An accidental eye lift

I accidentally had an eye lift this morning. Yes, I went to the hospital for a consultation with a plastic surgeon specialising in eyes, and yes, I knew I may end up having something done, but coming away with an eye lift courtesy of the NHS hadn't been an option when I got up at 5.30am! You know how it goes. I got up early, earlier than usual, because I had a hospital appointment first thing. First thing on a Monday - ideal. It was a blur of rushing round, breakfasts, getting children clean and dressed and off to crawl through morning traffic. I'd gone for a consultation. Said consultation resulted in me being told I was having some small lesions (to remove an ongoing skin condition)....so to find myself on an operating table wasn't unusual. The consultant had a joke with me that I looked like I was laid out for my funeral (oh, what a jest!) and then he looked into my eyes. Not like that. He looked at me, and said, "No! Too many for bshhh bshhh...bilateral blepharoplasty." And off he strode. "Do you know what's going to happen?" said the other doctor. "We're going to do this," - and he pulled his eyelid out in an alarming manner. "You mean I'm getting an eye lift on the NHS?" I joked. "Yes, " said the surgeon nonchalantly. Ironically, I'd been at a ladies' fashion lunch last Friday, surrounded by ladies who lunch. I'd felt a million miles different from them, yet here, just 48 hours later, I was entering their ranks. All I'd need now would be bleached blonde hair, a permatan and tooth veneers...and to move to Cheshire! Enough of my reverie. Suddenly, all hell let loose, both around me and inside my head! I was awash with gowns and towels and iodine and...I'm going too fast. But so was my heart at that very moment. I was glad I hadn't had time to think about it and thus worry, but at the same time I felt I'd been led blindly onto a rollercoaster and really couldn't get off. All I kept thinking was that I was going to undergo surgery...awake. I felt the surgeon moving something across my eyelids. "I haven't had any anaesthetic yet!" I screamed. "I know," he calmly replied, "I'm drawing on your eyes first." Oh. Right. Phew. As if it wasn't bad enough having iodine brushed all over my face (luckily no ceiling mirrors in the theatre) they then have to give me a local anaesthetic. Needles in my eyelids. I need an anaesthetic for them to administer the anaesthetic! Needles in my fucking eyelids. God love the surgeon, despite me wriggling and shmiggling and blaspheming, he got them in with minimal fuss. Very quickly, my face and head numbed, a bizarre sensation. And then I expected a scalpel. How wrong I was. A warm sensation and then the smell of burning flesh. He was burning the skin off my eyelids! Now at this point, I was squirming and squeezing the hand off a wonderful nurse (thanks, Elaine) and wondering how the hell I'd got here. The sensation of blood running down my face made me want to faint. And then he was stitching me up (this tickled) and then I was done. Well, I say done, to complement the eye lift, the thick sticky tape that had secured towels around my face was r-i-p-p-e-d off so quickly and hard that I'd had a face wax, too. Events took a further turn. I had to have gel packs and bandages on both eyes, rendering me blind. As I was wheeled into recovery, the receiving nurse actually yelped in shock - which made me laugh out loud - did I look so bad?? Turns out she wasn't expecting me to have this operation - no shit, Sherlock. Neither did I! And then the trip back to the ward. In one short journey, I got an insight (pardon the pun) into blindness - no-one told me where we were going or which way they were going to steer me, so I was off on a disorientating journey which was very unnerving. Even moving me from wheelchair to chair was peculiar as I had no idea where I was sitting. And when they told me I had a cup of tea beside me - well, which side?? I couldn't even switch my phone on to call home. Eventually, the eye pads were removed and I could go take a look at myself...ohmigod. Think Bride of Wildenstein. And then, like a closing scene of a film, a thick trickle of blood ran from the corner of my eye down my cheek. Argh! Faint or vomit? Faint or vomit? Or both? Luckily, neither, and so off home to rest. And to explain to my boss that after a simple hospital trip I'd had fairly major surgery and would be off for two weeks. To conclude, though, whilst I look like I've had a fairly good fight (and lost), and am rubbish at applying my ointment, and keep wanting to rub my itchy eyes, my son summed it up on getting home from school. He flinched, then stepped closer and said, "Oh, you still look like mum." That'll do for me.