Tunesday : Takin' Care of Business

Takin' Care of Business

(Bachman, R) Performed by Bachman Turner Overdrive

You get up every morning
From your alarm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above
And people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls who try to look pretty

And if your train's on time
You can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed
Look at me I'm self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day
And I'll be

Taking care of business every day
Taking care of business every way
I've been taking care of business, it's all mine
Taking care of business and working overtime
Work out

If it were easy as fishin'
You could be a musician
If you could make sounds loud or mellow
Get a second-hand guitar
Chances are you'll go far
If you get in with the right bunch of fellows

People see you having fun
Just a-lying in the sun
Tell them that you like it this way
It's the work that we avoid
And we're all self-employed
We love to work at nothing all day
And we be

Taking care of business every day
Taking care of business every way
I've been taking care of business, it's all mine
Taking care of business and working overtime
Take good care of my business
When I'm away, every day whoo!

You get up every morning
From your alarm clock's warning
Take the 8:15 into the city
There's a whistle up above
And people pushin', people shovin'
And the girls who try to look pretty

And if your train's on time
You can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed
Look at me I'm self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day
And I'll be

Taking care of business every day
Taking care of business every way
I've been taking care of business, it's all mine
Taking care of business and working overtime

Takin' care of business
Takin' care of business
Takin' care of business
Takin' care of business
Takin' care of business

As I wrote about back in May, this is the year my cataracts are finally coming off, and the first eye was done last Friday. As it turns out, the procedure was nothing like I expected, and if anything, I am even more anxious leading up to the second surgery than I was going into the first one blind (as it were, har har). This isn't the song that I was pre-planning to use for this post, but its appropriateness will become apparent. The tl;dr: What a strange and surreal experience, and as uncomfortable as it ultimately was, my improved vision is, obviously, worth it.

To prep for the surgery, I needed to put in a series of eyedrops the day before, and even though they weren't planning to knock me out, the instructions said that I couldn't eat or drink after midnight. Because it also said that I could consume clear fluids before 7 am if my procedure was scheduled for after 11, I decided that my 3 pm appointment meant I could have my clear fluids (both the Gatorade that I assumed was allowed and the coffee with a splash of milk that I assumed technically wasn't) until 10 or so. Even bending the rules, I was hungry by the time I arrived at the hospital at one. I still don't understand the point of an empty belly.

I need to note that it was Kennedy who took me - months ago we had planned to go and visit Dave's favourite cousin, Mike, for the weekend. So when my first surgery was scheduled for the 7th (with a followup appointment the next day), I knew I wouldn't be going to Mike and Jill's, but told Dave there was no reason he couldn't go without me; this wasn't the kind of "surgery" that would require any sort of aftercare from him. I didn't realise that meant that Dave planned to leave for his weekend away at the same time I left for the hospital - I kind of thought he was coming with me first, his sister had to tell me different, and I still can't see the urgency of him needing to arrive for 4 in the afternoon instead of, say, 7 in the evening - but I did encourage him to go, so I can't exactly be upset that he didn't change his plans at all to accommodate me. Still.

So, Kennedy drove me to the hospital, we checked in and were sent down to the Day Surgery waiting room, and for whatever reason, the nurse there said that Kennedy could come with me into the pre- /post-op ward: There wasn't a chair for her to sit in, and she had to stand in an aisle buzzing with nurses and orderlies and all the other (unaccompanied) patients being ferried about in hospital beds. As there was a bit of a wait, I was happy to have Kennedy with me, but I told her several times that she could go back to the waiting area (like everyone else), but she wasn't about to abandon me.

The admitting nurse on the ward was a bit of a weirdo: An older woman, she rattled through the questions, replying either, "Oh, bless your heart" or "Thank you so much" to every one of my responses (and while I'm sure she thought of that as friendly, it was so quick and robotic as to be laughable. When Kennedy made some quip to me, this nurse said, "Hey, I'll be providing the comedy today." This has been comedy?). She needed to put a series of three eyedrops in my eye, three times each, and in each series there was one type that really stung: I could barely open my eye after she would put it in, but I was doing my best to be cooperative, thinking this would probably be the worst of it. I was also given an Ativan to calm my nerves, and as I've never had anything like that before, I didn't know how blissed it might make me: in the end, I have no idea if it affected me at all; my heart continued to pound throughout everything that followed and I can't objectively say if it could have been worse without that tiny pill.

When it was nearly time for me to go in, I was brought to a hospital bed and told to take off my clothes from the waist up and put on a gown and a hairnet. I was not expecting that, but I complied; thinking it weird to take off my shirt but not my shoes. A new nurse gave me some more eyedrops, ending with iodine - which she warned would really sting - but I couldn't have imagined just how much. I smiled and assured her it wasn't so bad; thinking this must be the worst of it as she taped my eye closed.

I was not expecting this for eye surgery

Kennedy was finally told she could go back to the waiting room and an orderly pushed my bed through a series of cluttered, chipped-paint hallways towards the operating room. I was the last procedure of the day, and the chatter among everyone I could hear involved plans for the weekend and a rush to finish their shifts. The orderly put a heart monitor on the index finger of my left hand, attached a series of conductive patches to my chest for other monitors in the OR, and placed a blood pressure cuff on my right arm. She warned me that the cuff would get very tight, become nearly painful, but slowly release the pressure before filling up again to a painful level; this would happen every five minutes, and I would hear a beep when it was about to happen again; she warned me to place my right hand flat under my bum, as any other position would likely bend my elbow and be even more painful. She then laid a nasal oxygen tube across my chest and explained that there would be a sheet covering me from head to toe (for eye surgery?) and that I would be given oxygen during the procedure because it could get hard to breathe under the sheet. My heart was pounding through all of this: I had pictured sitting up with my head strapped into a familiar-looking Optician's-type device, with lasers burning my eyeball and maybe the sensation of the artificial lens being inserted near the end, and while this had me freaked out enough, the reality was unimaginable. I told myself to breathe. My inlaws and my parents all assured me this was no big deal.

I was rolled into the OR, the machines were hooked up (including the oxygen) and the blue sheet was pulled over me - completely covering me like a funeral shroud - with a clear plastic hole centered over my right eye (I had an image of one of those traditional Mexican wedding night modesty sheets, and the image definitely disturbed me). The doctor came in and started talking quietly to the nurses, squeezed my shoulder reassuringly before starting, and pressed down on that clear plastic hole, which sealed off everything but my eye. The last drops I had been given in the hallway were a numbing agent, and they certainly worked, because I could feel the doctor using something to pry and hold my lids open, but it was just a pressure, not a pain. The blood pressure cuff filled up - indeed, to a painful level - and lights were flashing in my right eye, my left eye aware of my body in the blue light under the sheet: this chameleon-like separated vision was hard for my brain to reconcile, and added to my sense of unreality. The clear plastic around my right eye gave my peripheral vision just enough information that I could see the flash of silver instruments as they were used to slice and dig into my eye, and while it wasn't painful at all, I couldn't help wincing and flinching in anticipation; jumping slightly every time an unexpected burst of liquid splashed off my eyeball. Nothing was holding my head still except my own will, and I feared the effects of my involuntary reactions: there were knives around my eye.

By this point I was totally on sensory overload and told myself just to breathe - my inlaws and my parents said this was no big deal, so why am I making it a big deal? - and I suddenly became very present in the moment: the blood pressure cuff was painfully squeezing my right arm and I moved my hand further under my bum, looking for relief; my left eye looked down along the length of my body in its watery blue light, noting the oxygen tube, the warm blanket, my left hand with its heart monitor draped across my chest as one would pose a cadaver; lights were flashing in my right eye, and then suddenly, my vision there went black, immediately filled with colourful geometric shapes spinning around, back to flashing lights, back to black and shapes; I could hear some machine making a whooooooop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whooooooop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, pshhhh noise in the background, and as I concentrated on centering myself into my surroundings, I could hear, just faintly, BTO singing the chorus of Takin' Care of Business behind everything else. It was surreal. The shapes and the whooooping machine and the incongruous soundtrack made it feel like I was watching a spacey science fiction movie; definitely a Kubrick. I was totally aware of the sensation of my eyeball being manually operated on, and I winced, repeatedly, as the artificial lens was inserted and adjusted and readjusted until I was finally just looking at plain lights again. 

As the procedure was finishing up, I listened as the surgeon and the nurses discussed the odd radio station selection - Who picked this? You usually like classic music? You mean classic rock or classical? Oh, Debussy? I guess that's classic? - and as they continued talking about the music and their plans for the soon-to-begin weekend, the clear plastic circle was detached from around my eye, the shroud was pulled off, and even though I was now fully present in the room, everyone continued to talk above and around me like I wasn't there for some minutes; me blinking and heaving my breath. The surgeon eventually leaned toward me and said, "I know you felt some of that, but you did great". Not only was I mentally amused by the statement that I had felt "some" of that, but I couldn't help staring at the doctor's own right eye, which was filled with bright red blood. He smiled and said, "You likely noticed my hematoma - it probably just started out with a burst blood vessel, but it doesn't affect my vision." How is that not like something right out of a Kubrick movie? It was surreal to have the surgeon finally reveal himself to me and his own right eye is filled with blood - my experience went right from 2001: A Space Odyssey to something out of The Shining. At least it was over.

I was rolled back to the ward, given some ginger ale (I was no longer as hungry as I thought I'd be), and Kennedy was brought back. I put my clothes back on, and Kennedy drove me home. As I noted, Dave was away, so the girls and I ordered Chinese Food for dinner, and while I would swear that that Ativan had done little for my anxiety, I did nap throughout the evening and still had a decent sleep that night. I was really concerned (and disturbed) by the double halo that I could see around the potlights in the kitchen, but that was gone by morning; all that lingered was a swimminess in my peripheral; I was astounded by the clarity of my distance vision. Not only could I see definition in the leaves on the trees in the far distance, but after having lived in this house for twelve years, descending the stairs in the morning was the first time I noticed the nap in the carpet; I had never before really appreciated the secondary colours in the black granite countertops in the kitchen; I couldn't tell if the grout around the bathroom tile was naturally that dark or actually a little grungy.

That morning I went for my followup appointment - sitting in a waiting room with the same people I had seen in the ward the day before; and while they all now had their drivers with them, Kennedy had not been instructed to accompany me from the outer office, so she waited there - and this seemed like the first time it had ever been explained to me what my medical situation was. Rather than the routine age-related cataracts that can easily be lasered off (as was the experience for my parents and inlaws), I have posterior subcapsular cataracts: my cataracts sit behind the lens capsule, and that's why my procedure required manual, surgical instruments. Apparently, there is still some clouding on my right eye, but the doctor assured me that it can be removed with a simple in-office laser procedure in a couple of months. It was then that I asked if it was too late to talk about putting close-up vision in my left eye (which is apparently routine for older patients [distance in one eye and close-up in the other], and while it's not recommended for someone my age because it can lead to vertigo after twenty or so years, I have much faith that the ocular field will advance in the next twenty years; maybe I'll eventually have bionic eyeballs?), and the doctor suppressed a sigh and said that he thought we had discussed this in our first appointment (and all I remember discussing was the option of paying two grand out of pocket for bifocal lenses in each eye - something the internet doesn't recommend - and I only saw the doctor once pre-surgery, last October, and that option was never brought up again). He then said that since the measurements on my right eye weren't exactly precise - and I have to wonder if that's due to the terrible experience I had during the laser-measuring process, as I wrote about before - I will likely have some near-sightedness in that eye (Whaaaaaat?) and that might be all the bifocular vision that I need. All I know is that when I cover my left eye while looking at a book, I can't decipher the text at all, so I don't know if that will really work for me. (But maybe that's the lingering cloudiness that will eventually be dealt with?)

When I was first checking into the hospital, several nurses told me that after my first procedure, I will be way less apprehensive for my second. But none of them - or I - knew about this subcapsular business. It wasn't painful, it wasn't terrible, but it was worse than I had anticipated, and now I am even more anxious about round two. I guess I just need to keep on takin' care of business (every day). I swear it's worth it for the improved vision I'm already experiencing, and it seems incredible that it's going to improve even further with time. There's probably some Kubrick film I could reference here to sum everything up, but I'm not an expert on his oeuvre; I've never been a fan.