Refractive lens replacement surgery: the actual surgery

Part one refers; but left you hanging as to when it would happen. The answer turned out to be not until a day ago, for a combination of: them needing to find the lenses; me needing a gap in my busy schedule; and them only doing a couple of days a month in Cambridge.

So I walked in, bright and early for 8:30, had my pre-checks, some eye drops, and the first of a billion confirmations-of-identity; oh, and a confirmation of which-is-dominant eye, and writing the numbers 1 and 2 above the eyes to indicate sequence. Then it turned out that the surgeon was stuck on a train; bref, the actual surgery didn't start till about 11:30. But then it took way less than the advertised three hours, so it was mostly a wash.

Taken upstairs we did identity again, I was given about five different eye drops, had a cap put on to voer my hair, and tissues put under my ears to absorb the cleaning fluids that would flow later, laid down on a gurney, and wheeled around into surgery. This featured the surgeon, who kindly offered me my choice of music, which was Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", which was almost exactly the right length; sadly the orchestral rather than in piano version but you can't have everything. He also did his fairly successful best to make light conversation to distract me from what was going on. There were two or more others present as well, though for obvious reasons I didn't see all that much.

Then I'm covered with a surgical masking, I guess, which completely covered my head, apart from a hole made for the first eye, my left, the non-dom one. Then some more eye drops, including I think anaesthetic, oh and also at some point a thorough cleaning around that eye and eyebrows. Then something to prevent my blinking, I'm not sure quite what: it felt like the left eye was plastic pulling it open, whereas the right felt like a clamp, but more likely they were the same. Then a warning that I was going to see something like the northern lights, and indeed - more eye drops? - it all went purply-yellow or whatever, and the action had started. Vague, hard-to-see things that must have been cutting a hole. Then a little noise - which I was warned about - which I think was the vacuum cleaner sucking out my macerated old lens. And then, taking little time at the end, inserting the new lens. That was the first eye done. Oh, and he checked - holding up two then one fingers - that I had basic vision with the just-done eye.

Surgical masking off, brief rest, during which I think I could tell that I could see the ceiling more clearly through the newly corrected eye than the other. Then we're onto the right - dominant - eye. This was slightly more "uncomfortable" than the left, in a way that's hard to describe, in the way that having yourself anaesthetised for dentistry is. Though this wasn't painful, just... disturbing? Mostly I was worried I was going to blink and ruin things, which is silly. But perhaps the dominant eye fought harder. During this one the surgeon told me about his formative experiences practising on the practice-surgery eyeballs his father (also an eye surgeon) had; and about how the lens he was putting in had tiny dots on the edges so he could get the orientation right (I am astigmatic, the lens corrects this just like glasses). Again, once done, quick basic-vision check and pass; and he says that all has gone well.

My vision is pretty blurry at this point with various cleaning fluid sloshing around, and I get plastic tranparent shields taped over each eye to prevent me rubbing them. I'm taken off for a quick after-care talk (these are your eye drops, anti-inflammatory, which continue for a month, do you feel pain? No, good; don't shower for a bit; and so on), and taken downstairs into the care of M who has come to pick me up. I can see well enough, and could had I needed to have gone home alone, but it is comforting to have someone to look after me. Also it is slightly more comfortable to have my eyes shut, and I'm feeling rather sunlight-sensitive. We go to Fitzbillies in Bridge Street for a light lunch, and then home.

I'm advised to keep my eyes mostly shut for today, so listen to the Henley livestream and the book of John, to which I fall asleep. I find I can watch from a distance, and I think I can see my vision is stabilising. I can't read my phone or a book though; distance is definitely better than close.

Overnight I leave my eye-protectors on, but remove them in the morning. For the first day in my adult life my first action is not to put my glasses on!

10 am: back for a check up: various machine-that-go-bleep and check obscure things like eyeball pressure, but all is well. I'm given an eye test and get 20/20 or a little better at distane, a little worse at close up, and told that it will get better. Things are definitely stabilising, distance vision is close-to-perfect, close-up is still a bit iffy but I can with effort read my phone. To W/S, coffee and book, Radiant Star which happily has a largeish font. And so home. Next check up in a week, then a month.

Update: a few days later: distance vision still good, I'm putting in my eyedrops reasonably faithfully. Reading vision stiff iffy; I bought some reading glasses and may have to keep them. The major irritation with that is taking pix from my phone.

Book review: Alchemised

Alchemised is the debut fantasy novel by SenLinYu... dark fantasy, horror and gothic romance... follows the life of a former alchemist, Helena Marino, as she recovers her memories of a civil war...  a reimagining of SenLinYu's popular fan fiction Manacled... reimagine the Harry Potter series in a dark alternative universe, with a romance between Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy. Or so wiki says. It stood out to me as not having a cover looking like AI generated slop - not that I oppose AI covers, but there is a terrible similarity to them all.

It is unique as the only book anyone has ever asked me about while I was reading it at W/S; the first asked me why I was reading it, which rather surprised me; but I learnt in the conversation about the fanfic past. And to the second, who asked if it was any good, I could honestly reply that up to about page 800 it was pretty good; pages 800-900 drag somewhat; then it recovers a bit until the ending goes all soppy and mushy.

Ranking notes: I find it ever harder to slot new books into my increasingly unreliable ranked list. This one gains because I genuinely enjoyed reading it. But it lacks the beauty of, say, Pavane. It also has nothing to say that isn't banal. And its a doorstop. I doubt I would re-read it (I have re-read most of the books in my "worth reading" section, which is where I placed this). Oh, and I think she tries too hard for the "horror" element in places; the flesh-eating for example is crude.

Real spoilers ahead, so don't read on if you're going to read it.

The story opens with Our Heroine pulled out of "stasis", with her memories missing in important respects; an apparently uninteresting medic from the losing side of the necromantic war. She has a bad time, and is assigned for interrogation by KF. Part two then goes back to the war a few years ago, and her experiences therein; her gradually developing role as "handler" for the "evil" KF who gradually falls for her and vice versa; in part three she regains her memories and the evil necromancers are defeated and so on.

So it begins with mystery, and some interesting "alchemy", and a nice moody atmosphere and tension. This is the best bit. Flipping to part two gives us a different perspective, and we begin to see that the vaunted "resistance" isn't quite as noble as we were lead to think (though why they are called "the resistance", when they start off as the govt, I don't know). Various tropes - outsiders getting their chance at education but being looked down upon by the hereditary insiders - are well deployed. Eventually it all turns into a teenage love story of the "oh, Artagel" sort and her failure to handle the culmination of that well is the duff patch around pages 800-900. But knowing that in advance would I think vitiate from about half way through; fortunately I didn't. I did begin to think that the way she and KF were able to meet up regularly without anyone tracking them was really Not Very Plausible At All, but unless you're really concentrating that takes a while to seep through. The scheme by which Cetus does his stuff rather flowed by me and I didn't quite understand whether she thought she had explained it but failed, or was deliberately being vague, but never mind. The bits with Ivy - first, her implausible ability to infiltrate, and then her implausible ability to steal the phylactery - grated somewhat. And in the end the "international community" (ffs) trying to bury the past all seemed far too much like a rather naive smearing of current ideas onto a different world. Was she trying to make a point? I hope not.

The two central characters are clearly the most important things in the world to each other, just like in teen romance. But the megadeaths all around them don't seem to produce much more than generic sadness in Our Heroes. Would it not perhaps have been better for the world if KF had simply died, thereby weakening the evil necromantic side? The excuse given is that he was also killing the bad people, so perhaps not; but I think a more honest book would have examined this more carefully.

Character notes: Our Heroine is really a bit wet, and allows everyone to push her around. The resistance assigns her tedious arduous supporting roles, and she just accepts this. Characters with no formal authority give her commands which she accepts. She is not an analogue of Hermione Granger. Her relationship with Luc is... odd. She is devoted to him, but apparently - it gradually and I think implausibly emerges - not at all in a romantic way. I think it would be natural - given her background - that she would be; there should be tension there, between her and him, and then a tension in her relation to KF.