It is December 17, 2014. I lay in my hospital bed, looking up at the surgeon, nurses, and anesthesiologist who surround me. They slowly place the mask over my mouth and nose. “Deep breaths,” they say. The air feels suffocating and all of a sudden I’m scared. What if they mess up? Will they really stick scalpels and poke around in my eyes? As I breathe in the thick anesthesia, my eyes blink slowly. The world warps in my vision. I find words to say, to anchor me, to keep me here. “I’m scared.” I say it in a whisper. The doctor tells me I’ll be fine and not to be scared. I take one deep, haggard breath. My last view is the surgeon leaning over me, ready to begin the procedure. 

I’ve had amblyopia since I was three. It’s not easy having one, nevermind two, lazy eyes. My doctor told me I needed eye surgery to fix it. He said it was really bad already and it would just get worse. Hearing the details of a Strabismus surgery, I got extremely nervous. I did not want doctors going near my eyes. However, they did go through with the surgery.

I wake up after the surgery was done, and it’s like no time has passed. Except now, my eyes hurt and I’m exhausted. I struggle to sit up; the nurse and my mom pushing me back down. I feel a wetness on my cheeks. I turn to the nurse. “Am I crying or leaking?” I ask her in a thin, wavering voice. She assures me that I was not crying, that it’s just from the surgery. I close my eyes, then lift my hand up to rub them. “Don’t touch your eyes,” the nurse warns me, not unkindly. My eyes are uncomfortable, stiff, and in need of a rub. They bring me a graham cracker and ginger ale. I start my snack, the first food I’ve had of the day. I look around. Everything is blurry. I suddenly have a strong urge to leave. I can’t explain it, I just have to get out of that hospital. I am allowed to stay as long as I want, but I feel like I have to leave. If I stay to sleep, then I’ll never leave.  The nurse points me towards the bathroom to get out of the hospital gown and into my sweats and t-shirt. As I change, I lean in close to the mirror and look at myself. The image is shocking. I am pale, with moisture all around my eyes, spreading as far as my cheeks and nose. I am startled to find that my sclera, the white part of my eyes, are not white anymore. They are red.  A deep red, bleeding color. When I feel tears coming down my face, it is actually blood. I come out of the bathroom as quick as my tired legs can go. I walk straight to my mom. “You didn’t tell me I was crying blood!” She laughs a little. “It’s all right. Your eyes are supposed to be red.” She helps me put on my sneakers and I get into the wheelchair that is waiting for me. I close my eyes as I am pushed through the halls. I really just want to be in my own bed, at my own house, away from this hospital, to go to sleep.

They hand me cataract glasses as I leave. The glasses are dark, and huge over my face. They tell me I will probably need to wear them for a few weeks, because my eyes will be very light sensitive. They also give me an ointment, saying that I will need to put on my eyelashes and blink in daily. It is to help avoid infection, or getting anything in my eyes, but it leaves my vision very blurry. I don't wear my glasses for a few days because they won’t help. The nurses help me into the car and off we go. I squint, looking at my phone. There is one message of good luck from one of my friends. I smile and try to lie down. My mom looks back and tells me to keep my head up, that it needs to be elevated, so I can’t lie down until we get home. I sit up straight, but my weariness and pain overcome me. I lie down again. She tells me to sit up. This goes on until we get home and I stumble upstairs to my bed.

Reading is one of my greatest passions. I can’t read for weeks. It is awful. It hurts to move my eyes around to look at things. My eyes are still light sensitive and I start seeing double everywhere. When I walk down the hallway in school, the walls look narrow and caved in. There are two images of my teachers in each of my classes, two of my friend when we are talking, and two sets of notes on the board. It’s hard to walk down stairs. Slowly and carefully, I watch each step as I walk down, ignoring the complaints behind me, telling me to go faster. Every day, I get the same panicky feeling every time I walk in the hall. What if I walk into someone? What if I misstep when I walk, and fall down the stairs? What if, what if, what if? I have to be careful and cautious every single time I go somewhere. I don’t like the scared feeling I get when I’m doing anything involving my eyes, whether it be dancing, walking, reading, or writing. When I finally collapse on my bed at home, exhausted from my careful day at school, I exhale slowly, feeling as if I held my breath all day. I hate my double vision.

I learned to avoid taking anything from someone’s hands, because I would miss their hand and grab at air instead. I confused the double with the real person often. It took awhile until I got the hang of this. When I went back to the doctor, I found out that they overcorrected me! My eyes were slightly turned in, which made me see double all the time. I could hardly read like that (though it didn’t stop me). I couldn’t spot when doing chané turns in ballet. And I couldn’t see my flute music as I played. Seeing double really messed me up for a while. I got headaches and I couldn’t rub my eyes because of the stitches underneath. Since they overcorrected me the first time, the doctor said he wanted to try again.

You can imagine how I feel. Why would I want them to mess me up all over again? Why would I willingly go through this for the second time? How can I face another surgery? Then again, I don’t want to see double for the rest of my life, and that’s what will happen if I don’t have the second surgery. I agree to do it. April 17, 2015 is the day of my second surgery. By then, I am tired of my eye problems and I want this to work so badly. I just want to get it all over with. I am tired of double vision, headaches and not doing the things I love like I used to do. I am ready. I am ready to see again, singularly, clearly and fully. I am a bit nervous, too. I’ve always had eye problems. I do not know what my vision will be like or what I will see differently, without amblyopia and double vision.

After the second surgery, I was just tired. Tired of all of it. I was restless and uncomfortable and ready to get on with my life. I still saw double sometimes, and I felt my eye going out sometimes, but I didn’t know what it meant for me, or why that was happening. My eye problems, surgery, recovery, and double vision were an important obstacle I had to overcome in my life. I can’t say it’s been resolved. It just hasn’t happened yet. But I hope, maybe someday, it will.