************************************************************************************************************
Once my eyeball was as immobilized as my head and limbs, the Chief Surgeon was glad to start his specialized destruction and reconstruction...assisted by his Sister.
Since my son made me watch the horrendous video of the 8-minute phaco-surgery the previous night, I knew what I was in for.
First the Chief will pick up with one hand a metallic probe (hopefully sterilized) that is as thin as a needle with an eye. The other end of this needle, called probe, is connected to the output of the huge machine that I talked about yesterday. And he will insert the eye of his probe into the cornea of my eye. This needs only a hole of less than a mm diameter. And with his other hand he will insert a similar needle that is not a probe but a sweeper.
And he will ask his Sister to inject a chemical through the needle, and switch on the huge machine that will generate ultrasonic pulses. His two hands now get busy. With the needle he will try to clean up, lubricate, and wash the cavity in which my eye lens resides swimmingly. And the probe will now start vibrating at a terrific rate of the right frequency and tiny amplitude. I guess some sort of resonance takes place in the cavity and the probe sends shock waves into the chamber.
My eye lens that has solidified as hard as an opaque rock won't be able to withstand these earthquakes and breaks up by and by into fragments. If it were not overmature, it would have simply emulsified into grains. And Sister would be splashing her liquid into the cornea to assist the breakup.
This thing that the Sister does has a technical name...Irrigation.
After my lens gives up its struggles and is duly destroyed like the Bomiyan Buddha, the probe now takes over and sucks out all the debris that the irrigation made.
This process of sucking up is called Aspiration.
Big names these medicos give for small things like dissolving and sucking...they are meant to frighten laymen like me and you.
After the whole cavity has been cleared of the mess they made and is as empty as a bowl of Harry's rosogollas after a party, the Chief will ask his Sister to insert her brand new lens into the tip of his probe. And then he will suck it in.
This is an eminently foldable lens. It is like the chapatis (parathas) that my grannnie used to try and roll out. First she tried making the dough into a sphere and then roll it out into a circle with her rolling pin...she could never get that circle perfectly...South Indians don't know how to handle wheat. Then she would fold the circular thing into three or more sectors...all the time applying lots of ghee. And finally she would try and fry the damn thing on a frying pan with a lot of oil and heat. What we got were more like crisp papads but we would never hurt her feelings about it but swallow them breaking them into bits and pieces without the help of ultrasonic waves.
Anyway, this foldable lens is what costs all of 32,000 rupees. It is a synthetic lens with all kinds of filters...mine is blue.
And after the foldable lens is sucked into his probe, our Chief would inject it or push it into the cavity where my original god-given lens was ruling for all of 70 years.
And the ultrasonic waves would now do the job of opening the folded thing into a perfect circle...that is where the Chief's skill lies...we could never open out our grannie's parathas into their original circular shape...that was an irreversible process with lots of entropy involved.
And after the Chief is satisfied that his plastic lens has spread its wings smugly into its cavity, he will say cheerio to his Sister and the attender who has been waiting all the while will tape a black mask onto my eye and would lead me out...and announce: 'Next!'
I hope I have given a succinct summary of the 40,000 rupees worth of phaco-surgery...with some 'faekos' here and there.
***********************************************************************************************************
Once my eyeball was as immobilized as my head and limbs, the Chief Surgeon was glad to start his specialized destruction and reconstruction...assisted by his Sister.
Since my son made me watch the horrendous video of the 8-minute phaco-surgery the previous night, I knew what I was in for.
First the Chief will pick up with one hand a metallic probe (hopefully sterilized) that is as thin as a needle with an eye. The other end of this needle, called probe, is connected to the output of the huge machine that I talked about yesterday. And he will insert the eye of his probe into the cornea of my eye. This needs only a hole of less than a mm diameter. And with his other hand he will insert a similar needle that is not a probe but a sweeper.
And he will ask his Sister to inject a chemical through the needle, and switch on the huge machine that will generate ultrasonic pulses. His two hands now get busy. With the needle he will try to clean up, lubricate, and wash the cavity in which my eye lens resides swimmingly. And the probe will now start vibrating at a terrific rate of the right frequency and tiny amplitude. I guess some sort of resonance takes place in the cavity and the probe sends shock waves into the chamber.
My eye lens that has solidified as hard as an opaque rock won't be able to withstand these earthquakes and breaks up by and by into fragments. If it were not overmature, it would have simply emulsified into grains. And Sister would be splashing her liquid into the cornea to assist the breakup.
This thing that the Sister does has a technical name...Irrigation.
After my lens gives up its struggles and is duly destroyed like the Bomiyan Buddha, the probe now takes over and sucks out all the debris that the irrigation made.
This process of sucking up is called Aspiration.
Big names these medicos give for small things like dissolving and sucking...they are meant to frighten laymen like me and you.
After the whole cavity has been cleared of the mess they made and is as empty as a bowl of Harry's rosogollas after a party, the Chief will ask his Sister to insert her brand new lens into the tip of his probe. And then he will suck it in.
This is an eminently foldable lens. It is like the chapatis (parathas) that my grannnie used to try and roll out. First she tried making the dough into a sphere and then roll it out into a circle with her rolling pin...she could never get that circle perfectly...South Indians don't know how to handle wheat. Then she would fold the circular thing into three or more sectors...all the time applying lots of ghee. And finally she would try and fry the damn thing on a frying pan with a lot of oil and heat. What we got were more like crisp papads but we would never hurt her feelings about it but swallow them breaking them into bits and pieces without the help of ultrasonic waves.
Anyway, this foldable lens is what costs all of 32,000 rupees. It is a synthetic lens with all kinds of filters...mine is blue.
And after the foldable lens is sucked into his probe, our Chief would inject it or push it into the cavity where my original god-given lens was ruling for all of 70 years.
And the ultrasonic waves would now do the job of opening the folded thing into a perfect circle...that is where the Chief's skill lies...we could never open out our grannie's parathas into their original circular shape...that was an irreversible process with lots of entropy involved.
And after the Chief is satisfied that his plastic lens has spread its wings smugly into its cavity, he will say cheerio to his Sister and the attender who has been waiting all the while will tape a black mask onto my eye and would lead me out...and announce: 'Next!'
I hope I have given a succinct summary of the 40,000 rupees worth of phaco-surgery...with some 'faekos' here and there.
***********************************************************************************************************
No comments:
Post a Comment