The Catalyst

TW: surgery

When I was younger I used to wear glasses, and like a fair few kids who wear glasses I hated them. I hated how they looked on my face, and I hated how they made my face look. I hated that the glasses helped people stereotype me as a nerd, and I hated when I changed to nicer frames and got given the moniker “sexy librarian”. My grade was 3.5/4.0 which meant I could barely see five inches from my face and life was basically unlivable without them, and I hated that as well. There was no way you could convince me there was anything even remotely flattering or nice about glasses. None.

I tried making the switch to contact lenses, but despite the temporary relief I ended up hating those too. They dried out my eyes, irritated them, and needed replacement every month because of my astigmatism. I’d switch back to glasses as needed, but then I’d look in the mirror with the glasses on and remember how much I hated them. This made the decision to get corrective eye surgery a no-brainer for me. I had the means and I hated life with the temporary solutions. I wanted my vision correction to be permanent.

Coming in to the center, I was fairly confident that I’d be fine. LASIK is a same-day recovery surgery, after all, and one that causes minimum interference and fuss in daily life. Before that, however, I needed to go through a routine checkup. How terrible is my vision, how thin are my corneas, all of that. It seemed standard and I figured nothing bad could come out of it.

Then the doctor broke the news.

My corneas were too thin for LASIK. I mentally braced myself to return back to that self-loathing life framed by my glasses, when he added the /however/. However, there was another procedure they could perform. PRK. Unfortunately, PRK is a very different beast. An excruciatingly painful one.

Here’s a little bit of a primer. Lasik and PRK are both forms of corrective eye surgery that use lasers. With Lasik, they essentially carve out a flap in the cornea, thinning it in order to improve your vision. The cornea folds back onto itself, which is why you have same day recovery. It’ll naturally heal and protect itself. PRK, or photorefractive keratectomy, does the same thing except for one crucial detail.

It shaves cornea off directly from the top layer.

This means that PRK has a longer recovery period, because you are essentially burning off parts of the eyeball. You can’t bandage it, put gauze or aloe vera. All you can do is take painkillers and accept your fate until new cells grow back to protect the exposed layer from the elements. That meant my choices were between going back to the life I’d hated, or what would be probably the most excruciating days of my life. Even so, I had known when walking through the door that I was resolved to do this. No matter what.

When heading into the surgery, they make sure to give you local anaesthetic over the eyes, dripping anaesthetic drops and rubbing some kind of cream over the top of your corneas. It means you blink less and feel nothing, but has the added bonus of making you go a little loopy. As the watchful eye of the laser blinked to life I imagined a conversation with it, as if it were a friend. Reassuring me. Telling me things would be fine. It wasn’t until a minute or so in when I began to smell burning meat, and a few seconds after that when I realised the burning meat was me.

It’s a quick procedure, taking only 5 or so minutes per eye. Time enough for contemplation and belated regrets, as well as to wonder exactly how bad recovery could be. Afterwards I was given all of the warnings. My vision would improve gradually over the next few weeks before it was permanently better. There was a chance I would become light sensitive, see halos around brightly lit objects, and have increased dryness of the eyes. Most importantly, though, I would be in pain. A lot of it. I was prescribed high strength painkillers and told not to take more than one every four hours. Four hours seemed like plenty of time, but as I was soon to find out each of those four hours would be the longest of my life.

The pain didn’t start until the anaesthetic wore off, later in the evening.

It started as blips of discomfort dancing across my eyes, until it began to start to sear. By evening I was a crying, whimpering mess. It’s hard to even find the words to describe it, but I’ll try. Imagine the sharp pain when you accidentally burn yourself on the stove cooking your dinner. In an instant there is heat, sharp and piercing, and it makes you grit your teeth and whimper. You’ll reach out for an ice pack of some kind, because ice will numb the pain. You’ll put a bandage over the burn to help it recover. Now imagine that burn had not been for a single instant, but had been for five long minutes focused on your eyes, one of the softest parts of the body. Imagine you cannot numb that area because you can’t put anything there. All you can do is take painkillers and cry.

To be honest with you, those few days were a timeless blur for me. I lived in the darkness of my room because any light at all made my eyes water and heightened the pain. Thankfully, I was able to stay with my parents and have food brought to me at the appropriate times, food I scrambled to eat in the dark and mostly undisturbed by the outside world. Painkillers were taken maybe too frequently, just because if I didn’t take them the excruciating pain meant I would do nothing except suffer the searing agony of my corneas. I didn’t dare check the time because lit-up devices might cause me pain. So instead I slept, and I listened to the rain, to podcasts, to anything that would distract me for even a little bit. Classical music and the podcast Welcome to Night Vale were close companions and the only thing that helped me indicate the passage of time, but so was the darkness.

I used to be scared of the dark, of things that go bump in the night. Even up to this day I’m afraid of what lies beneath the cover of night. And yet, during those days where everything about the world of sunshine and bright lights scared me, the darkness was my one solace. My friend. As the dulcet tones of WTNV’s host Cecil would regale me with tales of the weird and unusual in the little desert town of Night Vale, I dreamed of strange and frightening creatures in strange and scattered dreams. Through everything the darkness protected me, and in the sweet embrace of an unlit room I was able to find comfort in sleep, fitful as it was through the pain.

Then finally, the dawn of the fourth day broke, and the pain had begun to numb itself. To this day I’m still photosensitive. Very bright lights cause me pain, and I have to physically look away from them and live with the dull darkness of my computer screen. My eyes get unusually dry . Even so, do I regret the surgery? Not at all. My quality of life is better. I can see clearly, and have for the past few years. Still, my time in the darkness taught me a few valuable lessons.

First, sometimes, for our sakes, we have to make choices that will cause us temporary pain in order to find more permanent satisfaction and comfort. Not always physical pain, but also mental anguish. These choices are hard, and the safe and comfortable can be so much easier to fall back on. Still, when you think about it, sometimes that comfort is worse. You grow complacent and accepting of your circumstances. You pretend at happiness and tolerance when on the inside you’re angry at your circumstances. That’s not a way to live a life.

Second, we should have sympathy for those who suffer pain. Heartbreak, anguish, chronic physical and mental pain. I lived with that pain for four days. Four days where nobody around me could truly understand the depths of how much my eyes hurt, how desperate I was for any kind of relief, how many times I went to sleep sobbing and praying that it would come to an end. Imagine, that was only four days, and they were the worst days of my life. How miserable must it be to live like that on a daily basis, suffering from chronic pain? I will never not listen now, to those who say they are pained. I know how bad it can be, and I can only imagine how much worse it could be, when your body and circumstances are fighting against your willpower.

Third, I am fortunate. Extremely, incredibly fortunate. This is not a procedure easy to schedule, pay for, or recover from. It requires taking time out of your life to be able to recover, not only for the initial four days but in the coming weeks as your vision slowly returns. Not everybody can afford to do that. While it taught me humility and thankfulness for my circumstances, it’s also infuriating. Why are surgeries like this, and not only surgeries like this but even more critical ones, not more readily accessible? Why is it that I was born in the right place and time to be able to improve my quality of life this way, and not a million others? It’s not fair, it’s not just, and we as the next generation should push for change, whether it be universal healthcare or divvying up the wealth of the rich to pay exorbitant medical bills. Everybody deserves better. Everyone.

SPOILERS FOR IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON

“If you were given the opportunity, would you go back in time to stop a war, even if you had to kill?” This is the question that the movie In the Shadow of the Moon asks itself by its climax, and answers with a resounding yes. The time-bending mystery begins with a streak of mysterious murders, but as it progresses through its 9-year jumps it becomes a superficial commentary on police brutality, race relations, and the ethics of travelling through time to prevent disaster.

Unfortunately, that declaration is simply accepted as right just… because. When our lead Thomas Lockhart (rightfully) points out that this crusade has a price in blood, this is chillingly brushed off as necessary collateral damage. Our heroes are in the right because they are certain the deaths will bring peace and prevent war, so long as the correct people are killed at the correct time. They are so convincing that Tom is convinced to raise his own granddaughter into becoming a serial killer on a suicide mission. Nobody sees this as wrong, and the movie ends with him carrying the infant girl, fully aware that her future will lead to her own demise and the deaths of many others.

So let’s take this as an opportunity to ask an important question. If you could go back in time to right the wrongs of the world, would you?

In 2015, the New York Times tweeted out the following:

We asked @nytmag readers: If you could go back and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it? (What’s your response?) pic.twitter.com/daatm12NZC
— NYT Magazine (@NYTmag) October 23, 2015

To say the response was divisive is an understatement. Those pro-infanticide said that one life was nothing compared to the suffering of millions exterminated during the Holocaust. By their logic, if you stop Hitler’s rise you then stop that suffering and that of future generations. He would be necessary collateral damage. Sacrificing one for the lives of millions.Then there is the opposite side of the coin – those who wouldn’t kill the infant. After all, babies are babies. They haven’t done anything wrong yet except be born, cry, and occasionally throw up on somebody. Killing baby Hitler would be like killing baby Gandhi – they’ve not done anything yet, right?

But it goes further than that. When we as people take action, we cause ripples in the world. Now imagine a world without Hitler. Yes, it is one where the Holocaust never happened. But it might also be one where the Soviet Union takes over the world. Where Mussolini has waltzed through Europe like he owns the place. Where there’s no wi-fi, no computers, not even cellphones because the technology that lead to these never needed to be created. Or it could be one where World War 2 still happens, except Goebbels, Himmler, or even the communists were leading Germany. Any of these futures is possible, along with a million others. There’s no certainty to what you’ll accomplish by going back in time except killing a baby.

Even so, those of you reading this might still be willing to take those odds, and you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong for it. Change is often instigated by violence. Revolution at the cost of death. But if you’re talking about stopping war, it’s never just one person who starts it. At that point, it becomes a question of “how far back do we have to go and how many lives have to be taken to get what we want”? Within In the Shadow of the Moon, although we are not told the full number of female lead Rya’s victims, it is implied that by 1988 she has murdered her way through dozens, if not hundreds, in order to ensure that the future does not come to pass. Family, friends, lovers, anybody who could have influenced the ideology of her first targets – she could hypothetically need to go back hundreds or thousands of years to affect the change she wants, and it could still not be enough.

But I digress. Let’s talk about John Brown, and another civil war. A real one.

John Brown was a businessman, an abolitionist, and a proud advocate of armed insurrectionism against slaveowners. He once said that “These men are all talk. What we need is action—action!”, and proved it by leading anti-slavery forces for the abolitionists. His biggest claims to fame are killing five slave hunters with a broadsword during the “Pottowatomie massacre”, and attempting to raid the Harpers Ferry armory in Virginia. For the latter he was executed, after one of the most widely publicised and influential trials in US History. He could have run, could have been smuggled out, could have bargained with the goodwill of Victor Hugo petitioning for his release (yes, it’s Les Mis and Hunchback Victor Hugo). But instead, Brown chose martyrdom, and his death helped spark the American Civil War.

You read that right. Violence begetting not just violence, but one of the bloodiest wars in human history.

Historians have had a hard time placing Brown. Was he a madman? Was he resentful because he was a bad businessman and the slaveowners were more successful? There’s a lot of evidence to suggest this might be the case, especially after his wool businesses started going under. But then again, there’s the other side of this. The side that argues he was a visionary. A hero. This was a man angry at the state of the world, angry at the people and powers in charge, and angry that the ones who should have moved to stop it weren’t doing so. So he decided to take up arms to make a change, and he’s not alone. For as long as humanity has existed there have been revolutionaries. People tired of the status quo and taking active steps to fight it, not only in words but also in deeds and violence. Guy Fawkes. Che Guevera. Boudica. Robespierre. All influential figures whose purpose was to prevent bloodshed, oppression, and all-out war. All figures whose revolutions ended in violence, although not always success.

For the last time, let’s go back to In The Shadow of the Moon. Rya is our deuteragonist, our heroine, and the one going through time “killing baby Hitler”. The movie tries to make it more palatable by replacing “baby Hitler” with “a group of white supremacists”, which… does actually change the dynamic somewhat. This is no longer an innocent. This is a group of people who are actively spreading racist propaganda, so as you watch her murder her way through them it’s easy for it to feel justified. Earned. They’re getting what they deserve. She is a catalyst for change and hope for the future. You can cheer for her and revel in the movie’s ending, happy that it pats you on the back for supporting Rya’s mission.

But.

If that was you, in her shoes, would you be able to do it? Would you be able to bring yourself to kill? Even if you knew that there might be a sliver of hope for your future, could you act to ensure the death of not only one but potentially hundreds? Even if it might instigate another war – a different war?

If you can say yes to all of those questions, then you might just be the world’s next revolutionary. Or, the world’s next madman.

PRK: Personal Reflections on Pain Tolerance and Painful Choices

In The Shadow Of The Moon: The Ethics Of Time Travel And “Killing Baby Hitler”