping that hand tucked under my bum like the last orderly had, I tucked it away nonetheless). She noted that my wedding rings were taped (I was given instructions to have my rings cut off if I couldn't pull them off in the pre-op package, but the receptionist at the surgeon's office assured me that that was general info from the hospital and taping them would be fine for eye surgery), and then the orderly said that she had an upcoming surgery and had several piercings that couldn't be removed; that because she worked at the hospital and was expected to know how things worked, she didn't want to ask anyone what she should do. I had no reply to that.

The orderly left me and I began to concentrate on my breathing again, and that's when I made out what was playing on the radio that I had left behind in the ward: Afternoon Delight. Again, this made me smile - I was put in mind of the duet in Arrested Development, the singalong in Anchorman, and my friend Delight who hates this song. I couldn't help but smile.

Before I knew it, the orderly was pushing the last patient out of the OR and the surgeon came out to greet me; squeezing my shoulder reassuringly, and after confirming that we were doing my left eye, he pulled a pen out of his breast pocket and put a mark over my left eyebrow (I had forgotten that detail the first time). Suddenly, the orderly was back and pushing me into the small OR, lining me up under the lights and pumping my bed up higher. Although last time the nurses had introduced themselves to me, this time no one did, mutely attaching wires to my various patches and heart monitor, my blood pressure cuff. Once again, the surgeon swabbed the entire area of my left eye (maybe with iodine?) and draped a blue sheet over me from the top of my head to the soles of my shoes, with a small clear circle centered and then adhered over my left eye. The sheet must have been draped across my face slightly differently this time because while last time I had the surreal chameleon-like experience of bifurcated vision - with one eye surveying my corpse-like body under the sheet while the other "watched" the surgery - this time I couldn't see under the sheet at all.

Again, I don't know if the Ativan was all that calming: I trembled through the entire experience; flinching and cringing every time I saw the flash of silver instruments heading for my eyeball; startling every time a splash of some liquid hit my eye. I don't know if I was actively resisting the procedure, but at one point the surgeon said, "I know it's hard, but can you look straight into the light again?" Funny, but I had assumed that with the eyeball numb, he had attached something to it to hold it straight; weird that I had the freedom to roll my eye around as he cut and dug into it.

Last time, as I recounted, I found the entire experience to be very surreal: the strobing lights, the flashes of geometric shapes, the weird machine noises, suddenly tuning in to a radio playing incongruous music in the background. This time I seemed more aware of actual reality and I grasped for the weird; looking for lights and shapes and sounds, but stuck in my body; trembling and wincing and probably streaming tears. Because I was listening for it, I was aware of the radio playing in the background the entire time - the soft rock that the surgeon intermittently sang along with - but it didn't amuse or astound me; I found it unbearably sad to listen to him sing softly along with Christopher Cross' Sailing while I was trapped in my helpless body. 

Despite taking fifteen or twenty minutes, and my pathetic reaction to it, the procedure went by quickly enough, and before I knew it, the surgeon was removing the blue sheet, cleaning off the area around my eye and taping on the clear plastic eyepatch meant to protect it until I got home. I was rolled back to the ward, given a glass of ginger ale, and told to dress myself when I felt up to it as the nurse went to call Dave. I was dressed and ready nearly immediately, and another nurse led me to a chair to wait for Dave, who had apparently left the hospital during my procedure - he went home to cut the grass and have a swim and had been in the car on the way back when he got the call - and although I waited for probably less than ten minutes, I just felt so sad sitting there; helpless and alone; the party room just visible off to my left.

The balance of the day proceeded like last time - I was happy to eat; had trouble staying awake and dozed in front of the TV - and Dave, and then the girls, were solicitous and wanting to help me; but I didn't need much from them (Mallory attempting to put in my eye drops for me was actually pretty frightening: why would she think it's less intimidating to drop them from a height instead of squeezing the bottle against the corner of my eye? I was happy she wanted to help, though, so I bucked against the drops and thanked her for them.)

With my first eye, I woke up the next morning to a wonderful experience: I could see things at a distance with greater clarity than even my driving glasses had previously afforded me; I couldn't have been happier about what I had gained and the discomfort of the surgery had been totally worth it. With my second eye, despite having my vision focussed at about the reach of my left arm, I have pretty much lost my near vision: I can't read my phone's screen or the keyboard on my laptop without reading glasses (which I never used before) and I can't help but feel sad about all I've lost. I understand that this surgery was medically necessary, not vanity - the cataracts would have eventually blinded me - but my new reality has much to get used to: when I'm eating, I can see the food as I put it on my fork, but I lose focus on it as it nears my mouth; and that's weird. But still better than going blind.

I had my follow-up appointment with the surgeon the next day, and he was pleased with the results: the vision in my left eye is focussed right to where he intended, so this is just the way it is. I have no idea what it will be like to go back to work in a couple of weeks.

Words are few
I have spoken
I could waste a thousand years
Wrapped in sorrow, words are token
Come inside and catch my tears

So, yes, this was a melodramatic song choice this week, but I'm feeling melodramatic and I'm pleased that the universe sent it along to me at just the right time; Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? was certainly one of my favourite songs when it first came out and deserves a place in this discography. Of course, no one hurt me: while uncomfortable and somewhat distressing, the surgery itself was pain-free. And I do know that it helps me: I pretty much understood that having the permanent lenses inserted would prevent my eyes from changing focus like they would have naturally, but until that was my reality, I couldn't really have imagined it - it feels like a loss, but I know it is amazing to live in a time and place where this kind of surgery is available, without cost, to me.

Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry

And a final note: When I was telling Mallory about my first surgery, and how like a Kubrick film it seemed, she (a film student) was very interested; said she'd love to try and film that. So when I had the second eye done, she wanted more details and I had to say that it was just...different. Which was too bad because her intent had been to lead me into comparing this experience to another Kubrick title: Eyes Wide Shut.