photo by
Annemarie Poyo

I have just experienced – not witnessed, mind you, but experienced – a miracle.

This is not a joke. It is a fact. I am not a religious nut. I am a regular person like yourself. Here is my story, just as it happened:

One day I was sitting at my Macintosh computer in my little office in Emory University Hospital, writing the employee newsletter just as I always do every week, rain or shine. On this particular day, however, a FAX came over the telephone line about a procedure the doctors were doing.

The FAX said that doctors could correct nearsightedness with a cold laser and a tiny blade in about 20 minutes without any pain. Sure, I said. And you can make your thighs dainty by squeezing a hingey, wishbone-looking thing while eating Cheetos and watching Suzanne Somers on TV.

You might say I was skeptical, which is what being in journalism does to a person, even if she runs screaming into public relations writing after only three years on a daily newspaper like I did. You can take the girl out of the newsroom, but you can't make her believe everything she reads.

The people wanted me to put a paragraph about this procedure in the hospital newsletter, inviting employees to have it done to them. Well. Needless to say, I called those FAX-senders right up on the phone to find out the real true story, as I had my readers' welfare to think about. Such is the job of an employee newsletter writer in today's society.

The person who answered the phone sounded real professional, which was good, so I set up an appointment to go there and see what kind of place I was dealing with. I got to the center okay, even if I did have to drive on the highway in Atlanta traffic, where the motto is, "However fast you're going is not fast enough so I'm going to ride your bumper then dangerously swerve around you, giving you a dirty look as I go by."

The center was discreetly hidden in a tasteful brick building so you'd never know it was there unless you'd gotten directions, unlike Atlanta's famous Shallowford Vasectomy Center, which advertises on billboards using attention grabbers such as "fertilize your lawn, not your wife" and "trucks welcome, drivers free."

Once inside the tasteful brick building, I rode a quiet elevator upto the third floor and walked into a very tasteful waiting room that looked more like a study in an Arthur Conan Doyle mystery than any doctor's office I'd ever seen, were it not for the high-tech computers that would tell you all about the eye if you wore some headphones and touched a screen with your finger.

I sat in a little room with a little woman named Claire Schwall, who had a big belly full of baby and a passion for eye surgery second only to Mary Lou Retton's love of Revco. She told me all about the procedure, called LASIK , for Laser In-situ Keratomileusis, or, for you lay people, Let's All See Inside K-Mart. Okay, I made that up. Laser means, well, laser. In-situ means in site, or, all in one place. Keratomileusis comes from two Greek words that mean to shape the cornea.

So far so good. As Claire explained it, the surgeon uses an instrument called a microkeratome to create a flap in the top layer of the cornea. A cold laser reshapes the second layer, and then the surgeon puts the flap back down, forming "nature's bandage." Claire cupped her hands together like a clam to illustrate this point. It was very effective.

My head packed with facts, I got in my trusty American car, went back to my little office and wrote a paragraph for the employee newsletter. My job was done. I could go home with a clear conscience.

There was just one thing, though. I, too, suffered the inconveniences and, yes, even pains, of bad vision. I got my first pair of spectacles at age 11, and it's been a downhill slide ever since. Over the years, I've worn at least a dozen styles of glasses, three kinds of contacts, and when my poor eyes couldn't handle the contacts anymore, I switched to glasses again.

My uncorrected vision was 20/800. That's bad. There was no eye chart big enough for that. When I took my glasses off, someone else had to find them for me. Heaven knows there are worse problems to complain about, but I had given up swimming, boating, water-skiing and most other sports as well. Sports stopped being fun for me the day I couldn't see the boat anymore and the day I ran slap into the third baseman, sending my very expensive, ultra-thin glasses flying into the red dirt.

"Swim in your contacts," my friends would suggest, trying to help. "But I can't wear contacts! The doctor said!" I would reply. "Get one of those stretchy things that hold your glasses on your face," they would say. "When my glasses get wet I can't see a thing anyway!" I would shoot back. "Get prescription goggles!" "Oh, never mind."

Those of you who depend on glasses, not just for reading or driving -- that doesn't count, but those of you who really depend on them to get from the bed to the bathroom, know exactly what I mean.

For those of you who don't, picture this: You're on a crowded beach, enjoying the caw-caw of the seagulls and the crash-crash of the waves. You decide to take a swim. You put your glasses in their case and head for the water. Setting aside the fact that you cannot see a thing, you wade into the blurry ocean, careful not to go out too far, and you begin to float. There's nothing but you and the water and the bright blue sky. Life is good.

Then it's time to get out of the water. What do you see? If you're like me, you see the biggest Monet painting on earth, splotches of color on a giant canvas. Nothing more. No details, nothing discernible. But wait! Where is your towel? Where is your spouse? Where is your hotel? How many miles have you drifted while you were stupidly feeling safe floating in the blurry ocean and staring at the blurry blue sky? Are you still in Georgia or have you crossed the border? Do you have taxi fare?

Get the picture? So you'll understand what I felt I had to do. I called and made an appointment of my own for an exam and a LASIK procedure. By now, our local TV news celebrity, Monica Kaufman, had had her eyes done. There were rumors that Elton John, Atlanta's part-time very famous musician-type celebrity, might have his done, too. And Elton John even has a personal line of fashionable, highly expensive eyeglasses. They're part of his image.

The exam part was easy. They did some tests to see how bad my eyes were, and then they put in these drops to dilate my pupils so I looked like Timothy Leary did on a good day (or any day, for that matter).

Two weeks later, I came back for the surgery. One of the best things about LASIK -- and there are many, not the least of which is that your spouse gets to watch the whole thing on a TV monitor in the doctors' lounge -- is that they don't put you to sleep. And you know what that means. That means you can eat anything you want right up until the time of your appointment. I myself had a freshly made carrot/pumpkin muffin and a frozen coffee drink not two hours before. They were delicious.

I sat with my husband, Brent, in the tasteful waiting room, reading current issues of Time and People, and waited for my name to be called. As I had seen a scary photo in The Atlanta Journal and Constitution newspaper of a thing called a "lid speculum," which keeps your eyelids open and looks like a scene from A Clockwork Orange, I was a bit nervous about what this procedure would feel like.

A nurse called me in, did some checking, and put drops in my eyes to make my pupils really small so the laser light wouldn't bother me, then left me to wait again. When it was my time, they took me into the procedure room, sent Brent to the doctors' lounge, and it all began.

They sat me down in a big black recliner then buzzed all around like mosquitoes, getting the right supplies, checking the equipment, and who knows what else. Claire, the center's patient counselor, had agreed to stand next to me and hold my hand, because I am a really big chicken. When she made this offer, she did not know how strong I can be during times of emotional stress.

The operating room assistants washed around my eyes with betadine for that much-desired raccoon look, then put a sterile drape over my face. They flooded my eyes with anesthetic drops so I wouldn't feel any of the stuff I am about to describe to you.

And then came the moment I'd been dreading. The lid speculum. Eek! Eek! Eek! (Psycho shower scene noises.) Dr. Keith Thompson, director of the center and my very own eye surgeon, slipped the metal device into my right eyelid and . . . and . . . okay, it hurt. The drops didn't really numb the parts around my eyes that much.

"Ow ow ow!" I said, in one of my most eloquent moments. "You'll get used to it," Dr. Thompson said cheerfully, which I thought was a pretty nutty response. Maybe I should rethink this thing. Maybe Brent should be here and not Claire. "Claire? Are you with me?" "Yes, I'm here. You're doing great," she said, switching hands and trying to get some of the feeling back into her right one, her precious marketing hand.

"Okay now, Terri, look at my light. Can you see my light?" Dr. Thompson asked. "Nhh-hhh," I said, which is affirmative in the mysterious language of the clenched-jaw people. "Now you're going to see a little circle, then black, okay?" "Nhh-hhh." "Okay. Now here's the laser." A sound Claire describes as a vacuum cleaner full of paper clips began. I felt nothing. Except for the lid speculum, which I have already described and which I did not, in fact, get used to.

The laser stopped. A flash of light. I could see the outline of one of Dr. Thompson's fingers. Something delicate came down over my eye, like a tiny door that only angels could fit through. This was "nature's bandage," which Dr. Thompson had created without my even noticing while I was looking at the first light, as unlikely as that might sound.

"Okay, Terri. The right eye's done. That's it." "Thhht'sHhht?" I say. "That's right. We're almost done." They repeated everything for the left eye, took me into an exam room, and brought in my stunned but smiling husband. He had, as you recall, just watched my eye being lasered on a big-screen TV.

Ann, one of the nurses, told me what to do and not do after surgery. She made this very clear: "Do not do not do not do not touch your eyes. Do not touch your eyes. Do not do not touch your eyes. Don't wash your face. Don't get water in your eyes. No eye drops until after your check-up tomorrow. Do not touch your eyes.

"Use these antibiotic drops four times a day, the lubricating drops whenever you need them, and wear these when you sleep tonight," she said, holding up a pair of metal eye patches with holes in them. They looked like a fly's eyes. "Any questions?" she said. We had none. "I'll be here for four more hours today. Call me if you think of something." And she was gone. It was 6 p.m.

That night I felt fine, although my vision was still blurry. No pain. I took two extra-strength Tylenol just in case and went to bed. Brent taped the fly's eyes to my face and kissed me good night. Then, at 5:30 the next morning, the most remarkable thing happened. I woke up, turned around, and through the fly's-eye holes in my metal patches, I could read the clock!

I went to the bathroom and took off the patches. Yep. It was true. I could see! I was on automatic pilot that early in the morning, so I walked back into the bedroom to get my glasses before I realized I didn't need them. I didn't need my glasses! I could see just fine without them! The very next morning after a 20-minute, painless (except for the lid speculum) surgery.

For the next hour, I sat in our living room drinking coffee and simply looking at things. Look! I can read that magazine from here! Hey! I can read the signature on that painting! I looked out the window. I looked in the closets. I looked in the cabinets. Look! I can see! I can see! This is so outrageously fantastically great!!

I generally am not a very excitable person, but let me tell you I was on fire. I had been healed of the great curse of uncorrected blindness. Never had I even imagined this would be possible. Life was not some Monet painting after all. I could find my towel now!

In two weeks, I'm going back to the beach of my childhood, North Myrtle, South Carolina, to put my new eyes to the test. I plan to run fast, my face to the wind like a kid with a kite. I'm going to dive head-first into the water. Stand on my hands. Dive in the pool for quarters. Take up synchronized swimming. Train for the Olympics!!

I'm going to stay in the water so long my fingers will turn to raisins. They'll have to call me in for supper, because I've got a lot of swimming to do. With my new eyes I can be whole again, folks. I can be that tough little girl who put a part of herself in a case the moment she put on her first pair of glasses. Look out!!