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It was actually pretty interesting. Around three and a half hours of testing and discussion. (What wasn't interesting was having to catch the 5:25am commuter rail train to Boston, an hour away.)
First they did the standard eye chart stuff. Then they did the glaucoma test (numbing drops, press the blue light on your eyeball). Then it got more interesting; they sat me in a machine that measured the cornea (not sure how, but I stared at a tiny white light while they rotated a red and green bank of lights around and took pics). After that, they put in some dilating eyedrops. Then they did the ultrasound; it uses saline instead of a gel, but the same principle (squirt the eye, press the tiny ultrasound thingy on the eye, and move it around and take lots of zaps to get a picture of the eyeball dimensions). Then the optometrist measured my current glasses and did a preliminary retina/cataract look-see (the usual dilation exam, tilting you back and making you look at all four corners of the room while he shines a painfully bright light in your eye).
Then I went to meet the Big Gun, the Doc who I was referred to in the first place. This dude must've been around 60-65, and must be "Golden Fingers" 'cause he only does surgeries on Mondays and I guess they line up around the block for him. (Funny enough, the guy in RI who did my retinal detachment surgery in '01 also worked on Mondays, and I was lucky enough to nearly go blind on a Sunday night. Moral: if you do anything bad to your eyes, do it on Sunday.) He did his own quick retina/cataract check with the sit down machine (vertical slit-lamp, tiny magnifying glass) while mumbling quickly to two assistants who were scribing like Moses was reciting the Commandments. As most excellent doctors/scientists/engineers tend to be, he was a bit flaky and OCD (spoke quickly, repeated himself, quick hand gestures).
Apparently, cataract surgery has become so perfected that--once you're all set up in the room--they can bang it out in 10-30 minutes. They make a tiny 1/8-inch slit (which apparently heals quickly and self-seals so they don't even need to stitch it shut when done). They insert what amounts to a tiny sonic jackhammer which goes into your lens and pulverizes the shit out of the center of it where the cataract is, then vacuums up all the pieces, leaving the little empty skin-bag where the lens used to sit. Then they insert a new lens (depending on the type, it might even be folded and they insert it and open it up). They correct some/all of your vision while doing so; my vision is hideously nearsighted, probably around a -21 diopter (for those without glasses, this means I can see about two inches away without my Coke bottles on), and he said they can pretty much correct it so I only need glasses to read or drive. Sweet.
The issue with me is that the right eye doesn't need surgery right now. But I can't wear glasses to correct only the right eye because that eye is pretty bad too (around -19). When you have thick glasses, it's like looking through a telescope; the world is around 15% smaller-looking to you. And with the left eye almost 20/20, I would see one large image and one small image and my brain could never combine the two (not to mention I'd look like Bill the Cat). So once the left eye is done, I have to wear a corrective contact in the right eye only for the 1- to 5-years it'll be before I need surgery in that eye.
Fascinating shit, for what amounts to two bagfuls of jelly in your head.
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