Arrived Tuesday with some trepidation - {Hmmm... Some of my xenophobic chums aver that it would be insane to have eye surgery in Tijuana. Am I nuts? But there must be a lot of brainy people running around Mexico - right?} As I walked into the clinic a number of people in the waiting room greeted me - "Buenos tardes!" Were they the clinic staff? No, they were fellow patients in the waiting room being friendly - how weird!! Like a jerk, I just nodded my head to them {You dope - you had two years of high school Spanish - you should have said "Buenos tardes!" back. You're an ugly American...} I went up to the reception desk half prepared to communicate with sign language. Hey! - the attractive and smiley young ladies behind the desk spoke English flawlessly. This was getting better.

After a short time in the waiting room observing one patient after another walk in and get greeted the same way I was - and respond more politely - a very pleasant looking young woman came to the waiting room holding one of the patient information cards that we all filled out on arrival. She was obviously struggling to decipher the scrawl on the card - and looking around the room. Her eyes met mine and we both knew... "That's gotta be me!" I declared - she smiled, nodded, and ushered me into an examination room. Technician, optometrist, MD? - beats me - but the equipment looked state-of-the-art; gadgets, scopes, computers - it all looked right. She was patient with me - poked me in the eye with some instrument, placed my head in some device, made me look at some flashing concentric rings and VOILA! - a multicolored map of my corneal aberrations - I think. What a mess - looked like a tie-dyed doily. Back to the waiting room...

Another short wait and I was summoned to a different exam room. Walked down the hall past several suited gentlemen who smiled and nodded at me {hmm, wonder which one of these guys does the deed?} This exam room looked more traditional - like the optometrist offices we used to go to - the chair, that thing they put over your eyes with the lens wheels to try different correction combinations, and a line of letters projected onto the wall. And the other wall was plastered with degrees, certificates, citations. {Good grief! Is this guy a Mexican Jonas Salk?}

One of the suits walked in and introduced himself as Dr. Chayet. I liked him immediately. He quickly put me at ease as we chatted about my home in the Northern Virginia area. We discussed the implications of regulation on the Virginia tobacco industry (really), and then he talked about his experience, his publications, and the clinic's state-of-the-art equipment. He explained that the equipment they used to perform LASIK was more advanced than the equipment I would find in the DC area. He also said he had a number of associates in the DC area that he could put me in contact with if I had any problems after I returned home. I had good instincts about this doctor - I believed him - every word - and my Myers-Briggs personality profile says that I will trust my instincts about people despite what other people say and any evidence to the contrary. And in this case, there was certainly no evidence to the contrary.

He completed a quick eye exam and informed that my progressive multi-focal glasses weren't right - I was probably having trouble reading with them. {Yep, roger that, I've been taking them off to read} . He told me I was a perfect candidate for the surgery, then asked me how I learned about the clinic. I explained about the guy in the booth at the border crossing area. "You are very lucky. That is a special promotion we're running for people that normally wouldn't or couldn't do this. I'll go ahead and give you the promotional price - $1700." {Wow! What's the worst that can happen? They shred my eyeballs, I have to replace my corneas with some departed person's corneas, and my insurance picks up everything after the shred point! Go for it!!} "Uh, OK, I think I'd like to go ahead with it..." My surgery was scheduled for noon the next day.

Despite the confident predictions of my xeno' chums that I would be blinded by surgery in Tijuana, Lee and I showed up well before noon the next day. (Those Myers-Briggs chicks were right on target again.) We had plenty of time, and Lee was hungry and wanted to stop on the way for a taco. I was pretty eager to get on with it, and I was in what Lee chidingly refers to as the "Platt Zone." That's Lee's term for my tendency to be obsessively and compulsively distracted by whatever interests me at the moment - and her observation that the universe seems to bend to my will far too often. I suggested that maybe they would do me early and we could get a taco afterward (as if...). "Ok," said Lee, considerate enough not to tell me what a dope I was.

They didn't take me early (ripple in the Platt Zone?), but did get to me right on schedule. A few minutes before surgery they handed me a valium pill. {I wonder if I should have told them that I've had valium before and a horse dose has a slightly perceptible effect on me - this looks like the same does they gave that 98 lb. girl that went before me. Oh well, too late now. Lucky thing I learned those breathing exercises when my Ex and I went through Lamaze classes in 78.....}

....Ok, sit in the chair. Lean your head back. Some drops for your eyes. "Yeeoww!" Ok, feels better now, eyeballs are numb. Tape on the eyelids and a sterile membrane of some kind, 2" x 3", stuck over my eye and cheek. Dr. Chayet spreads open a slit in the membrane above my eye and inserts some sort of spring spreaders to hold the eye W-I-D-E open (surely invented by a gynecologist). Some sort of suction cup thing placed around my eye - shaped like a ring bolt, to hold the eye still and act as a bed for the....KNIFE! Believe they call it a Keratome; a precision instrument for cutting the corneal flap, but it's a KNIFE! Hey, is that thing oscillating?! Oh man, it doesn't hurt, but I can feel it and I know what it's doing! CALM, BREATHE SLOWLY, HEE, HEE, HEE.....

Whew, that's over. Some stuff squirted into my eye - hmm, must be rinsing masticated corneal cells off of the surgical plane, maybe a disinfectant, whatever... Now look at the red dot and hold still, very still. The doctor holds my head with his hands - Jesus, they were hands a minute ago, when did they turn into a hydraulic vice? My universe is the red dot, nothing else matters, hold still, look at that dot, breathe out. The laser - BAP, BAP, BAP, BAP, BAP, BAP.

"Excellent," says Chayet. He releases his grip on my head and it pops back into it's previous shape. He uses a little instrument to lift the flap up and lay it back over the fried spot on my cornea - er, excuse me, the ablated area on my cornea. Hey, cool, as it drops back into place things clear up a little. Ok, next eye. Wonder when the valium is going to kick in...?

A few minutes later, standing outside in the sun.

"You know Lee, If I didn't have all this crap over my eyes (plastic shields and those squirrelly eye-doctor sunglasses), I think I could see well enough to drive right now!" "Yeah, right," she says as she leads me stumbling back across the border. "Hey, don't you want to stop and get a taco?" "Yeah.., right..."

Thanks to Dr. Chayet and his terrific staff for my new eyes!

Dr. Chayet and the Codet Clinic are affiliated with the ARIS Laser Vision Institute