Sure, go ahead and shoot laser beams into my eyeball! I can take it!

With a blink of an eye I can change the world--or at least its appearance. Close my left eye and open my right and I see whiter whites and brighter brights; close the right and open the left and it looks as if someone has pulled down a yellow scrim, making the world look like an antique sepia-toned photograph.

And that dulled view is apparently how I've been seeing the world for quite some time. I had the cataract removed from my right eye Wednesday and a new artificial lens inserted, and at first I couldn't see much because it felt like someone had dumped a truckload of sand into my eye. I walked around for a day and a half with my eye either clamped shut and weeping or open and blurred. Today, though, I can see, and what I'm seeing with my new lens only reveals how faulty the old lens must have been. 

Getting it out was both easy and awful, in different ways. There was some discomfort, but the only real pain occurred after the surgery, when they tore some tape off my forehead. Two days later, I can still feel that sting. 

Every aspect of the experience is designed to keep patients calm and comfortable, including the small dose of Valium that didn't seem to do much for me. When the nurse asked me whether I was feeling relaxed, I told her that relaxation isn't my spiritual gift--and besides, the word relax simply doesn't fit into any situation involving lasers pointed at my eyeball. When James Bond was strapped down on that table with the laser overhead, did Goldfinger tell him to relax? Maybe he should have given him some Valium.

My doctor's surgery runs like a well-oiled machine, with squads of specialized staff people moving efficiently from patient to patient to perform their essential roles--vitals, history, Valium, eyedrops, and on and on. By the time I was wheeled into the laser-surgery suite, I had spent a total of maybe 30 seconds with my actual doctor, and by the time he was done, I'd spent, at most, 10 minutes in his presence. The result of all that machine-like efficiency is a patient who feels like no more than a cog in the machine--a sore and sorry cog that can neither relax nor see straight.

But it's all good, or it will be soon enough. My eyes have always had trouble playing well together, but now they have to learn to cooperate all over again, which leads sometimes to double vision, or not quite double but one-and-a-half vision that resolves only with squinting. The doctor reassures me that everything will be fine with time, especially after I get the other cataract removed sometime next month. Meanwhile, I'm feeling my way around and enjoying changing the world with every blink of my eye.